Is Hexen (1995) a so complicated game?

[Dark Pulse]

9 hours ago, holaareola said:

I did enjoy a run-through with Korax mod mod quite fun, maybe give that a shot.

I remember that mod. Someone should port it to GZDoom. No reason none of that couldn't be replicated now with DECORATE and maybe some ZScript.

[Doom_Dude]

When I played HeXen I took notes where stuff was after I played for ages and clued in I can't remember this stuff.. I know it tells you in the messages but when you quit and come back later it impossible to remember what is going on. haha.

 

The worst part about Hexen II wasn't the puzzles so much as the damned bugs. The grave doesn't open up or the mill doesn't grind the bones and you're wandering around wondering wtf to do when some event didn't work. The egypt bug with the staff and door not opening. I love Hexen II but good fucking gravy I wanted to kill somebody....

 

4 hours ago, kristus said:

I love Hexen, shame I never finished my Hexen mappack.

 

Any chance you'll get back to it?

Edited February 11, 2019 by Doom_Dude

[kristus]

Yeah I recall using the chaos device once and ending up in a part of the map that I hadn't been to before and couldn't seem to get back to where I were either. Fun times.

 

Well, never gonna say never.

[whirledtsar]

27 minutes ago, Doom_Dude said:

When I played HeXen I took notes where stuff was after I played for ages and clued in I can't remember this stuff.. I know it tells you in the messages but when you quit and come back later it impossible to remember what is going on. haha.

 

The worst part about Hexen II wasn't the puzzles so much as the damned bugs. The grave doesn't open up or the mill doesn't grind the bones and you're wandering around wandering wtf to do when some event did work. The egypt bug with the staff and door not opening. I love Hexen II but good fucking gravy I wanted to kill somebody....

 

 

Any chance you'll get back to it?

I've played through Hexen 2 a few times on the Hammer Of Thyrion sourceport and haven't encountered these bugs, perhaps you should try that out some day. The damn touchplate puzzle in the Egypt hub is still fucked though.

[Avoozl]

I use the UQE Hexen 2 source port.

[Doom_Dude]

51 minutes ago, whirledtsar said:

I've played through Hexen 2 a few times on the Hammer Of Thyrion sourceport and haven't encountered these bugs, perhaps you should try that out some day. The damn touchplate puzzle in the Egypt hub is still fucked though.

Well ya I'm using that port these days but back in the day there was no Hammer port. Some stuff is still iffy like you say. Like the mill last time didn't grind the bones till I went back in there a 2nd time. 

[AndrewB]

I've gotten stuck in various places throughout the years, but I don't think there's been any one puzzle that I was completely unable to figure out on my own.

[Vorpal]

the part that I got stuck on most was late in the first hub, I think the button message was just "stairs have risen" and it took me like 4 hours to figure out where. After that I started to pay waaaaay more attention to wtf I was doing and never found the rest of the game to be a problem.

 

It's a shame because I think hexen is vastly superior to doom, but that one mistake of class restricted weapons and all weapons using eachother's mana is an unforgivable blunder, so I can only bring myself to replay it like once per decade

[AndrewB]

I think the parts of the game that most commonly messed me up were like 75% of the way through hub 2, and that level in hub 4 with the Korax bookshelves.

[leodoom85]

7 hours ago, AndrewB said:

I think the parts of the game that most commonly messed me up were like 75% of the way through hub 2, and that level in hub 4 with the Korax bookshelves.

If you miss the switch located in the dungeon map of that fourth hub...well....you'll be in an eternal limbo

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

16 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

Yes there is a bug in hub 4's Gibbet map (boss area). I am not sure what the exact condition is but it has something to do with number of chaos serpents alive in boss arena. I think if player kills them too quickly, then level gets stuck or something.

 

There is a patch 1.1 that fixes this problem.

Does it?  I was under the impression that issue still existed in the final version.  It was the porkalator sequence break on the Castle of Grief that I know for sure they patched out.

[Ichor]

5 hours ago, leodoom85 said:

If you miss the switch located in the dungeon map of that fourth hub...well....you'll be in an eternal limbo

The main problem of the dungeons (besides the hyper-respawning ettins) isn't the switch. It's the entrance to effluvium.

 

Hey, see that dark hole there with the pit that leads to your death? Well, unlike every single other pit that leads to your death that you have seen so far, this one won't. So pay no attention to Pavlov and drop down the hole. Never mind the falling scream that you've heard a hundred times before. You'll be whisked away at any moment to a wonderous land of cookies and rainbows and unicorns. Aaaaaany moment now...

[leodoom85]

^^ that too....

No one would imagine that doing a leap of faith would lead to Effluvium...

[ReaperAA]

4 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Does it?  I was under the impression that issue still existed in the final version.  It was the porkalator sequence break on the Castle of Grief that I know for sure they patched out.

 

Well I am not 100% sure. But I think I read this somewhere.

Atleast that bug never happened with me for a long long time (or maybe I was lucky)

[ReaperAA]

2 hours ago, Ichor said:

The main problem of the dungeons (besides the hyper-respawning ettins) isn't the switch. It's the entrance to effluvium.

 

Hey, see that dark hole there with the pit that leads to your death? Well, unlike every single other pit that leads to your death that you have seen so far, this one won't. So pay no attention to Pavlov and drop down the hole. Never mind the falling scream that you've heard a hundred times before. You'll be whisked away at any moment to a wonderous land of cookies and rainbows and unicorns. Aaaaaany moment now...

 

Hub 4 is the most bullshit hub and its dungeon map is easily the worst map in Hexen.

[Ichor]

18 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Well I am not 100% sure. But I think I read this somewhere.

Atleast that bug never happened with me for a long long time (or maybe I was lucky)

It wasn't a bug, but an exploit. You could have used the projectile trap near the gibbet entrance to turn yourself into a pig, then go back to the beginning and sneak under the wall and skip through almost all of the hub.

[42PercentHealth]

Caution: vomit-inducing self-plug incoming.

 

I have a YouTube channel with a series in which I explain all the Hexen and Hexen 2 puzzles in detail, explain all the weapons, monsters, and items, and find almost all the secrets (every now and then I get a comment on one of the videos saying that I missed something). In some cases, I even explain what clues the game gave you (if any) in order to lead you in that direction, since some of them are quite subtle.

 

I've given my opinion on the Hexen games before, but generally I find them very fun and rather unique. I wish there were more games like them. My problems with the first Hexen are that combat is too easy, some enemy types are annoying, and some puzzles are too obtuse. The puzzles in the second game were much better, but the combat was generally worse, with fewer-but-spongier enemies, and severe lack of enemy variety.

 

Quote

Yes there is a bug in hub 4's Gibbet map (boss area). I am not sure what the exact condition is but it has something to do with number of chaos serpents alive in boss arena. I think if player kills them too quickly, then level gets stuck or something.

 

There is a patch 1.1 that fixes this problem.

 

5 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Does it?  I was under the impression that issue still existed in the final version.  It was the porkalator sequence break on the Castle of Grief that I know for sure they patched out.

 

24 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Well I am not 100% sure. But I think I read this somewhere.

Atleast that bug never happened with me for a long long time (or maybe I was lucky)

 

4 minutes ago, Ichor said:

It wasn't a bug, but an exploit. You could have used the projectile trap near the gibbet entrance to turn yourself into a pig, then go back to the beginning and sneak under the wall and skip through almost all of the hub.

 

There was an exploit at the start of the hub, which was patched out. However, as far as I know, the bug referred to still exists (at least, I can trigger it in my version of Hexen). There is a sequence where you kill a bunch of centaurs, and when all of them are dead then some afrits are released. When they are dead, some chaos serpents are released. The intention was that if less than or equal to three serpents are still alive, then some walls lower and bishops are released. However, there was a coding error, and so it checks for equal to three chaos serpents. This means that if you use your ultimate weapon and kill 2 or 3 of them at once, then you won't be able to continue the game without cheating.

[Lila Feuer]

On 2/11/2019 at 5:01 AM, riderr3 said:

If you played and completed Eternal Doom 3 wad, Hexen will seem as walk in the park.

That's not true, if anything Eternal Doom is more complicated, and has actual fiendish puzzles at times. Hexen couldn't be more ABC123. People just don't have patience and/or are not observant enough.

[leodoom85]

47 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

This means that if you use your ultimate weapon and kill 2 or 3 of them at once, then you won't be able to continue the game without cheating

Yup. It's still there in that patch. Use a weapon that kill several monsters at once and you're fucked, forcing to noclip the area

[Ichor]

 

[unerxai]

First time I beat the game several years ago I was determined to finishing it without help, but there was one part that made me give up and use a walkthrough, once. The game gets kind of dull at times especially when you don't know what to do. It's like the game expects you to get stuck so from time to time it will respawn one of those shitty enemies so you have something to kill. Heretic is definitely more fun to me but Hexen is still a good game.

[Xcalibur]

the Gibbet glitch is only on PC to my knowledge, the n64 port (which is my mainstay) fixed it.

 

Hexen is an excellent game. the main consideration for Doom fans is that it's structured differently -- instead of a fast-paced FPS, it's a cross between FPS and dungeon-crawling. I think too many people try to blitz through it like a Doom map, only to get confused by switch-hunting, the hub structure, and finding new openings on the map. It's really not that cryptic if you explore, and read the in-game text which tells you what happened. if you think it through and pay attention, you should be fine.

 

17 hours ago, Vorpal said:

the part that I got stuck on most was late in the first hub, I think the button message was just "stairs have risen" and it took me like 4 hours to figure out where. After that I started to pay waaaaay more attention to wtf I was doing and never found the rest of the game to be a problem.

 

It's a shame because I think hexen is vastly superior to doom, but that one mistake of class restricted weapons and all weapons using eachother's mana is an unforgivable blunder, so I can only bring myself to replay it like once per decade

 

that's a prime example, given that the stairs in question appear very conspicuously, and right in the middle of the main hub area! but once you lengthened your attention span, you were fine, which fits what I'm saying. Gez really summed it up earlier.

 

that's not to say it's a flawless work. the weapons feel a bit limited at times, and centaurs could've been adjusted to be less tedious. there's also a few places where it's a bit too trolly, like the portal drop in Dungeons -- during my first playthrough, I myself reloaded, until I finally experimented and found the warp at the bottom of the pit. I'm sure that tripped up many people, given that the game conditions you with 'long drop = death', except for that one time. there's various other minor issues as well.

 

overall it's great, but it's a different kind of game and you have to know what you're getting yourself into.

[Lila Feuer]

21 hours ago, Avoozl said:

I use the UQE Hexen 2 source port.

You know where to get it still? I never got to try it out and the website for it is dead.
 

21 hours ago, whirledtsar said:

The damn touchplate puzzle in the Egypt hub is still fucked though.

AFAIK that is how it behaves in the original game, they never state that you're suppose to let the plate rise back up before hitting the next, hopefully successful one. Then the pattern randomizes in real time when you fail so outside of a savegame you could be on that puzzle for a long time. Co-op must be a nightmare.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Hexen just has a few really annoying parts if you have no idea where you are supposed to go next. The ones that come to mind are (Because people get lost doing them online all the time):

1) World of Metal's elevators in 7 Portals. If you have no idea what the minotaur switches do you can easily spend a long time just running in circles.

2) The swamp in shadow forest has a rather.. really meanly placed switch that you need to progress 

Spoiler

A switch inside a fireplace with a cauldron next to it, very easy to run past it

3) The stupid caves again in Shadow Forest. The stairs with serpents above them horribly meld in the background on some graphic settings.

4) Two grey trees in the heresiarch seminary have a switch behind them to progress the hub. If you didn't know you can destroy them in the first map this is very easy to oversight.

5) The castles part of the heresiarch seminatry need constant jumping between the different castles. This is more annoying than confusing. (You spend like 5 minutes in each castle each time)

6) Gibbet might detract from an otherwise great hub with all the annoying fetch quests in it.

7) Gibbet has the buggy as shit heresiarch fight people are talking above in the thread. I've had the bishops bug the map just like the serpents, Which needs no-clipping to continue (Possibly bugs on specific difficulty settings.. Only happened as the mage to me)

 

[CyberDreams]

I've played some of Heretic and enjoyed that game but i've never actually played Hexen. I've seen a few Twitch streams of it though and it does look a little tedious, especially the expansion "Deathkings of the Dark Citadel". The constant onslaught of re-spawning enemies in the expansion is just ridiculous, especially on the harder difficulties. I'm just glad i wasn't the one that was playing the game and that i was only watching it being played via a Twitch stream.

 

The main game seemed like it was generally okay though from what i saw. You just have to "step back in time" and play it like its 1995 i guess. And yeah, i'd agree that the puzzles can be a little idiotic at times (or at least that's how they looked). But i guess that's part of the charm. I guess it's more of a "thinking man's" shooter.

 

I tend to like the more action oriented aspects of Doom and not the puzzle aspects so i highly doubt i'd actually like Hexen (or Hexen II) all that much but i'd be willing to give 'em a shot sometime since i did enjoy Heretic (well what i played of it anyways). 

[GooberMan]

The really annoying thing about Hexen's switch hunts is that they already had an in-game solution to make the results much clearer. Items.

 

But instead they went for the more technically challenging (at the time) deferred script execution method and figured showing text rather than providing clear design was good enough.

 

If someone were to make a map patch WAD that changes the switches to be items/puzzle pieces/etc it'll do a lot to clear up some of the game's more annoying design habits. Some people might even say "Metroidvania" over and over in the release thread too.

[printz]

Hexen went in the direction of mixing the hardcode combat of Doom with the puzzle-driven gameplay of adventure/quest games. Hexen 2 went even further, with actual puzzles and items to use cleverly, but I found its execution less immersive.

 

I'd love to see more Doom/Heretic/Hexen mods with a significant puzzle/thinking challenge component. Usually even regular Doom 2 maps have puzzles when you look for secrets or try to survive them on Nightmare!.

[FuzzySpaceRaptor]

Hexen is my personal favorite game of all time. This is mainly because of its atmosphere and how the game is just vague enough to unleash one's imagination. When you're a fan of dark fantasy in the older video game style, it's like a dream come true with immersion.

 

For me, the backtracking is actually an experience enhancer in a way because it allows me to take multiple looks at the game's environment. I love the way the hub opens up more and more as you progress through it, and everything starts to come together by the end of each hub, making it look like an actually comprehensive complex. For some this might mean environment oversaturation, and I do experience this downside as well; by the time I'm out of a hub, I find myself feeling like I'm very much done with it and eager to move on the next. But I think that, in a way, this is what the game is trying to achieve. It's letting you revel completely in its atmospheric splendor by forcing you to backtrack, adding something new every time. Your mind feels very much satisfied and complete with each area by the time you are done because you have seen it all, and the game allows you to do so through its puzzles without feeling like you're wasting time hanging around in a level, as I feel with Doom and Heretic.

[SirJuicyLemon]

I just finished Hexen for the first time a few days ago!

I've played it before all through Heresiarch's seminar and even beyond but I had to eventually format my PC so I lost that progress.

 

I used the Cleric class on the 2nd hardest difficulty (UV on Doom, didn't wanted to go to the hardest one because I thought the monsters would respawn non-stop like on Doom's nightmare difficulty), I felt like kind of slow at the start hitting a lot of those two-headed weak monsters 6 times each to kill them but once you get the blue mana weapon it's cool.

 

And yeah, it's kind of a hell of puzzles in Hexen but that's kind of the point of the game. I started replaying it already knowing that I'd have to go through a lot of puzzles and stuff. The hardest part of that is that in every hub there are many maps with puzzles and stuff that, apart from helping to progress on the main map, also are needed to progress in other puzzle maps, so you gotta be revisiting each to make sure you don't pass by any important switch or key.

 

I had to search for some videos and information on a fandom wiki to make sure I didn't screw up the game (happened at least 2 or 3 times with the cave key, the demon codex and stuff like that).

 

My other fear apart from that was bugging the game, which also happened at one of the last rooms inside the gibbet (the room with the axe key door entrance) where there was supposed to be some slaughtaurs I think, some green chaos serpents and then some walls were supposed to come down and reveals some dark bishops but that never happened (I think I bugged it because I opened the door but for some reason I didn't entered the first time so I had to open it again and maybe the game supposes you will enter at the first try? I don't really know, that's the only "weird" thing that happened...)

 

Apart from that, Hexen is still a wonderful game. I'm glad I played it and finished it.

 

Edit: I just noticed that I said a bunch of crap without answering the question.

 

Is Hexen a complicated game? Kinda. Depends really on your experience on different kind of games, most likely RPG or ones with puzzles and stuff. In my case I'm not that into those kind of games and that's why I had to do a little of research (feels like kind of cheating but the concern of not getting the game bugged reasures my need to investigate) but I'm still pretty sure that even if I wouldn't search for some helping information, I would eventually search in all the maps on the hub and get through the puzzle without taking that much additional time.

 

I guess there are way more complex games like World of Warcraft (complex at least in the part of RPG, missions and stuff rather than puzzles, as far as I know). It's just that Hexen is like Doom's and Heretic's brother and those two games are rather simple than complicated, even with secret areas and some "puzzles" and stuff, both of them are just linear sequences of maps one after another. Meanwhile Hexen's hub system is quite confusing at first sight compared to the simple maps' system of Doom and Heretic.

The addition of more unique items needed to progress also adds a little bit of complexity to the game (it's fair to say that they act almost exactly as a key both in Doom or Heretic but those key are more standarized as they are in each level and in Hexen each one is unique and with one use only, and also usually appears in places that you need to progress in other puzzles before reaching them).

 

So, in summary: yes, Hexen is quite a complicated game but not that much honestly.

 

Considering this is a Doom forum and Doom is quite simple compared to Hexen you could say that is complicated.

But I'd rather say that Hexen is confusing at first sight. After a while you kinda get the hang of it and understand all of the portals system. The only bad thing of Hexen is that sometimes it isn't that clear to know where you should go and you gotta revisit each portal in order to progress, but I guess that's part of the point (and the fun) of the game. If you already knew all the routes and make it linear like Doom or Heretic it'd lose the magic part of Hexen.

Edited February 13, 2019 by SirJuicyLemon

[Xcalibur]

good points made above! the fact that there are criticisms and minor issues don't take away from how great it is overall.

 

I think if they shortened the centaurs invincibility window and powered up the mace, that would've gone a long way. I can understand the logic in both cases, but in practice it gets a bit tedious. a shorter defense phase for centaurs would make for smoother combat, in fact you could limit this to centaurs and let slaughtaurs have the longer defense phase, that would be interesting.

 

as for the mace, I understand the balance they were going for. to kill an ettin, you need 4 regular hits with gauntlets, 6 hits with the mace, and 8 with the sapphire wand: therefore, 4/6/8. while that appears balanced, in practice it isn't. first of all, the gauntlets have a power punch, which means in practice, they kill an ettin in 3 hits. then there's firing rate -- gauntlets and sapphire wand are much faster than the mace. the sapphire wand has the additional great advantages of being a ranged attack for no mana, and penetration, which makes it useful throughout the game. compared to all this, the mace is a very lackluster weapon, and the fact that it has the longest melee reach doesn't make up for the rest. the mace should've been faster, and should've killed an ettin in 4-5 hits.

 

23 hours ago, Pegg said:

Hexen just has a few really annoying parts if you have no idea where you are supposed to go next. The ones that come to mind are (Because people get lost doing them online all the time):

1) World of Metal's elevators in 7 Portals. If you have no idea what the minotaur switches do you can easily spend a long time just running in circles.

2) The swamp in shadow forest has a rather.. really meanly placed switch that you need to progress 

  Reveal hidden contents

A switch inside a fireplace with a cauldron next to it, very easy to run past it

3) The stupid caves again in Shadow Forest. The stairs with serpents above them horribly meld in the background on some graphic settings.

4) Two grey trees in the heresiarch seminary have a switch behind them to progress the hub. If you didn't know you can destroy them in the first map this is very easy to oversight.

5) The castles part of the heresiarch seminatry need constant jumping between the different castles. This is more annoying than confusing. (You spend like 5 minutes in each castle each time)

6) Gibbet might detract from an otherwise great hub with all the annoying fetch quests in it.

7) Gibbet has the buggy as shit heresiarch fight people are talking above in the thread. I've had the bishops bug the map just like the serpents, Which needs no-clipping to continue (Possibly bugs on specific difficulty settings.. Only happened as the mage to me)

 

I respect your opinion, but

1. if you check the map, you can see the effect of the switches, but admittedly this can be confusing.

3. to be fair, the caves of circe are designed to be confusing and disorienting, that's the whole concept of the level.

4. the darkmere swamp in hub 2 can only be entered by chopping/burning trees in your way. while that switch is easy to overlook, the game does teach the player about destructible trees.

5. you mean the chapels? the portals are designed to make it very easy to switch between them. those 3 levels are supposed to be an interlocking puzzle.

Edited February 13, 2019 by Xcalibur