Hexen - Curse of the lost gods

Tough Hexen adventure with great architecture/texturing. It doesn't follow the standard hub formula, with a mostly linear level progression. A variety of environments are explored, from a standard fantasy castle to a foggy swamp/canyon to a massive fortress inside in an icy cavern. The wad uses a selection of custom textures (made by the author himself I believe) that look great and fit in with the stock texture set very well, allowing for some very beautiful architecture with liberal use of arches. Each level is quite massive and elaborate (excluding the final map), with a high level of non-linearity, interconnectedness, and optional exploration. The first level will probably turn many people off due to the huge amount of enemies one must face with only the first weapon. It is challenging, but it's doable with the wise usage of items (and the wise choice of not playing as the Cleric). It's probably the hardest level, as the difficulty decreases significantly once you get your 2nd weapon in the 2nd map. The ice fortress segment is split into 3 levels, and requires some backtracking between them. The first part, Lower Tartarous, was my least favorite level (and the main reason why I didn't rate this 5 stars), as there were several annoyances like frustrating platforming, sequence-breaking, and confusing level design that made it drag on for much longer than it should've. The final level, as I mentioned, is much shorter than the others, and as such feels rushed/unfinished. It's not a bad level, but it certainly would've been nice if this was finished. Overall it's a great wad, and what's here is mostly very polished, so I would recommend it to Hexen fans.

Well as a creator of megawad "Fucking Hexen" I could look like a jealousy ass because I didn't get into Cacowards and you did, but... Yeah, the levels look epic and the architecture is breathtaking, however the gameplay itself it too way hard. It was sometimes absurd, like... if you play as Fighter, you spend lots of time only with the basic weapon and it takes some time to get another one. In first level I had to kill thousands of slaughters only with fists. I had to fight with Zedek boss only with fists and... in the end you won't find the last weapon. Ok, it's just not quite right.

I found this to be very convoluted, and grand architecture got in the way of an otherwise amazing idea. For example, I personally enjoyed the little secret entrances to Tartaros the best parts of the game... they were very trippy, and I still don't know how getting the secrets in the seemingly unrelated map managed to register on the proper map of Upper Tartaros. Yorick's Skull seemed to be overall irrelevant to reaching the end stage, which I found interesting. In fact, I don't know what placing it did at all to the map, except for release a horde of Afrits.

Thanks for all the fish.