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Oddball Wizard

Any Heretic/Hexen fans here?

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Big Hexen fan here. I think my feelings towards the three games have pretty much stayed the same across 15+ years. I've always felt like Doom is a fun game with tons of replayability. Whereas Heretic and Hexen feel like Doom but with a cooler, more interesting style to them. Heretic looks and feels like a more magical, fantasy version of Doom, whereas in my mind, I always thought of Hexen as a more badass, metal version of Doom. Out of the three, personally I've always loved Hexen the most. Just something about that game really appeals to me. They're all great, though. To be honest I'm kinda surprised to see so many Hexen fans, lol, I thought it was less popular in the Doom community, but it looks like there's still a good number of people out there who enjoy it. 

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Serpent: Resurrection for Hexen is a must-play for Hexen fans. I did it and I liked it. 4 endings too!!!

 

edit: I met Hexen first, then Heretic. And I don't have problems to say that I like both games despite some flaws. :)

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I actually prefer Heretic over Hexen simply because Heretic is a bit more similar to Doom than Hexen is. 

 

I know most people think that it's mediocre at best, but I really enjoyed playing through Masters of Chaos. It's got pretty robust maps and has a couple of new enemies and weapons which I didn't mind.

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I love me some Heretic/Hexen.

 

Heretic was very good, but to me it always felt like it was missing something. Maybe it is that I played it after Hexen and I could see the difference between the two.

I played the first 3 episodes, but I didn't want to play it anymore, after E4M1.

 

Hexen though is what got me in this series and I couldn't have been more thankful. While the puzzles are still kinda primitive, I enjoyed them a lot and I think they added tons of depth in gameplay. And the gameplay is fun. Plus the levels are really well designed. It is easily my favourite idTech1 game after Doom.

The expansion was cool too!

 

Finally Hexen 2 is my second favourite in the series. It took me some time to learn how to control my character, but after a while I was running around, smashing enemies with my sword, with great ease.

And the puzzles are probably the best in the series. Fun and always with some logic behind them.

 

(will play Portal of Praevus sometime - I forgot about it)

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Shamefully I finished Portals of Praevus before the main game which I still haven't even finished.

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The amount of levels that use the Heretic and Hexen IWADS is small. However there are a lot of DooM wads that are closer to Heretic and Hexen in terms of level design, visual style and gameplay than they are to DooM. While testing out new maps I've found myself quite often thinking out loud: "Why didn't the author make this for Heretic/Hexen instead of DooM?"

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Hexen was the first of the two i played and still the one i prefer overall, i always thought it was far more atmospheric than Heretic and has a larger variety of level design.

Plus it didnt just feel like a glorified Doom TC and actually felt like its own game.

Never got into Hexen 2, was just kind of dull and boring compared to the original Hexen.

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I guess I'm something of a HeXen fan, though I've not played it in years.

 

I still like the universe, some of the monsters have a lot of character that I approve of, and the game had some great features for its time (breakable objects and glass etc.).

Oh and I always was a sucker for having the main villain pop up to deliver cheesy taunts at the player once in awhile.

 

And Character Classes. That was yummy back in the day and it still gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

 

Heretic never did anything for me until I played it with Heretical Doom, which gives the weapons some much needed oomph, plus some other features that I feel improves it and helps to make it feel more unique.

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Thank you for posting the links for all the mods for these games, I'll play it necessarily! 

 

Heretic's weapons seems to take a massive amount of a criticism when people say why they don't care as much for the game as they wanted to. I'll agree that supposedly more powerful weapons turns out to be weaker than it should, but I actually like all the weapons in the game, as all these projectiles makes the fights far more busy than in games like Doom or Strife. In the old days the fantasy setting seemed like a breath of fresh air after countless space bases and hell themes of Doom. 

 

I still haven't played Hexen II because yeah, the game looks incredibly bland. However, I've played Heretic II and it's actually a fairly good game. At least I remembered this game as a good one, maybe I need to replay it one day...

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15 hours ago, ShotgunDemolition said:

I love me some Heretic/Hexen.

 

Heretic was very good, but to me it always felt like it was missing something. Maybe it is that I played it after Hexen and I could see the difference between the two.

I played the first 3 episodes, but I didn't want to play it anymore, after E4M1.

 

Those were the original episodes :D. The other 2 are imo just there if you really want to play random shit from wand start on black plague.

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Just now, Pegg said:

The other 2 are imo just there if you really want to play random shit from wand start on black plague.

 

I figured that out, eventually...

And OH BOY, was I extremely pissed off after failing that map many times in a row!

Once, I even reached the end room and just when thought I cleared everything and saw 4 Iron Liches slowly ascending, I wanted to slam my head on the keyboard, but I kept playing.

I marched on with great courage (to the opposite side of the room) and the Iron Liches chasing me, got stuck at the stairs or something (wanted to send them to the crusher, but no luck in that). 

And I said: This is my chance! I release the remaining of my firepower now (it was enough to kill half of them, so 2 remained) and I rush to open the door and exit the level.

 

As I reached the door and opened it, one tornado hit me in the back and I was flying uncontrollably for 2-3 seconds, until they hit me with the finishing move...

Spoiler

download.jpg.91f51da290388de461c657a992195be3.jpg

 

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I grew up playing Doom and didn't experience Heretic or HeXen until a couple of years ago, but once I had finally managed to get my hands on them and booted them up I was in love. Despite the fact that I have spent a lot more time playing Doom (and I will say that Doom is still the better game in my opinion), I think I'm finding myself more drawn towards the Serpent Rider Trilogy now. Probably because I don't see enough love for it, and I'm the type of person who absolutely loves it whenever a game has a much deeper lore surrounding it.

 

I've been mapping for Doom for close to eight years now, but ironically enough my first publicly released map was for the Heretic Upstart Mapping Project (HUMP). I'd greatly recommend that mapset, not for my map but for the amazing work that many other people have contributed.

 

I'll probably contribute to more Heretic and hopefully some HeXen community projects when the opportunity arises. I have a rather ambitious HeXen project currently on the shelf that I'll need to improve my skills for before I start seriously working on it.

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17 hours ago, Avoozl said:

Shamefully I finished Portals of Praevus before the main game which I still haven't even finished.

I wouldn't blame you too much, PoP had quite a bit better level design as I recall.

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I love Heretic too.  Nowadays, I play using GZDoom, Eriguns 2, Damnums and Wardust's sprite replacements along with Droplets and Nashgore.  I also use my own WAD with Heretic II and Hexen II music in it.

 

Playing a good mapset with these enhancements/updates feels like the Heretic I always wanted when the game first came out. :)

 

 

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5 hours ago, MasterRhan said:

Anyone know how to play Portal of Praevus on Hammer of Thyrion?


-portals

Under command line via launch options, assuming you're running through Steam.

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6 hours ago, ShotgunDemolition said:

 

I figured that out, eventually...

And OH BOY, was I extremely pissed off after failing that map many times in a row!

Once, I even reached the end room and just when thought I cleared everything and saw 4 Iron Liches slowly ascending, I wanted to slam my head on the keyboard, but I kept playing.

I marched on with great courage (to the opposite side of the room) and the Iron Liches chasing me, got stuck at the stairs or something (wanted to send them to the crusher, but no luck in that). 

And I said: This is my chance! I release the remaining of my firepower now (it was enough to kill half of them, so 2 remained) and I rush to open the door and exit the level.

 

As I reached the door and opened it, one tornado hit me in the back and I was flying uncontrollably for 2-3 seconds, until they hit me with the finishing move...

  Reveal hidden contents

download.jpg.91f51da290388de461c657a992195be3.jpg

 

Yea e4m1 and e5m1 are quite the jump in difficulty. It is like getting wings clipped and then thrown into an underground river to drown.

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Felt some of that Thy Flesh Consumed burn from Heretic's fourth and fifth eps at times, especially on the starter maps. But they're pretty good episodes still, just more of the same really, could've used some new skies or textures or monsters. My same criticisms also apply to Hexen's expansion.

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3 minutes ago, Pegg said:

Yea e4m1 and e5m1 are quite the jump in difficulty. It is like getting wings clipped and then thrown into an underground river to drown.

 

Best way to deal with E4M1 is to severely curtail your ammo usage and let that crusher do most of the work. The maulotaur can be dealt with by using the gauntlets, a tome of power, and ring of invincibility. You should have enough ammo leftover (assuming you found the hellstaff) to deal with those ophidians and iron liches.

 

As for E5M1, you're going to need to make some room outside. Get the gauntlets and get rid of those gargoyles. In the crossbow room, your main objective is to not get surrounded inside, even if you did get the crossbow. Lure those guys outside and deal with them with the gauntlets or whatever. Then there's that top area. Have fun with that, especially if the maulotaur falls off into the lava in the side instead of the starting area.

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4 minutes ago, Ichor said:

Best way to deal with E4M1 is to severely curtail your ammo usage and let that crusher do most of the work. The maulotaur can be dealt with by using the gauntlets, a tome of power, and ring of invincibility. You should have enough ammo leftover (assuming you found the hellstaff) to deal with those ophidians and iron liches.

 

Agreed, though I typically save the tome+gauntlets combo for the liches near the end, since it quickly saws through them and also becomes a free heal right about the time you need it.

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heretic is my #1 favorite game of all time (base games only, obviously), fight me

 

dont actually i'm fragile

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Just interesting, is there any mods for Heretic that features Doom's levels? I know that there's mods that swaps weapons between the two, but is there any attemps to swap the whole episodes? 

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On 3/21/2018 at 6:56 AM, yakfak said:

heya! doomworld folks have created a small but wonderful amount of Heretic maps and mods, some show up in the yearly awards! Hexen is something I'd like to map for personally, being a game I really prefer to Doom for its atmosphere and all its extra decorations and sounds, but the tools we have are noticeably geared towards Doom modding and imho it seems far more fiddly to get to grips with all the extra Hexen features. Strife even more so!

 

I think in Strife's case, the number of custom WADs can be counted on one hand!  

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As I recall there was also GL patch for Hexen 2 which wasn't Hammer of Thyrion.

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