Hell is Us

Разработчики сознательно не дали привычную карту, объяснив что игрок должен слушать окружающих и читать записки. И это оказалось фатальным решением! Такое решение сработало бы, будь мир интересен для исследования, персонажи не были бы картонками с парой фраз, а записки хоть сколько-нибудь содержательными. В итоге ты бегаешь по пустому миру и избегаешь драк, потому что боевка в игре отдельная пытка. В итоге бросил игру уже на второй локации, это просто не интересно.

Great lore and core gameplay that doesn't let player by the hand, I just loved it. But sometimes good deeds (sidequests) are not intuitive at all. Overall expirience is awesome, but the story itself is somehow boring, IMHO it should be more cinematic, not only between chapters

Yo digo que si lo malo: poca variedad de enemigos! lo bueno: todo lo demás! yo no digo nada, pero hay unas armitas nivel 15 cerca del inicio que oye, ayudar ayudan!

I can recommend it because the game has a lot going for it: ✅ Graphics ✅ Creature and world design ✅ The combat system, especially the rally-style healing mechanic that rewards aggressive play, much like in Bloodborne ✅ The music and sound design. At times they're almost too good and realistic ✅ Lore BUT... it also has some absolutely infuriating moments that had me raging with the fury of a thousand suns: ❌ The story. It’s just as bad as the game’s world and visual design are cool ❌ The war sound effects trigger some seriously intense PTSD ❌ The NPC side quest system is complete ass. The items NPCs are looking for are often found in completely different locations, and by the time you stumble across them, you’ve already forgotten who even wanted them ❌ Some quests can also just break. You fail to find the required item, progress further in the main story, and then the NPC dies. The only way to discover this is by going back to them, finding their corpse, and only then does the game tell you that the quest failed. But the biggest issue is that the NPCs don’t affect anything at all. ❌ The lack of a map, quest markers, or object markers absolutely kills my motivation to do quests. I liked the idea of not having any of that, but I simply don’t have the energy to keep everything in my head when I launch the game after work. I spend 15 minutes trying to remember where I am, what I was doing, and where I’m supposed to go, while desperately resisting the urge to just close the game and uninstall it. ❌ The difficulty. I played on the default difficulty. Once you upgrade your weapon to the maximum level, regular enemies become made of cardboard. At the same time, I had absolutely no desire to increase the difficulty. I just didn’t feel like spending more time beating the ♥♥♥♥ out of the same enemies. ❌ The level design and the sphere-cleansing system are frustratingly implemented. You can go through a long, narrow tunnel all the way to a sphere, enter it, and only then discover that you don’t have the item required to close it. That means leaving the entire location, coming back later, and killing all the enemies again. One time, this demotivated me so badly that I immediately closed the game. ❌ Quest rewards are almost completely worthless. The same applies to most of the loot scattered around the world. It’s mostly just consumables. Once you find a weapon that feels comfortable, you can basically use it for the entire game. I literally used only two perks throughout my whole playthrough: the drone stun and the weapon stun. ❌ The problem with the lore is that you simply don’t need it. Yes, there’s a civil war. Yes, there’s an ancient hatred between different groups of people. Yes, it’s connected to the lore and explains what is happening. But none of it affects anything. Had I been able to choose who to help and who to abandon, with the information I gathered throughout the world influencing those decisions, then the lore would have actually mattered.

Hell is Us is a thematic masterpiece with an atmosphere as thick as the fog that surrounds you, an absolute masterclass in video game design, treating your players like they have functioning brainstems with no infantilizing handholding. The visuals, the story, it's utterly infatuating and covers emotionally heavy topics with a great degree of depth and respect. Accompanied by a fantastic droning soundtrack that makes you feel this perpetual cosmic dread on par with movies like Annihilation and Color Out of Space. And the puzzles are a perfect degree of brain teasing, but not to the point if being overly frustrating/nonsensical. The only thing in my opinion that holds this game back from being a 10/10 is the combat, whilst not bad by any means, it can get repetitive, especially with the heavier focus on it towards the end. It lacks both enemy and weapon variation to truly elevate it. But with that said, Hell is Us is an incredibly underrated experience with the groundworks for a very unique universe. // TLDR; Do not play this if you just want another difficult ''Souls'' game, play this if you want a narrative experience with no handholding.

1/5

Very interesting game with some of the most serious subject matter and depictions of evil I've seen in a game.

You will see some really dark things in this game, and with that, it's not going to be for everyone. This game revolves around a religious war and the fanatics that go with it. Both sides view each other as less than human and do some of the most awful stuff to each other, and kids are not excluded from this. This game forces you to witness the events that are unfolding and the aftermath of it all. The exploration does not hold your hand I have a Word document with notes and clues to quests I have found to help me remember everything going on. The puzzles are great, but you have to put the clues together yourself. Don't expect brazen hints. There is zero hand-holding here, and some of the quests and puzzles you can permanently miss out on due to the ongoing war and conflict in the game. Combat-wise, it's nothing incredibly new, if your used to action games, this will feel somewhat familiar with some minor new mechanics involved with kills and the way HP and stamina work. Over all if you like action oriented games and love puzzles and exploration and story telling this game is a must buy even at full price. If your only interested in the combat cause your chasing something like a "souls like" then I would skip this.

combat really is crisp and the stamina/health pool being shared isnt that bad if you just heal after your hits. 10/10 world building and atmosphere. It wont hold your hand at any point. Absolutely recommend for those who enjoy exploration and a challenge.

All these reviews and no one is talking about easily the worst part of the game. The ladders. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ theyre so slow. Took the near death faceplant instead every single chance I could. Other then that Game is great.