Hell is Us Review – A Few Fumbles Don’t Ruin One of 2025’s Best Games

I've been intrigued by the third major release from Montreal-based developer Rogue Factor, Hell is Us, ever since I first saw its debut in 2022. The teaser trailer didn't give away much, and frankly, there's a lot about that original trailer that looks very different now, even if I can look back on it and recognize what every element of it refers to now that I've hit credits on it days ahead of its full release. But I've kept the game in the back of my mind for years now, which has its own layer of expectation building, even though I realistically knew very little about the game.

My expectations only rose with its marketing push in the last year, with the first gameplay debut last September, a more detailed look at the puzzle and combat elements in that same month, and again this past July. I purposely avoided the demo to be as devoid of spoilers as possible regarding how the game would actually feel, but I've more or less followed each step of its public development, and in all that time, I've been particularly interested in the studio's emphasis on how Hell is Us has "no hand-holding" for players.

"There's no map, no quest markers, and no hand-holding. Just organic exploration asking you to trust your senses," the game's art and creative director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, said in July. The game even reminds you about all of this before it starts.

I love that kind of game, challenging me to think outside the box consistently and pay attention to my surroundings more than the map in a menu screen.

And for the most part, I'm glad to say that Hell is Us delivers on that experience in spades. At least until you start to recognize commonalities within its various puzzles, and, as what happened in my case, years of experience with games like Resident Evil and Uncharted kick in to help solve the several puzzles that require you to match symbols with environmental landmarks or figure out the path to odd and uniquely shaped objects that just so happen to fit into a concave spot in the centre of the door you're trying to open.

But even after seeing the patterns, the puzzles are still fun to solve. Paired with a strong combat system, a gameplay and narrative structure that lets you go at your own pace, a thick atmosphere, stunning visuals, and an intriguing lore to the game world that makes me want to read each item description, Hell is Us is, without a doubt, one of 2025's best games.

It's not perfect, though, faltering with its core character, narrative, and the unfortunate reality that faces many modern games, which is the fact that they really didn't need those light RPG elements that seem to have little to no impact on how you progress.

I want to start by talking about its story, Remi, and the fictional country of the game's setting, Hadea. Some basic context for Hell is Us: you play as a man named Remi. Born in Hadea, he was sent away by his mother when he was just five years old, with her final words to him being "I love you. Never come back." Despite growing up in the outside world to be a military man, Remi shows a distinct inability to follow orders and smuggles himself into Hadea years later to find his parents based on a small set of facts he remembers.

He was born in Hadea, his family lived in a town called Jova, and his father was the town's blacksmith. He doesn't know if his parents are still alive, but armed with those three facts, he's determined to find them. We begin our journey with Remi after he's officially made it in under the guise of being part of a peacekeeping force trying to do its best to stop the two peoples of Hadea, Sabinians and Palomists, from killing each other off in a brutal civil war.

But that's not the only element of the game's opening. It more accurately begins with Remi strapped to a chair, with a truth serum currently being administered into his bloodstream. A man who could be a relative of the Baron Vladomir Harkonnen in Villeneuve's Dune sits across from him in a suit, sporting a hat and a bolo tie, and in one of those bits of exposition dialogue that's more for the audience, he tells Remi (us) about Remi. We're told that, according to his file, Remi is a 'high-functioning sociopath,' a cold and calculating man who cares about his own objectives and little else. A man not led by emotions, and honestly, even though it becomes clear that Remi is not without human emotion, I found that, despite Elias Toufexis being behind his voice, Remi is the most boring part of the whole story.

I can understand that Rogue Factor might've intended for players to have a blank sheet in Remi upon which they will write their own emotional journey, but he's not a character I created. He's the central piece of a crafted narrative, and I think it's boring to have your character be emotionless, or for them to at least present a state of emotionlessness. His brooding stare can join the legions of leading characters who are like that to look cool, I suppose? Like I said, he's not actually emotionless, but his range as a character is lacking, and it made it difficult for me to care about him beyond his place within the lore of the game's world. Link has more emotional range without ever saying a word, and in a game absolutely chalk-full of characters you speak to that feel like real people, with real emotions, I found myself stunned by the fact that Remi lacked what I found everywhere else in the game.

Maybe that's another reason why Remi is as boring as he is, because you're supposed to care about everyone else more. You'll talk to Sabinians and Palomists, you'll hear about their traditions, their histories, their cultural views, and perhaps most importantly, you'll hear how they talk about each other.

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Some Sabinians will tell you the Palomists aren't even people, and that they deserve to have their homes pillaged, destroyed, be sent to work camps, and stay under the Sabinian boot until they die. Some Palomists will tell you, "The only good Sabinian is a dead one," that they are of a lesser stock compared to Palomists, and that they deserve to be treated as such. You'll see graffiti of a group of people having been lynched, which Palomists call "the Sabinian family tree." Some, from either side, will express disgust at the hatred, the fighting, and the atrocities committed. They'll argue they're all Hadeans first, and beyond that, they are all human. The atmosphere built by what you see and hear in the environmental storytelling weighed on me constantly, with signs of hate and violence that remind me too much of real-world news and the worst examples of what people are capable of.

Both will argue an original claim to Hadea, with the Palomists' argument generally carrying more religious reasons than the ones given by the Sabinians. And again, there are a select few on both sides who believe the two can coexist peacefully and that this fighting has to come to an end.

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It was impossible for me to hear all of this and not think of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, particularly due to how the fighting between the Sabinians and the Palomists is depicted between its historical and religious origins. I'm not saying that Rogue Factor mapped the conflict between Sabinians and Palomists based on the generations of fighting between Palestinians and Israelis, or that Sabinians were mapped to Palestinians and Palomists to Israelis or vice-versa. In fact, key differences in how the situation in Hadea is depicted seem to avoid those one-to-one comparisons purposefully. The studio's technical designer, Simon Girard, even discussed in an interview that went live days before this review, how Hadea is meant to represent no singular conflict, just the reality of civil wars in a brutal way. "The nature is of neighbours-against-neighbours. It's not one country against another. It's people who are the same, right? They're divided amongst either geographical or cultural or religious lines, but they're one in the same."

Even still, the comparisons between what's presented in Hell is Us and our current world were impossible to ignore, particularly when some of the characters laid blame at the lens through which the media reported on issues between the two peoples, and how the role of the media in causing and perpetuating the civil war is discussed.

Rogue Factor front-loads all of this and the importance of the ongoing civil war in Hadea and the divide between Sabinians and Palomists, with your introduction to the town of Jova being a Sabinian-occupied town with a few Palomists trying to stay hidden, held in captivity, or, as is the case for the man who upgrades your weapons, not held captive by ropes and chains, but by being put to work for the occupying force. The rest of the town was either taken to the forest to be shot or sent to work camps.

It's a violent, terrifying introduction to Hadea, with dark displays of hatred in every house you walk into, some of which feature displays of sexual violence that are particularly dark.

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Almost everywhere you go in the game is like this. One area is spared, with its design being that of a warm blanket and all the comfort it can provide. It's a safe haven from the fighting, where you can see NPCs end up by making certain narrative choices, but the rest of the game's locations don't let up.

To say that it's a lot to kick things off is an understatement, so I found it disappointing that it all took a backseat in the narrative to focus on the more fictional elements. The history of Hadea and the fighting between Sabinians and Palomists are all woven through the lore, but Remi's personal quest drives the bus for the story. It was a heavy narrative opening with no real payoff, and ultimately landed on 'War is bad, humans are capable of awful things.' That's a fine message, but it felt lacking when compared to the opening and what follows with every other city you go to in Hadea, and the complexities of the characters you meet.

The game even has an added layer to the narrative with examples of the creatures you fight being less monstrous than the people of Hadea, but it's once again not leaned on enough.

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There was also a core element of the gameplay that I found a tad narratively incongruent with the positive side of any message its narrative has, which is centered around helping people who need help. You can return to a key NPC to receive a reward every time you complete a side quest that's called a 'Good Deed.' You'll get a gameplay-focused reward when you do so, and getting a reward each time feels like it misses the point of doing the good deed in the first place.

This is all to say that Hell is Us gets a lot of things right with its narrative. The lore of the creatures and the history Rogue Factor has built is really interesting, and I have a lot of time for a game that tells its story through environmental design and item descriptions more than it does cutscenes. But it doesn't stick the landing, and doesn't go as deep as I expected it to based on its heavy opening.

The gameplay, on the other hand, is actually pretty much the same, just on a different scale. It's good, sometimes really good, sometimes great, but it doesn't succeed in crossing the line to amazing. The combat is fairly solid. I really appreciate a key mechanic that lets you get your health back by being aggressive. But, at least when playing on its normal, balanced difficulty setting, it was never challenging enough that I had to really engage with the various buffs and slight build changes you can make with passive and active abilities and special attacks.

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Once you find what works between your weapon choice, abilities, and drone attacks, sticking with it is all you need to do, and you can practically ignore everything else that's not just 'upgrade your weapon to hit harder' afterwards. I found a passive relic that, when equipped, made it so that I did 200% damage to enemies after a successful parry. Paired with a halbred-esque weapon called a Polearm, I got through every combat encounter with little trouble. There are a few cool-looking killing blows you can deliver, though. I also appreciated that even though there were only a few variations of the creatures you fight, later-stage versions of them get new attacks to switch things up.

The best part about playing Hell is Us, though, is its puzzles, partly because the whole world is a puzzle, as you're constantly trying to put context clues together to figure out where to go next. Sometimes you solve that problem by talking to people, sometimes by looking at your surroundings, and sometimes the answers come through objects you find. Like I said before, you start to notice the pattern to it, but that doesn't make it any less fun.

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The puzzles kept me glued to Hell is Us. Walking around one of the major dungeons, exploring each new zone for clues about the story or where I'm supposed to be going. It's where I had the most fun, and the design that went into every puzzle, particularly in making each zone and the world you explore a giant puzzle, is why I truly think, despite my problems with its narrative, Hell is Us will remain as one of 2025's best games.

I can only fault it so much for falling short of its introduction, and I was absolutely glued to it throughout my playthrough. It only took me 26 hours to hit credits, but you can easily spend double that time looking into every nook and cranny, and I intend to keep digging further.

There's no question that Rogue Factor has made a great game. Hell is Us is an amazing accomplishment for the studio, and especially for a core team of 55 developers. It fumbles in places, but I was so engrossed with all the things it does well that those fumbles don't overshadow the whole experience.

Hell is Us might not go as far as I want it to in more ways than one, but it doesn't entirely drop the ball either. Overall, it delivers a package to be missed for anyone looking for a deep narrative and a solid action game, with a lot of puzzles and a rich atmosphere tying it all together.

Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).

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