Hell is Us

As someone who enjoys Zelda-like puzzles and Souls-like combat I thought this game was a no brainer. But unfortunately this game doesn't really hold up to either of those standards. Combat is very one dimensional, enemy types are quite limited and get old fast and the puzzles will go from: "well, that was easy." to: "How in the hell was I suppose to read your mind?!". The story is semi interesting and the visuals are well done, but the real killer for me was the pacing of the game itself. It's unexpectedly slow and that pairing with the pretty consistently unrewarding experience made me move on to better games. If you're looking for a decent story game, sure. Otherwise you're better off elsewhere.

TL;DR: Please, don't let the initial disclaimer turn you off of this game. It's a lot easier than it makes you believe. This is the absolute platinum standard of game design and it not winning the GOTY 2025 was a literal crime. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, so... The whole thing feels like a souls-like for people who dislike souls-likes: It's way more focused on the story than on the combat, it has a difficulty selection and even sliders to adjust enemy health and damage to create your own difficulty, death is little more than a slap on the wrist: enemies [b]don't[/b] respawn, items remain collected, basically you lose no progress (there's an option to disable all that for people who'd like to, though), and it's even possible (and encouraged) to get rid of enemies permanently, but how you do it is spoiler territory. The initial warning about the game not having a map or waypoints is kinda unwarranted. What do I mean by that? Well, lots of games have no map or waypoints, and basically all of them are wa(aaaaaaaaaaaaa)y more cryptic than this one. Think of souls-likes for instance. A better disclaimer would be: "This game follows some rules of souls-likes, in that it doesn't have a map or waypoints, and a few side quests can fail without warning, but it also makes an herculean effort to guide you with very clear directions given through dialogue". The main quest doesn't complete itself only because you need to move your character. If you pay attention to dialogue instead of just pressing "skip" all the time, then it's a pretty easy game. Now, that's [b]not[/b] a knock against the game at all, it's the exact opposite. Here's some real examples of what I wanna say: Exhibit 1: An NPC says you need to find the village's blacksmith and gives you directions: 1 - you can follow his directions; 2- you can look around a little and see a 10-meter tall pole with a giant anvil symbol on top,; 3- you can wander around and eventually stumble across a building with "Blacksmith" written on a plaque above the door; Exhibit 2: NPC: "I saw a truck that seems to be in good shape. If only I could find the keys, me and the others could flee from here." Me: [finds a vehicle key]. I wonder what I should do now. So mystery. Much unsolvable. In all seriousness though, the game still manages to make you feel smart about it. It's all diegetic and coherent, nothing ever takes you [i]out[/i] of the game. Everything you need will be given to you [i]in-game[/i]. That's an art in itself. That's game design in its best possible form. The world-building and story are simply amazing. I can't talk about any of it without spoiling something, so you'll have to take my word for it, but I genuinely loved both. Combat is fine. It's not bad at all, but it's clearly not the focus. It's also very easy. I played on normal and I died 2, maybe 3 times, all of them because I decided I could fight 10 high-level enemies at once. Let those who never got stuck between a mob of enemies and a wall throw the first rock... LOL. Oh, you also can literally parry by accident. Only certain attacks, but the timing is [b]extremely[/b] forgiving. Also, something that's not talked about often, but that genuinely impressed me: animations and environment design. It's one of those things that, if it's working correctly, you're not supposed to [i]think[/i] about. But this game here? This level of animation quality is what we all dreamed only in our wildest dreams back in the 90's or the early 2000's. I frequently caught myself just think about how good the animation is. And how good the environment design in this game is. The environment design is what every game should strive to achieve: coherent, believable, functions as environmental storytelling AND even transmits information to the player: who to talk to, which symbols are most likely to part of a combination given its location, possible clues about a puzzle. It's fan-f'ing-tastic. That's what I mean by saying "this is the absolute platinum standard of game design". The only negative nitpicks I can think of are: 1- The enemy variety. It's not super bad, but you only have 5 "core" designs (the white enemies), so you'll see them [i]a lot[/i]. That being said, each of them can have a level between 1 and 3, with each level adding one or more attacks to their moveset, and they also can have one (and in rare cases even 2) of 4 types of so-called "hazes", which are enemies "attached" to the "main" enemy, and those have 3 variations each, so that's 5 enemies (+ level variations) + 20 combinations of enemy + haze. So you [i]will[/i] see the same designs a lot, but the encounter variation is actually pretty good. 2- Facial animations specifically are sometimes not the best. I know I just praised the animations, but it's only the facial animations, which arguably is one of the hardest to get right, and only sometimes. That's it. I wouldn't recommend this game if, and only if you're not interested in the story and wants action and only action, 'cause then you're not the target audience. If you are the target audience, though... This here made into my "favorites" list.