Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel (1996)

I don't have too much to say on this one. It doesn't innovate the game play from the base game and instead just feels like an extension. If you wanted more of the same, this will fill that desire. I did feel the level design was a bit less convoluted. This was aided by having more hidden walls get highlighted for you (by having a light shine on them conspicuously after hitting a switch or triggering an event), but some progression is still hard locked behind obtuse hidden walls and switches.

The final fight is kind of lackluster since it's a retread of the penultimate episode of the base game. They vary it slightly by having waves of enemies you need to kill first, but still kind of disappointing as a whole.

Beat as the cleric on the hardest difficulty. That difficulty was intense but I still ended up with an overabundance of ammo and items. I got almost all of the way through the 1st hub before I got stuck and had to check a walkthrough. Turns out a quest item was lost and my save was screwed, so I had to load a backup and do a majority of that hub again. It seemed like you could not have more than 1 of the same quest item in your inventory as I was mysteriously missing a green gem that I know I picked up. It happened again with fire masks on this 2nd time as I picked up 2 planning to place both but only 1 was in my inventory. Good thing there is an extra mask in the level. I was cautious about this in the later hubs but never ran into that problem again. The 2nd hub was obnoxious and I did end up checking a walkthrough for some of it and to find the secret level. I hated that secret level with the maze in the middle. The 3rd hub was the best over all and I did not have much trouble. I found the secret level but those ice elementals on the hardest difficulty were insanely difficult to deal with; wraithverge spam all the way. The final boss battles were insanely difficult too. For the shield enemies I had to use multiple icons of the defender and circle strafe around while flying and spamming wraithverge. I summoned several maulotaurs and let them kill the warrior boss entirely. The cleric boss with wraithverge was extremely difficult; just spam my wraithverge and chug healing potions. Mage boss was no trouble.

Overall it is just more Hexen. Again I used the vanilla dosbox version and had to fight with the mouse controls. Definitely will play again as the other classes using a source emulator. I actually have more time on this than Hexen, so this is an expansion is that just as big as the base game.

7.8/10