Heretic and Hexen are on my bucket list for quite a long time, so I used the time in lockdown to catch up with all games in that series. I started at the beginning of the first lockdown in March and finished right before Christmas.
All Heretic or Hexen games are shooters, most of them are first-person shooters, the only exception is Heretic II, which is a third-person shooter. All titles were developed by Raven Software, using the latest versions of id Software's engines. Raven Software a very 1990ies game developer (I can't think of any better way to describe it), they gained a very good reputation during the 1990ies, because of games like Heretic / Hexen, had their heyday in the early 2000s with titles as the infamous Solider of Fortune series, Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force and especially Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. Later on they developed
- some X-Men games, to which I can't say much, except that they were developed in the mid 2000s, before the current superhero hype
- Quake 4, which people seem to hate for some reason, but I really don't get why, it was a very good shooter
- Wolfenstein also known as Wolfenstein 2009, it's a very loose sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which had a lukewarm reception and was quickly forgotten, only to be overshadowed by the succeeding Wolfenstein games developed by Machine Games
and - Singularity, the last game they developed on their own, it was not developed using an id Software engine, but still a straight-forward FPS in a Cold War / time travel scenario. Funnily enough I found a test of it in the last ever gaming magazine, I every bought (which was in 2010). They called it a solid, but not spectacular shooter, which is nicely old-school, without regenerating health or other elements introduced by Call of Duty.
And speaking of Call of Duty: Raven Software's fate is kind of sad today, because since 2010 they only assist other studios in developing Call of Duty games. It's a sad fate from a creative point-of-view, since Raven was always a quite creative studio. From a business point-of-view it is great, I guess.
Here are some short reviews of the games. I played them in this order, as you might notice, since the reviews for the later ones are longer:
Heretic
When it was released, FPS were also called Doom-clones, and it felt a bit like a fantasy mod for the original Doom. It did have some additions like usable items, e.g. one item that turns enemies into chickens. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad thing, Doom was a great game and so is Heretic. You play as an elf named Corvus (although this only gets revealed in Heretic II) and blast your way through your enemies.
Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders
More Heretic, it is actual the final two episodes of Heretic. It was included in the box release (aka the European release), but it also was provided as a free patch from Raven's website. It's a bit odd story-wise, since it takes place after the final boss was defeated, but the story was anyway rather thin, and it is more Heretic, so it is good.
Hexen: Beyond Heretic
Hexen is still based on the original Doom engine, but Raven really pushed it to its limits. It changes things story-wise, since you are not playing as elf, but as human (but again, story wasn't a big focus back then). You can choose from one out of three classes: fighter, cleric or mage. The fighter is a melee focused class, the mage is more focused on ranged combat and the cleric is kind of the all-rounder. Each class has four different weapons. Also, they changed to a hub based level system instead of a sequence of linear levels. This means that you have (a limited) choice of how to finish the levels, and you unlock new areas in previously visited levels. In theory, it is a good idea, but in practice you end up pressing a button or finding a key and look what new area you can visit now. It can be confusing at times, but the level design is quite good. There are five hubs, a prologue and an epilogue.
Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel
Hexen was not an easy game, but with this expansion they again cranked up the difficulty. It added three more hubs and a total of 20 new levels, and they are intense. There are no new classes or enemies. If you liked the original, you are also going to enjoy this one, it is a nice challenge. I finished the original in roughly 19 hours, for this expansion I needed almost 14 hours, just to give you an idea of what you are getting into.
Hexen II
Hexen II used the Quake engine and is the first game of the series which is fully 3D. This time you can choose from four different classes: Paladin, Crusader, Assassin, and Necromancer. Each class has again four different weapons. Hexen II also features light RPG elements: as you progress you are able to carry more ammunition (mana) and get more health points. Each class also has some special skills, nothing too special but a nice addition. It is as challenging as always, especially in the beginning: since you have little ammo, you end up fighting melee quite often. I played as Assassin, who is not good in melee combat, which makes the beginning quite challenging. It does get better though, the further you progress in the game. The same thing can be said about the puzzles: the first puzzle of the game is just crazily complex. It's hard to believe that people were able to solve this without a guide online back in the day. The following puzzles are easier, but some are almost impossible. The level design is again very good, and predates an idea from the infamous Daikatana: it is split up into five episodes and each episode has a unique setting: Medieval Europe, Mesoamerican, Ancient Egypt and Greco-Roman. The last episode is set again in a Medieval Europe inspired setting. If you like a good and challenging 1990ies shooter, this is for you.
Hexen II: Portal of Praevus
The expansion pack to Hexen II introduces a new class, the Demoness and two new hubs. Again one in an Medieval Europe inspired setting and one in a Sino-Tibetan setting. The Demoness is the only class who doesn't have a melee attack and is a ranged fighter. I played her and I also played in the highest difficulty: surprisingly I didn't find it too hard. Maybe I adapted to the difficulty after finishing the original game, but having a pure ranged class makes it surprisingly easy. And much more fun, since one thing the Quake engine is doing well is shooting. I found the puzzles quite OK this time, no strange difficulty spikes there (with one exception, where I had a hard time figuring out the solution, but in retrospect it was obvious). Like all games in this list, I can only recommend it.
Heretic II
Heretic II is special, for many reasons. The obvious being that it is not an FPS, but a third-person action game, clearly inspired by Tomb Raider. It uses the Quake II engine, even though it is a versatile engine, it is not the perfect engine for a third-person game, and it shows. It seems to me like an FPS would have been the better choice, but beside that I have to praise the animation of the main character and his movement set: it is superb and the Corvus is not second to Lara Croft. The next big difference is, that it puts much more emphasis on the story, and it also has cutscenes, NPCs and an interesting premise (ironically for a game I played during lockdown, it is about a mysterious disease). Also, it is the only game in the whole serious, whose source code was not released and this I didn't play a source port. There is a native Linux version, but it crashed at one point, so I had to play it using WINE. Luckily there are versions with applied Widescreen patches available on Lutris. Funnily enough, although it is the newest game in the series, it kind of feels like the most dated one. The patches help, but the traditional 1990ies FPS gameplay is just timeless, compared to this 1998 third-person shooter.
The last reason why this game is special is a personal one and a nice little anecdote I'd like to share: it was the only game out of the series, I played before. In 2000 JoWood (a now defunct Austrian publisher) released a game collection, where Heretic II was a part of. For those of you who don't know: these game compilations were quite popular in the 1990ies and early 2000s, because you got a bunch of good older games for a good price. Remember that this was a time before Steam Sales or Humble Bundles, so this was actually a good deal for getting games. The funny thing is, that I didn't buy the compilation, but I bought specifically Heretic II out of this compilation at a video rental store (this was in 2002). Looking back, this was most likely not legal, because I don't think it was allowed to sell those games separately. Anyway, I didn't know at the time and paid €1 for it. The video rental store closed down a long time ago, I think even before Netflix became popular. It was good that I bought it back then, because unfortunately it is not available anywhere digitally. It must be some licensing issue, but it is a pity that the final game of this series is missing.
Preset
There hasn't been a new release in over two decades, and it seems to me that those games were almost forgotten. Almost, in 2014 Ziggurat was released, it is certainly more influenced by The Binding of Isaac, but it is still an FPS in a fantasy setting. In the last two years, with the rise of the so-called Boomer Shooters, also a lot of Heretic / Hexen inspired shooters came along: AMID EVIL is heavily influenced by Heretic, Graven, a spiritual successor to Hexen II, Hedon even runs in a source port of the original Doom engine. Then there is also Apocryph and Project Warlock.
For most of the past two decades fantasy shooters seemed dead, only to come back strong in the last two years. And I really like it 😃