Rogue Factor’s bleak, map‑free odyssey blends smart puzzles, Souls‑ish scraps, and cosmic‑horror vibes into one of 2025’s boldest (and most divisive) adventures.
If you’ve ever wished your quest log would stop yelling at you, Hell Is Us is the game that finally snatches away the waypoint fairy and tosses her into a time‑bent oubliette. This is a third‑person action‑adventure set in Hadea, a fictional country tearing itself apart through civil war and something worse. Instead of breadcrumbs and glowing paint, you’re handed rumors, directions like “north‑east of the old mill,” and riddles etched into stone. It’s thrilling, sometimes maddening, and frequently unforgettable. The design principle is simple: trust the player. The execution is anything but simple—and that’s where Hell Is Us so often shines.
What Hell Is Us is (and isn’t)
The basics: it’s developed by Rogue Factor and published by Nacon, arriving on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The standard edition is $59.99, while a Deluxe Edition offers 72‑hour early access. PS5 and Xbox store listings mark the global launch as September 4, 2025, with Deluxe owners stepping in on September 1.
Creative and art direction comes from Jonathan Jacques‑Belletête (ex‑Deus Ex), and those vibes permeate everything from the fashion‑forward poncho to the brutalist ruins. The lead character, Rémi, is voiced by Elias Toufexis (yes, Adam Jensen himself), lending the story a grizzled, world‑weary cadence that feels right at home. The tone draws on cosmic‑horror inspirations—think the dread of Chernobyl reinterpreted as a force you can’t quite see—rather than tentacles and winks to Lovecraft.
As Rémi, you sneak back into Hadea—smuggled out as a child, now hunting for your parents amid a conflict between the Palomists and the Sabinians—only to find the land infected by “Calamity”-borne anomalies and pale, mannequin‑like “Hollow Walkers.” It’s a setting that feels disturbingly close to real history, then slides into the uncanny: time loops, haunted relics, and enemies that look like grief given form.
Explore first, fight second
Hell Is Us’ calling card is exploration without hand‑holding. There’s no map, no quest markers, and no breadcrumb trail; the game expects you to read journals, parse NPC descriptions, and keep notes (really). In practice, you triangulate landmarks, follow audio/visual cues, and piece together an investigation web on Rémi’s chunky retro‑futuristic datapad. When it works, it’s magic—like cracking an old‑school dungeon by pure observation. When it doesn’t, you’ll wander in circles wishing you’d written down that plate code.
Side content reinforces that “trust the player” ethos. “Good Deeds” are often time‑sensitive errands with consequences if you’re late. They’re not labeled as such; the game simply lets events unfold (sometimes bleakly) if you didn’t get there in time. You can brute‑force thanks to a generous fast‑travel back to your APC, but the elegance is finding the route because you understood the world, not because an arrow told you so. It’s as bold as it is occasionally cruel.
The combat: Souls‑ish cadence with its own twists
Combat borrows the familiar block/dodge/parry/stamina dance, but this isn’t a Souls game in spirit. Death isn’t the loop here—it’s a setback you’re meant to avoid—and you can adjust difficulty at any time, even fine‑tuning enemy health, damage, and aggression with sliders. That alone makes Hell Is Us an inviting on‑ramp for players who love the idea of Souls but hate the punishment.
There are systems layered atop the basics. Weapons (swords, polearms, axes, greatswords) accept “glyphs” that grant special moves. A smart “healing pulse” system rewards offensive momentum by letting you recoup health if you trigger it at the right moment. And Rémi’s drone—KAPI—starts as a distraction tool and later evolves into a real partner with stun/damage modules. It’s a build‑crafting sandbox, even if character stats are light.
The best wrinkle is thematic: enemies and abilities are keyed to emotions—Rage, Grief, Terror, Ecstasy—with color‑coded Hazes that tether to Hollow Walkers. To damage the walker, you first disrupt its Haze; wait too long and the Haze respawns. The metaphor is on‑the‑nose, but it creates a satisfying rhythm: isolate, cut the tether, then finish the job. It’s clever, readable design that turns abstract feelings into encounter logic.
The loop in the loops
A recurring objective is closing “Timeloops”—inky, humming anomalies born from a frozen moment of atrocity. Mechanically, you’ll hunt down Timeloop Guardians and then “seed” the loop to shut it down, preventing respawns and reclaiming a piece of the map from an endless wartime now. It’s one of the game’s strongest expressions of theme through mechanics: the past literally won’t let Hadea move on until you intervene.
Puzzles you can feel in your wrist
Dungeons alternate between nerve‑shredding melee and point‑and‑click‑style problem solving: deciphering glyphs, building door codes from scattered hints, slotting artifacts per some dusty ritual you only half remember from a note in a crypt. At its best, the puzzle design channels old Resident Evil locked‑box satisfaction. At its worst, it leans on out‑of‑game note‑taking and small CRT‑green text that can be hard to read. Accessibility options cover a lot, but text size remains a pain point.
Presentation and performance
On PS5 (and Pro), Hell Is Us looks and runs well, with a Performance/Quality toggle and sharp upscaling (PSSR) that keeps the grime crisp and the swamps eerie. On PC, the Unreal Engine 5 build is surprisingly well‑optimized—even mid‑range rigs hold 1080p/1440p nicely—though your mileage will vary in the densest zones. Across platforms, the sound design is excellent: you’ll hear a Timeloop Guardian before you see it, and the drone’s whir becomes a welcome heartbeat in a hostile place.
Art direction is the real standout: white, hollow‑faced horrors dancing through bogs; memorials toppled and repurposed into puzzle locks; a blue flower field that’s both gorgeous and ominous. The world carries the palpable heaviness of atrocity without wallowing, which makes the rare moments of beauty land harder.
How long is the war?
Expect roughly 20 hours if you beeline the main thread, and 30‑plus if you savor every dungeon, Good Deed, and Timeloop. That spread mirrors the experience: sprint and you’ll miss what makes Hadea special; linger and you may find the final act a little rushed compared to the slow‑burn middle.
The rough edges (and the ones that cut)
A few design choices will rub players the wrong way:
- Enemy variety & boss count. There aren’t many enemy archetypes, and late‑game bosses can feel like jumbo‑sized repeats. The encounter palette isn’t broad enough for a game this long.
- Note‑taking & UI. The game’s refusal to log every crucial scrap of info is philosophically consistent—and occasionally frustrating. Small text doesn’t help.
- Navigation friction. The “no map” manifesto mostly pays off, but when backtracking across multi‑zone puzzles, the romance of being lost can curdle into tedium.
And yet, even the missteps serve a point. Hell Is Us wants you to stop, read, listen, and remember. In 2025, that alone feels radical.
So… is it any good?
Mostly, it’s excellent—and unmistakably itself. If you come for pure combat, you’ll find a solid, sometimes spectacular melee system that peaks when you juggle glyphs, Hazes, and the drone. But Hell Is Us is ultimately an exploration and investigation game that happens to fight brilliantly when it must. The lack of hand‑holding, the detective‑style datapad, the Timeloops that tie respawns to trauma—this is a design statement delivered with confidence. The result is a haunting, heady experience that occasionally trips over its own ambition and keeps going anyway.
Play it if…
- You love solving puzzles with a pen nearby and getting genuinely lost in well‑designed spaces.
- You want Souls‑style tension without Souls‑style punishment; granular difficulty sliders make this unusually approachable.
- You’re into moody, cosmic‑horror‑tinged worlds where vibe and meaning matter as much as loot.
Skip it if…
- You need constant direction, objective markers, and a tidy checklist. This game actively refuses to be that.
- Combat depth is your main draw; enemy variety and boss design won’t carry 30 hours by themselves.
Verdict
Hell Is Us is a rare AA release that takes a swing at the industry’s biggest sacred cow: convenience. Sometimes it whiffs—an overlong puzzle chain here, a samey fight there—but when it connects, it delivers the kind of I figured it out dopamine rush you can’t fake with a HUD icon. It’s bleak, demanding, and refreshingly uninterested in coddling you. If you can meet it halfway, Hadea is a hell worth getting lost in.
Platforms & pricing at a glance: PS5 / Xbox Series X|S / PC, $59.99 Standard; $79.99 Deluxe (72‑hour early access). Launch on Sept 4, 2025 (Deluxe early access Sept 1).
Notable credits: Creative Director Jonathan Jacques‑Belletête; Rémi voiced by Elias Toufexis.
Tone check: Real‑world‑adjacent war crimes and other heavy themes appear without trigger preambles; know your limits.
Pro tip: Close Timeloops in areas you intend to revisit; it reduces respawns and turns a slog into a victory lap.
