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Jimmy

Flash thoughts on Heretic's design

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Episode 2 gets my thumbs-up, just because they decided to put never-melting ice on the freaking lava. I really want to use that concept someday.

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Heh, reading this I had actually forgotten how terrible Episode 4's boss level was! I fully agree with the thoughts on each episode as a whole.

Spoiler

 ̶E̶6̶M̶2̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶f̶a̶v̶o̶r̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶p̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶H̶e̶r̶e̶t̶i̶c̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶,̶ ̶y̶e̶p̶.̶

 

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Mostly agree; I think you were too harsh on Episode 3. It is the best of them all when replaying with wand start black plague runs. D'sparils fight is a bit too hectic for many people on skill 5, which honestly might as well be the real ultra-violence since it doesn't involve respawning monsters like doom and synergies with the projectile heavy gameplay. 

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The expansion episodes are definitely the worst IMO, all I remember is a slog without memorable level design, just boring mazes with endless hordes of bullet sponges. And E4M1 feels like Raven's answer to Doom's E4M1, except the difficulty derives from ammo starvation rather than clever encounter design.

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Overall the maps are far from perfect. There's a few tropes that Heretic really could have done without doing at all, but does many many times over.

- Harshly blinking sector lights (E4M9, E5M9)

- Tight mazes (E4M8, E4M9, E5M9)

- Requiring the player to hump walls for "secrets" that may actually be part of mandatory progression (just about every map, but E3M6, E4M8, E5M1, E5M3)

- Hiding crucial switches away behind pillars or in dark corners (E1M6, E1M7, E1M9, E4M7, E5M6)

- Not using keys or switches effectively to telegraph where the play needs to go next (E4M9, E5M6)

- Linedef triggers in really unintuitive places like inside monster closets or just in front of locked doors (E4M4, E4M7, friggin' E4M8)

- Obfuscating progression with too many switches or walkover triggers (E2M4, E5M6, E5M7)

 

Funnily enough most of these would also describe Hexen's level design pretty accurately.

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The Citadel map is THE best map ever created in the classic engine IMO. When I played it (quite a long time ago, like a decade and some) for the first time I was really amazed.

 

I still like the third episode the most, the maps are varied from great to alright.

I am also a sucker for the water/underwater theme maps/games (even though I can´t swim).

 

E4 and 5 are like Blood 2... they dont´t exist in my mind.

 

Now I want to play Heretic again... huh...

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I'm kind of disappointed in Heretic as a whole. I liked Hexen quite a lot, but Heretic felt like a medieval Doom reskin and I could never fully get into it.

 

I know it did some stuff that was markedly different, but the ideas that changed the gameplay didn't really outweigh the gameplay feeling so similar to Doom.

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Looking back, I tend to confuse Heretic and Hexen, and I'm a sucker for the medieval concept - probably stems from D&D obsession. D&D-like upgradable player stats might have been interesting. I would have liked some more sophisticated puzzle-like elements, but I don't know what that would look like, or how it could be implemented in a non-cheesy way. Something a bit more than hit switch, find key, etc. Hexen did a bit of this, but I thought Hexen concentrated too heavily on the hub design.

 

Major pros: monsters, weapons, the inventory system, the artifacts, free look.

Some cons: Not enough textures, making a lot of levels look same-y. Far too few PWADs for both games.

 

The fairly-recent resource addition/replacement PWADs are looking very promising and encouraging. More source ports should get better Raven game support.

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Yea that map is the worst map in the entire game (Maybe after Labyrinth). Deserves a 2 or 0 since many better maps have a 4.

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On 3/29/2019 at 11:07 AM, Jimmy said:

* M8 - D'sparil's Keep: Pretty underwhelming closer. D'sparil isn't that fun to fight in such a huge open space, and like with E1M8 you're given a massive excess of items that just wind up going to waste since it's the final map. 4/10

 

 

Hmm... what difficulty did you play on? Because on the last two, D'Sparil is one of the harder 90's FPS bosses I've ever played.

 

Totally agreed about E4M9. I've played through this entire game many times since my teenage years. I'd say every few years or so, I give it another playthrough, from start to finish. And that map *always* frustrates me. 

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D'sparil on skill 5 wand start can give people a run for their money. He is much harder than all other Doom\Hexen bosses and one of the few that might dead end people's run if they don't know what tomed weapons to use and when. 

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One time I was playing E3M8 (black plague) through DOSBox and the fight went on for so long, there was a shitload of disciples on the screen. The game crashed to the DOS prompt with an error code or something but with a 320x200 resolution so the text was huge. Scary stuff.

 

To this day I find it a difficult fight on black plague compared to the Doom bosses.

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Yeah, that fight is a bit easier for me every time I play through the game again, but even so, I usually die at least half a dozen times because of how he's basically spamming in Disciples towards the end.

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3 hours ago, Caffeine Freak said:

Hmm... what difficulty did you play on? Because on the last two, D'Sparil is one of the harder 90's FPS bosses I've ever played

He played on Smite-meister difficulty

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D'Sparil is easy up till skill 4. But he is a entirely different beast on skill 5. On skill 5, he is probably the hardest 90's fps boss. He spams disciples at a rate that would put Doom 2's IoS to shame.

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Not only that, but his abilities seem made to counter player's speed and awareness advantages.

 

@Jimmy You seem to be complaining about hidden switches. Are you aware that the switches, as designed by Raven, are visible in the automap? I dislike how /idgames PWAD authors were mostly unaware of this convention.

 

Also, pretty sure all secret doors are marked with clues.

 

I find it peculiar how E2 (one of the weaker in my opinion) is the only one with ice. Also notice how in E4 and E5 Raven segregated the monsters into undead areas and beast areas (all of them controlled by disciples). E3 is the best episode with the best flow. I'd love to see a megawad with the same quality and balance (i.e. with difficulty not easy, but not too hard if you use your inventory), probably there are some already ( @kristus episode's difficulty spikes badly at level 4).

 

I like to think that E4M9 is inspired on real mausoleums (just not detailed, and full of killer monsters). I consider E5M8 to be a crap, depressing finale to the entire series, after enduring E3M8 -- all those maulotaurs are too easy if you circlestrafe, they're no match for D'sparil "ever the brave warrior", and the design is too basic (here are your powerups, defeat these bosses). I don't consider E4M8 to be a serious boss ending, just a chapter ending in the middle.

 

What does "skein of D'sparil" mean anyway? Do you get to visit the late serpent rider's tailor shop?

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I wonder how long did it take to map E5M8. From concept to final version. Probably less time than it took to write a few posts in this thread.

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There is only one time where D'sparil has ever died by my hand. every other fight, he has died from his minions shooting at him. it is so hard to hit him when teleports that much and has such many enemies which steal your autoaim X)

 

 

Spoiler

I consider E5M8 to be a crap, depressing finale to the entire series, after enduring E3M8 -- all those maulotaurs are too easy if you circlestrafe,

 

i think that is problem with most of the boss fights in this game (and with most FPS boss fights, unfortunately). They have multiple different attacks, but because the arena is not suited to them, the manner in which player avoids them is exactly the same: run in a circle, or just sidestep back and forth.

 

in my opinion, the best boss enemy use is the maulotaur at e5m4 (courtyard), there is not much room to get around him so you must be some mindful of which attack he is doing, and each attack demand a different way of avoidance to the player, his fireballs attack now takes more precise strafing to fit between two fireballs (because you might not have the space to run around the whole lot), and the "fire snake" controls the space you have to move in by lingering ont he ground.

 

IIRC there is invulnerability secret that lets you cheese the fight, and you can just back out of the room and shoot him through the doorway. but this sort of fight highlights how enemies with multiple attacks can be wasted by simply placing them in a huge space, when they don't have any abilities that let them hit somebody who is circle strafing.

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26 minutes ago, xdarkmasterx said:

IIRC there is invulnerability secret that lets you cheese the fight,

I think that's the only reliable way to defeat the E5M4 maulotaur: finding the ring of invulnerability. Otherwise it's too hard to survive the floor fire. This is why I love E5M4, it's a fiendishly hard (but simple looking) map, fitting for the last episode.

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Get's phoenix rod in a twist >:(
Cool review man can't wait for your Hexen one :) (will you review Deathkings too in that?)

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I just finished a full run through the game as well, and don't have much to argue with. I agree that E1M4 and E1M5 are among the best maps in the game. I also liked E2M9's layout and the cool opening area with the stair. Overall I liked E3 best as an episode, but also thought some of the combination of slidey and damaging floors was a pretty good gimmick for a lot of E2 maps, and the weaker enemy set and generally decent map design works well for E1. I thought some of E4 and E5 were pretty solid, particularly blasting through all the Nitrogolem and Gargoyle hordes in Colonnade -- but I was playing modded, so every map moved more smoothly than it would have playing the vanilla game. E4M1 is still the most ridiculous map though.

 

A lot of the progression was indeed messy, especially in E4 and E5. If Foetid Manse had a clearer progression, I think it might be my favorite map in the game -- it has a lot of the things I love in Heretic pwads, a strong sense of place and of adventure, a big open layout where you can just kind of ramble around, but distinct areas within that layout. 

 

I also feel like mentioning E6M2, which is the only one of the three bonus maps that feels like a true single-player experience. Disciples are my favorite enemy in Heretic, so a whole map mostly themed around them is really cool imo -- though again, more fun due to playing modded. This map also has a really nice take on the "cathedral with pews" idea, with significant height changes and some of the pews molding around the altar/central structure. E6M1 made me laugh with the Doomcute bathrooms. Who can resist Doomcute bathrooms? Apparently not Raven Software.

 

A lot of pwads have done Heretic better than Heretic did, but the game has always captured my imagination as much as Doom, and I love the fantasy setting and the enemies and items, even if they feel like an incomplete selection. Overall, a pretty neat game.

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This post inspired me into finishing off E4 and E5 for the first time.

 

Hard to argue with any of your points. I still love Heretic, but there is a lot of weakness in the map construction particularly in the later episodes.

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