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Vegeta

Favorite and less favorite Heretic/Hexen chapter

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Hexen and Heretic seem to ressurrect a bit nowadays wich I think it's a very good thing. Now the subject says it all, what's your favorite chapter in the Heretic/Hexen series, and what's your less favorite?

Personaly I find Hexen, Hexen II, and Portal of Praevus to be the better ones, I can't be sure wich I prefer, but I think Hexen's atmosphere atracts me more, still I love the monsters (specially bosses) of the other two.

My less favorite without a doubt is Heretic II, I never liked much the third person view, the plot was ruined as hell, the "villians" are less interesting, and every character (foes and specialy Corvus) are weak.

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Hexen is probably the best one, in fact I'm in very much of a Hexen mood at the present moment. I'd say it had the coolest enemy designs in the series. Some of the levels are memorably cool as well, Darkmere and Bright Crucible come to mind. The puzzles were sometimes a bit annoying in the first run through, but it becomes a lot more fun once you get used to it. Deathkings was also fun.

Heretic was at one point my favorite game, so I'd say it's also good. Its main weakness is that it does feel a bit much like a medieval/fantasy TC of Doom. Also it could have used some better creature design, as some of them are rather cheesy. This game does get bonus points for having the Tome of Power, and better Tome effects than the other two games that had it. Also with the expansion it has a ton of levels which is a plus.

Hexen 2 had some good parts, and some others I didn't like. I didn't like the bosses much, War was overly difficult and felt like he was as tough or tougher than Eidolon, and all of them were a chore to fight. The Egyptian levels didn't do much for me, and it felt weird that they named these various places things like Thysis and Septimus and whatever but then didn't even bother changing the names of stuff like "Temple of Mars" and "Crown of Upper Egypt". Also the classes didn't appeal to me as much as the first Hexen's clean-cut archetypes did, although the Demoness in the expansion pack was interesting.

Heretic 2 was messed up... it doesn't even mesh with the others aside from having Corvus as the main character and some scattered concepts from the previous games, like the hellstaff and the two colors of mana. The enemy concepts were lame and the gameplay was very often annoying. I never bothered finishing it (I got as far as somewhere in the cloud fortress, probably near to the end of the game when I gave it up).

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The way that Corvus stands when using the Hellstaff in Heretic2 (It's a real "get some" pose) is enough to raise Heretic2's rating for me.

Hmmm, probably the original Hexen is favourite - let down by too few weapons and to many obscure "WTF did that switch do" situations.

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Heretic was a good game, with the biggest problem being it was too easy. They give you a small army of ammo, artifacts and great weapons .. then put you through levels with 100-150 monsters max. Episodes 4-5 rectify this a bit (220 monsters, wow!), but they still aren't as much of a challenge as Final Doom levels compared to original Doom levels.

Hexen's atmosphere and use of scripting was great .. some would also say it's downfall, since it had vague puzzles that could easily lead to a player being stumped, hours of playtime lost. It's gameplay was also somewhat of a mess .. it had an armor system that didn't seem to do anything, and the enemies were unbalanced, with alot of them more annoying and frustrating to fight than anything else.

I only played Heretic 2 and Hexen 2 a little bit, so I can't comment on them much. I remember getting lost and stuck in Hexen 2 even more than I did in the original, though.

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Well, I played Hexen and Heretic a long time ago. My opinion is that Hexen was *******ely better, but yeah, the puzzles were just too complicated at times. I remember spending half a day trying to finish that level with the main hall with the 7 gates (I think). There were some cool design elements tough - the winter, fire etc themes for example.

However, I still think that the level design was way too overloaded compared to Doom. Doom's simplicity is one of its greatest strenghts IMO.

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What i din't like about Hexen and Hexen 2 was the constant puzzles. Hexen beyond heretic? More like. Hexen. Beyond Brainteasers.

Heretic had more dive into the action. Which i like. But Hexen was still cool.

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Vegeta said:

My less favorite without a doubt is Heretic II, I never liked much the third person view, the plot was ruined as hell, the "villians" are less interesting, and every character (foes and specialy Corvus) are weak.

Looking at this thread again I took a bit more notice of this passage. When you say every character, are you saying that you think that ruddy lizard assassin thing that teleports to you and slashes your throat (or whatever he does that instant-kills you) is weak, or did you just forget about him?

Remembering that enemy gives me one more reason to put Heretic II as my least favorite. I hate that guy.

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Well personaly I see this as Corvus being weak, you can kill the characters with more HPs (not the bosses) with few hits, but also you can be killed with few hits. Also the game is harder because with the third person view and some coding in Corvus' movement it's harder to move with accuracy and avoid attacks.

Also almost every character is very thin looking weak. Compare the Cauthorian with a Shadow Wizard (the black teleporting wizards from Hexen II), the Medusas, Angel Lord, and other monsters from Hexen II or its expansion.

Okey in Hexen and Heretic the monsters are rather easy to kill(at least easier than Heretic II cretures) but have nicer magic attacks, and the larger numbers, and stronger look compensates its weakness. But yeah this is more a personal crazyness rather than a serious argument, please don't take me serious on this.

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Vegeta said:

My less favorite without a doubt is Heretic II, I never liked much the third person view, the plot was ruined as hell,...


I agree to that.

The original Heretic is my favorite.
Not too complicated, intense gameplay, good atmosphere.
It's strange, that i started to love it, after playing it with md2-models in jHeretic...

Greetings
Funduke

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1. Hexen comes first because i loved the hubs and the differences per class. It all made sense and Ettins are very fun to mow down, especially with only your fists, without a need for a berserk pack.

2. Heretic. Not as good as Hexen, but still great. The weapons are slightly too close to Doom, i do like them however, especially the Firemace. :D

3. Hexen 2 goes here. It plays nice and so, but i lost the ability to tell a wall from an object made of 10 polygons a good time ago. It also bothers me that the sky wasn't changed from Quake, only made grey. I personally would have liked another Hexen in the doom engine, since Hexen 1 looked better than Hexen 2. The texture quality isn't that much better, and 3D models became good about when Quake 2/Unreal was released.

4. I've never played Heretic 2, so i guess i'll put it here.

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I played "Heretic", "Hexen" and the "King of the Dark Citadel" expansion pack for the latter.
I prefer "Heretic", because "Hexen" has too many frustrating puzzle and its monsters are annoying rather than hard. On the contrary, "Heretic" is better because of its funny gameplay!

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1. Hexen. Fantastic atmosphere, one of the most immersive games I've ever played. Huge and well-designed levels, packed with detail. Excellent sound and character design all the way through - very polished. Great balance of puzzle-solving and action. Cons: only 4 weapons per character, some of which are a little underwhelming.

2. Hexen II. Great music and atmosphere (especially the Meso-America themed hub), some of the best bosses ever, cool "four horsemen" theme. Cons: Dull and bland textures in the midieval hub, Quake engine movement physics felt awkward in a Hexen-themed game (thankfully tweakable through the console).

3. Heretic. Mediocre. Lacks the puzzle elements and hub system that gives Hexen it's depth and staying power. Weak weapons and sound effects. Some excellent textures and good monster design however.

4. Heretic II. A disappointing game which somehow ended up completely lacking the character of all it's predecessors. Uninspiring character design, drab and dull textures.

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IMO they should have just skrewed Hexen 2 and Heretic 2, cause none of them are particularly fun. Specially not Hexen 2.

Instead they should have made Hecatomb instead, the game that John Romero had planned for the third chapter in the series. Hexen2 is just a commercial ploy game made to attract customers.

What made Heretic and Hexen so good was that they were fresh in their idea and that they managed to establish a mystery. They ruined that when they made sequels.

Hexen2? Yeah, It's Hexen, with Quake engine.
Heretic 2? Yeah, it's heretic, in 3rd person and Quake2 engine.

You pretty much knew what to expect. Yeah there's the hell-staff etc.

When I played Heretic, I was walking into this mystic new world that I felt I somehow stumbled on (probably because a classmate to me had installed it to our class computer w/o me knowing it and I stumbled upon it)

Then, Hexen came. And you didn't know what to make of it, it's a sequel? But not a sequel. A whole new world. With new rules and design. It was the mystery all over again.

Then Hexen 2 came, and you were not very thrilled. Specially since all the weapons were so fucking gay.

EDIT:Correction, Weapons AND monsters.
Eh, come to think of it. The whole game sucked ass.

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Hexen 2 was a boring travel-to-next-area puzzlefest with barely any fair fights (well there are enemy encounters, but they all deliver high damage and kill you instantly), it's when raven jumped the shark tbh

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Yes that puzzle was total crap and pissed me off to no end.
My list:
Hexen
Heretic
Hexen 2

I liked all 3 but over all Hexen was my favorite out of the 3.

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Ichor said:

Worst thing about Hexen 2:

I was going to say the entire Egyptian hub, but that thing is to the Egyptian hub what the Egyptian hub is to the rest of the game.

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