Your thoughts on Hexen?

[Cupboard]

Hexen was a cool game. The character classes weren't well-thought out but neither was the doomguy class, originally. Some of the weapons are better than others and the monster types were built in to oppose anyone who doesn't have a ranged attack. Well there are also a complete absence of hitscan foes which was a remarkable display of restraint on behalf of Raven Studios, so kudos to them for that.

[Lila Feuer]

11 hours ago, jupiter_ex said:

• Tougher enemies in every sense: the dark bishop is a tougher version of the disciple of d'sparil, the afrit shoots way faster than the gargoyle, the snake from d'sparil is (kind of) a normal enemy
• The fact that finally, when you are a mage, you shoot stuff from your hands (in Heretic you used weapons.. with ammunition..  ??)

I actually think the Hexen monsters are less tough than Heretic's, minus the Wendigo and Slaughtaur.

Yeah, kinda weird on that second note, the Sidhe elves' world flowed with magic and they specialized in magic weaponry, but nobody casted spells directly or utilized mana. Though Heretic II remedied this.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Heresiarch's bishops are in no way stronger than the disciples of D'sparil. Their damage is pathetic and all they do is slowly warp around letting you kill them. Even when placed in dozens the player still bulldozes through them. Disciples on the other hand have one of the most dangerous attack in the entire game.

 

Perhaps Corvus is closer to the cleric than to the mage? Besides am sure the mage gets rings to cast the frost spell and bracers to cast arc of death.

[vinnie245]

I've always loved Hexen, its atmosphere is tremendous and i always liked how the combat feels, the puzzles were never much of an issue for me either.

I even played it's playstation port and enjoyed it despite its horrible framerate and pixelated graphics.

The only complaints i have towards it is that the level design is a little too monotonous and the mage class could of definitely used a better starting weapon.

Edited July 4, 2017 by vinnie245

[Not Jabba]

6 hours ago, cyan0s1s said:

Yeah, kinda weird on that second note, the Sidhe elves' world flowed with magic and they specialized in magic weaponry, but nobody casted spells directly or utilized mana. Though Heretic II remedied this.

 

I like the way Heretic does magic, because it's a bit different from what we usually see in fantasy worlds, and it seems to have rules. You can cast powerful magic if you have the right tools, but you can't just generate it out of thin air.

[Kontra Kommando]

I remember playing Hexen on playstation back in 1997, when I was 12. Honestly, I didn't know wtf to do, on the second level. It was only within the last few years, when I picked it up again, have I explored it more.

 

My thoughts: Its a good game, and its more difficult than Doom.

[AdirBlaz]

Hexen is like.... That weird, awkward cousin of Heretic. It does stuff differently, but still sticks to a fantasy-medieval theme, and after a bit of time, ya just start to like it for some reason.

[leodoom85]

Just investing some time in the game is enough to like it or not and discovering the pro/cons of the game is useful for the gameplay.

[Nems]

Having played through it (and Heretic) recently, I appreciate what it did in terms of exploration. That being said, it's not really my cup of tea (neither is Heretic after giving it another spin recently) and I spent more time being lost and frustrated than I would have liked.

[CapnClever]

Hexen appears to have been designed with a heavy focus on cooperative play, especially using every class:

• Thing generation is flagged per-class, meaning if all three classes are in play then even more monsters (and items) are available; this flagging is in addition to coop flag, though I'm not sure if there are major cooperative-specific encounters
• The Mystic Ambit Incant is a cooperative-specific item that benefits all players within range and its use depends on class.
• Version 1.1 upped player starts from 4 to 8, by far the most significant difference in the patch.

Because each class has something of a role to fill (fighter handles the melee and knockback keeps enemies at bay; mage snipes far targets and especially flyers that dodge; cleric plays crowd control with self-healing and strong group damage), combat with the greater volume of enemies leads to a well-crafted dynamic experience. Unfortunately this appears to come at the cost of the single-player experience, with each class carrying certain deficiencies that never resolve themselves and ultimately make the game feel incomplete. It's like playing some party-based RPG with all of the same class: interesting in certain settings but to do so on the first playthrough exposes just how important the variety (and role-playing) is. Incidentally, my first experience with Hexen was in a cooperative setting (as a young child at that!), so keep the bias in mind.

 

As far as single-player goes, Mage probably has the best mileage on a first playthrough: the weapons are varied enough that each one has a niche use to keep things interesting, and the infinite railgun is always a safe strategy if you're patient. Fighter has a lot of staying power, and although his ultimate weapon is disappointing for its mana usage (in a relative sense) it's easy to skate through the game on the others. Cleric is easily the most lopsided class, with lackluster weapons for most of the game and an absurdly overpowered ultimate weapon that has to be used strategically lest you be forced to fall back to impotency. Preference depends entirely on approach, of course, and if you like the game you'll like it enough to play another two times.

 

Hexen's also a game that is very obviously inspired by CRPGs from its time, though packaged into something that worked better on the Doom engine. What many players will miss on playthroughs is that the game is actually quite straight-forward: however, this is often juxtaposed by terrible conveyance. Unlike its inspirations, very rarely are there locations that do not involve progression, meaning: you are either meant to find a key/relic that solves the next point of progression (relics being the closest thing the game attempts at intuition), or after reaching the next area you are to find switches/linedefs that invoke yet another point of progression. Hub2, Shadow Wood, does the best job in being quite obvious about collecting keys to perform hub progression, which is likely why it also has the most optional sections of any hub. That said, where these switches or keys or relics (or freaking linedefs) appear is often non-obvious, and so Spot the Difference is a necessary component of gameplay. I imagine all of this was quite intentional, even if it did little to prevent panicked backtracking because the player forgot to search every crevice in the latest room.

Most of the time the combat feels like an afterthought (at least in single-player) to give the player something to do on the journey of puzzle-solving. There are some polished encounters (Hub3 and Hub5 are the strongest contenders) but the biggest problem is the same one Heretic had: general lack of threat. The enemies capable of dealing real damage to the player (Wendigo, Stalkers, Reivers) are all massively confined due to theme: I honestly have no idea what they were thinking, making the glass cannon appear in the first hub and then never again. Afrits and Bishops are basically the Fire Gargoyles of the game, annoying to deal with but never put you in a problematic situation. This leaves Ettins and Serpents as effective but bland staples, and of course, the groan-inducing Centaur.

 

As much as you see people complain about their very existence, Centaurs/Slaughtaurs are interesting enemies that make the game better and not worse. Their invulnerability/reflectivity does a far better job at forcing particular weapon usage than Heretic's ghosts, and in a pinch flechettes pierce through the shield (unfortunately for the Fighter their reflectivity still causes the grenades to bounce off). What makes them such a hated enemy is their frequency: as with Archviles and Pain Elementals, they help to perform a specific role in combat, but ad nauseum placement causes said combat to lose a great deal of flavor. Here I blame lack of context-less variety: the other interesting enemies are limited by the given setting, kind of like if you said Archviles could only be placed in libraries (exclusively, not just as a weird trend) or Mancubi could only be placed in room with SKINFACE walls. I don't hate the enemy but, much like Poison Slugs in Commander Keen 4, they overstay their welcome.

 

That accounts for my big thoughts on Hexen. I could nitpick a lot of details that are good or bad, but I doubt many are interested in the nitty gritty.

Edited July 10, 2017 by CapnClever : typo fix

[Da Werecat]

I was actually quite surprised how good the Cleric's weapons felt when I first played as this class. Compared to Mage, anyway. The mace is crap, of course. All the shortcomings of the sapphire wand without any of the benefits. The second weapon is cheap, effective, and it heals you - would've been a great universal tool... if not for the centaurs, once again. Centaurs automatically make any weapon that deals little damage, but deals it frequently, feel like a joke. The next weapon doesn't help either, because when the secondary flames spawn, the centaur has long since became invincible. This leaves the Cleric with pretty much nothing to dispatch these fucks effectively.

 

People usually praise his flechette use, but it seems to be very tricky to pull off consistently. Yes, you can ridiculously gib a centaur by repulsing a fart cloud his way, but in my experience this will fail in about 80% of cases, and you'll be left with a permanenty-stunned, broken-sounding centaur that will emerge from the dispelling fart barely scratched. In awkward spaces, this is also a recipe for sniffing your own medicine, especially if monsters are approaching from different sides.

 

I seem to remember both flechettes and the fire hands working better before ZDoom. The latter used to be pretty effective even against smaller enemies such as lone bishops, but not now. I wouldn't be surprised if some subtle internal change caused this as an unintended consequence.

 

It seems to me that the developers had the right idea when they made the centaurs' shields vulnerable so some damage. Right now I'm aware that explosive flechettes can fry their asses. They should've allowed more fire-based attacks to go through, maybe with a penalty. The Mage's jazz lightning hands have a special exception, why not the Cleric's secondary flames?

 

Speaking about the Mage, it's an interesting class to play, but tricky to get right. There are quirks in his weapons that one should be aware of. Maybe that was the point. I'm assuming that the sapphire wand being such an effective and straightforward weapon was a way to compensate for the other weapons' quirks - if you can't get someone using more powerful tools, you can always plink them from a distance. Boring, but rarely fails.

 

But boring.

 

And Fighter is a Fighter. You'd think a melee-oriented class would be the hardest to get used to in a game that has ranged enemies. Admittedly, the wyverns are very hard to hit when you don't have wings, and you really need the third weapon - both points illustrated by Deathkings. Otherwise - well, you can crack a centaur's skull in just a few powerful blows. There's even a chance that he won't go into his pain state, because every melee attack is just one damage roll. What more do you want?

 

Fighter's flechettes are often being praised as well, but they have a really unpleasant property: their velocity depends on your velocity when you throw them. This means that if you're backpedaling the flechette won't fly very far. But the main problem is that if you're strafing the flechette will be thrown sideways. If the former makes some sense, the latter just makes the character look like he can't aim for shit.

[Ichor]

18 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

And Fighter is a Fighter. You'd think a melee-oriented class would be the hardest to get used to in a game that has ranged enemies. Admittedly, the wyverns are very hard to hit when you don't have wings, and you really need the third weapon - both points illustrated by Deathkings. Otherwise - well, you can crack a centaur's skull in just a few powerful blows. There's even a chance that he won't go into his pain state, because every melee attack is just one damage roll. What more do you want?

You can pick up that hammer when you first start in Brackenwood, before you start fighting the death wyverns, though it requires a little bit of tricky jumping. It's not too terribly tough though. And even when you do get the hammer, fighting the death wyverns involves a lot of leading the target, sometimes as much as shooting at 12:00 of its flight path when the death wyvern is around 9:00 and hoping it doesn't suddenly dip down or the hammer shot doesn't hit a tree or random bishop.

[Da Werecat]

Thanks, I'm aware, but I still think it involves more trouble than with other classes. Mage, for example, can just railgun a wyvern with no mana cost at all, provided there's enough space (and there's more than enough in Brackenwood).

[Ichor]

And cleric has the easiest time because of the firestorm, though you would have to go to Sump for that, which has its own share of headcahes.

[Graf Zahl]

I always thought that fighting those wyverns is a waste of time. I just tend to run for the switches, hit them until ready and move on.

Killing those fuckers doesn't make it any easier.

 

Due to the heavy respawning playing Deathkings for 100% kills is impossible anyway.

 

 

[Ichor]

I usually do it just for the fun factor. Also, I believe when one dies, it opens up some items and a bunch of combined mana in that area.

[leodoom85]

Deathkings is a bit harder. And we all know of the wyvern. If I use the fighter, I just kill the serpents, pick up the wings and punch that bastard. With the cleric, same tactic but using the serpent staff. And for the mage......the wand is enough or for a quick kill, use the arc of death. (that's in Hypostyle). In Deathkings, using the hammer or the staff will do the job just fine.

..

[Rosh Fragger]

I love Doom in Hexen format! :p

[HunoR]

I'm a big fan of Frank Frazetta's work. Always wanted to look around with the eyes of the heroes he painted. This is the experience what Hexen -and only Hexen- gave me. It's like a living Frazetta painting. It doesn't matter to me how much different things suck in it, I love every second I spend in that world.

[Varis Alpha]

i was under the impression that the Cleric had the best weapons out of all the class overall, though. the Serpent Staff is probably one of the best ranged weapons in the game, using a very small amount of mana per shot, and has an absurdly powerful lifedrain in close combat. the Firestorm is the closest thing you'll get to a hitscan weapon in the game that isn't the Mage's Sapphire Wand, and it wastes enemies in two or three shots. and that's not even talking about the Wraithverge, which is by far the most powerful ultimate weapon out of them all.

 

sure, the Mace of Contrition is by far the worst starting weapon out of the classes, being about half the strength of the Fighter's gauntlets (always loved how his starting weapon is just punching the shit out of giant monsters), and doesn't have the range of the Mage's wand, but that's a small price to pay for having the most powerful and versatile weapons in the game.

[Jon]

I prefer Hexen to heretic.

[Uncle 80]

Hexen is booooring. Also, the enemies look stupid, and the map design sucks.

 

Hexen 2, on the other hand - that's one of my fav fpses. That one has atmosphere! And all the other things the first has not.

[Varis Alpha]

you wanna talk about sucky map-design, look no further than the second half of Hexen 2. where'd the rest of the game go? i'm steamrolling through everything and have more kraters of might than i know what to do with.

[Lila Feuer]

The enemies become mana sponges by Septimus, and it's only really ever Archer Lords and Giant Brown Spiders from there on out. Return to Blackmarsh was Raven's way of saying 'let's just get this game over with please'. The sudden shift and disinterest in good design a 3/4th of the way through was probably a result of a deadline imposed by Activision.

[Varis Alpha]

there's also the issue that the game itself is, for some reason, extremely slippery, making it very hard to be precise as you slide all around the level. i thought that i did something wrong when playing the game, but apparently, it's supposed to be like this.

 

i will say that the puzzles in Thysis are at least more brain-taxing and more like actual puzzles, compared to anything you do in the first Hexen, which is just a variation of putting a key inside a lock. then again, Thysis has the constellation puzzle, and the infamous broken tile puzzle...

[42PercentHealth]

20 hours ago, Viscra Maelstrom said:

the Firestorm is the closest thing you'll get to a hitscan weapon in the game that isn't the Mage's Sapphire Wand, and it wastes enemies in two or three shots.

The problem with firestorm is that it costs 4 mana per shot. Yes, you can take down a chaos serpent in 2 hits (8 mana), but the fighter can do it in 2 hits (6 mana) and the mage in 1 hit (5 mana) with their third-tier weapons. Besides that, it usually takes at least 2 hits to kill a lowly afrit as well. NTM the effectiveness of that weapon's splash damage is very situational. TBH, firestorm is one of my least favorite weapons in the game.

[Da Werecat]

I think maybe ZDoom fucks it up somehow. I remember it being better in vanilla?

 

14 minutes ago, Viscra Maelstrom said:

there's also the issue that the game itself is, for some reason, extremely slippery, making it very hard to be precise as you slide all around the level. i thought that i did something wrong when playing the game, but apparently, it's supposed to be like this.

Small cramped levels, lots of slopes, crazy running speed. Also twitchy Quake controls with non-capped straferunning. It's one of those games where it's unpleasant to simply run around. I don't know what they were thinking.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

The cleric has Wraithverge and Flechette cheese, otherwise mage and fighter shit on him in the other weapon tiers (Especially mage at tier 3, which is complete bonkers, not to mention he can beat the game with nothing but his first weapon).

 

Wraithverge is pretty crazy but all of the ultimate weapons are extremely overpowered so the only differences would be killing shit behind walls and stunlock killing bosses (which are very weak and can be beat with any weapon by all classes).

 

Hexen 1 isn't above hexen 2 when it comes to feeling unfinished. It feels like stuff got rushed as you progress in the game (not to mention the horrid balancing of everything, players and monsters alike -obligatory centaur shield complaint, worst gameplay delayer in an fps ever-).

[Major Arlene]

The fact that I haven't played it since I finished it the first time (heavily relying on a walkthrough to do so) says a lot. Many games I've played, even after disliking them the first time, have gotten a second chance within about a month or two since the first completion. I don't want to touch Hexen again- it was a headache and a half to get through and I didn't get much sense of satisfaction after completing puzzles. The environments were cool, though, I will give it that much. 
Screw those centaurs, though.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Centaurs can go to hell can never be said enough haha.