Hexen II (1997)

This is a dark fantasy FPS that expands on the ideas of its predecessor while embracing early RPG mechanics in a way that was ambitious for its time. Built on a modified Quake engine by Raven Software, the game trades pure run-and-gun simplicity for a slower, more methodical experience focused on exploration, character progression, and atmosphere. And as much as it gives a lot of vibes that it'll have a progression system, it doesn't actually implement anything special. Your progress is more akin to other traditional shooters, you can find new weapons, upgrades and equipments, instead of traditional RPG progression using XP. Before anything, you need to choose your character, Paladin, Crusader, Assassin, or Necromancer, each with unique weapons, spells, and playstyles, giving the game strong replay value and a sense of identity.

One of its greatest strengths is its world design and mood, the game is divided into themed hubs inspired by medieval Europe, ancient Egypt, Mesoamerica, and Greco-Roman mythology, all tied together by a bleak, oppressive tone. It is very nice to see such varied and exotic environments for a shooter, especially for its era. The environments were impressively detailed, with large open spaces, vertical level design, and dynamic lighting that enhanced immersion. The hub-based structure encourages exploration and gives the world a cohesive feel, making it seem less like a series of disconnected levels and more like a continuous journey through a cursed realm. Despite all this, almost all the levels are very confusing to navigate, especially the Edypt one which, I admit that I needed to follow a guide in order to progress. Fortunately the last few levels have a very high quality design compared to the first half of the game.

Combat is deliberate rather than frantic, emphasizing positioning, resource management, and the smart use of spells and abilities. It really forces you to become more tactical in your approaches, instead of simply relying on skills and reflexes. And since your resources are very limited, you need to take advantage of the varied consumable items such as bombs, power-ups and regens. Traditional XP points allows you to level up and improve attributes, which adds a subtle sense of long-term progression. Though I got to admit that, once you find the last weapon of each class, the game becomes a breeze since they are powerful enough for all the enemies you face. One of its biggest drawbacks is the pacing, progress is uneven, and some encounters become frustrating if the you miss key upgrades or enters areas in the “wrong” order.

The most divisive aspect is its puzzle and navigation design, objectives are often vague, backtracking is frequent, and it is easy to get lost or overlook crucial switches and items. Like I said before, the Egypt level is the worst level, it is the one I got stuck quite often and for quite some time. I needed to use a guide in order to progress, and since the pacing is very bad, I had difficulty following the guide since there is a correct order in which you need to do things. Not to mention the mysterious key item hunting, there I don't know which is worse, where they are located, or how to use them. There are even some unfixed bugs up to this day when it comes to some soft-lock people face while trying to progress.

This game really needed some patches in order to address these QOL issues, maybe even a remake. While the high difficulty of its puzzles can be rewarding for players who enjoy methodical exploration and trial-and-error problem solving, it can also feel unintuitive and punishing, especially by modern standards. Overall, this entry is a bold, atmospheric shooter that rewards patience and curiosity, standing as a memorable but flawed classic that appeals most to players who appreciate depth and mood over constant action. I yet to fully play the first entry, but I already heard a lot of opinions about it, and I don't think these design issues are isolated on this sequel, if anything I think the second game actually tried to address the QOL issues, and succeeded to some extent.

Beat on the hardest difficulty as the crusader at level 11. Before settling on that I tried out all 4 classes and looked up online to see what they were like. I decided on the crusader because it was most similar to the Hexen cleric. I also randomly noticed a guide for enabling mouse look by typing +mlook in the console. That made the game more enjoyable. The random heal and powerup special abilities were occasionally useful. I used the basic melee attack for many enemies. I did feel that the combat in this game was a bit off, with too much emphasis on using melee when compared to Hexen 1 and Heretic. It did not help that the ammo capacity seemed too low. I liked the boomerang effect of the hammer when under the tome of power, but I never felt I needed to use it. The ice staff was very much like the cleric’s basic staff/heretic pistol staff, and it was my go to long range weapon. It was cool that slain enemies remained as frozen statues, though they often acted as cover for the enemies since the ice shots could not break the statues. The tome of power ice storm was nice for damage but I barely used it. The weapon pacing was off. I had to complete the first stage with only the hammer and ice staff, and I wondered if I had missed the third weapon. It took way too long to obtain the fire staff, and then an oddly short length of time between that and finding the ultimate weapon. The fire staff was ok, though its grenade launcher firing method was far inferior to the sniper rifle fire of Hexen 1. The grenades were only effective at mid range and I found them useful for killing archers, imps and mages. I never used the tome of power mode other than at the final boss; it at least made the weapon more accurate. I did not like how the tome of power increased the mana cost of shots. The ultimate light staff had no Doom equivalent because it was a very accurate laser that required keeping on target to do consistent damage over time. It was great for sniping but had an annoying black smoke effect that obscured my vision after shooting for a couple seconds. I used it focus down multiple enemies and for bosses. The tome of power effect put on 3 beams but ate mana incredibly quickly, so I never used it. It would make the weapon devastating at point blank range but that would defeat the purpose of using a super accurate long range weapon.

I killed enemies using only melee strikes whenever I could manage it. Spiders were easy to kill. Archers could be meleed without taking damage if I had cover close enough to them. Pillars made them easy to kill. At longer distances and if there were more than 1, I shot them. Imps could only be meleed in tight spaces where they could not fly above me. For whatever reason, they took forever to kill with the ice staff (especially the ice imps). Most golems were easy to kill in melee if I could get them to a point where they could not pursue me, and charge towards and back to avoid damage. Otherwise their lunging attack forced me to keep my distance and drop them with ice shots. I shot all scorpions with ice rather than risk taking damage. The Anubis guards were deadly with their arrows and fire attack straight from Hexen 1; why couldn’t I have that instead of the grenade launcher? They were difficult to deal with in groups so I often burned them down with the laser. While alone, it was easy to bait them into using their melee instead of magic and using the same run in and out strategy as for golems. I found the hammer and grenade launcher most effective for mages because they did not stand still for long with their annoying teleporting around. The end game fallen angels were so tough that I killed most of them with the sheep item; got to love insta kill! After I ran out I had to kill 1 with the light staff and she just stood there trying to block it until she died. I used pretty much the same strategy for each boss; circle strafe around while shooting and using the repulsors to reflect shots back. Heal as needed and sometimes drop a time bomb. I actually had to use those bombs sometimes right after boss fights because I would start the new hub very low on mana. I saved all of my invulnerability and invisibility powerups for the final boss. All of the bosses were pretty tough and took a couple tries to beat because their damage output was so high that I could be dead in seconds. It was critical to setup hotkeys for the powerups. I was very impressed with the keybinding options, which allowed me to correct the atrocious inventory bindings of Hexen 1 and Heretic. I set Q and E to cycle through items, with F to use. Then I bound individual items to keys in my WoW paladin standard layout. 1-4 for weapons, Z for heal, X for repulse, C for torch, V for tome of power, B for force cube, M for mana chalice (probably should have put that C since it was a waste to bind a key for torch), G for boots of speed, R for bomb, T for invulnerability, Y for big heal, I for invisibility, 0 for teleport. Right click was fly up and I found it incredibly annoying to get out of water. It seemed like space bar jumping was not enough, rather I had to go under and shoot out of the water using right click. Right click was also very important for going up while noclipping.

I got stuck in the first stage and had to follow a walkthrough. It turned out that I missed a little hidden switch. It was not difficult to figure out what to do, rather the difficulty was figuring out where the hell quest items were hidden. While I feel the overall level design was better than Hexen 1, it was still needlessly obtuse. I messed up the second stage and had to use noclip to beat it. There was a point where I had to platform across lava to get an important item. Do you think I am going to platform back across that? Hell no, I teleported out of there and ended up in a completely different part of the map. I later found out it put me just beyond the door that was opened with the 2 skull quest items, so I pretty much had to do the stage in reverse. By the time I got back to the beginning, I was locked inside because I had not completed the fire puzzle. I tried teleporting and going everywhere but there was no way to progress without noclipping. The Egypt stage was incredibly annoying with puzzles and it was at this point that I started taking photos of the text to help me figure stuff out. I had already been keeping notes of what quest items were needed where. First was the 3 button puzzle which I could not figure out and had to look up. I tried all the combinations so not sure why it did not work for me before. Maybe I just fell off too often and messed it up because having auto run on made it very difficult to move from switch to switch without falling off. Then was the awful bridge puzzle that teleported me several rooms back upon failure. Game you know I am just going to reload the save rather than walk back so why have such a stupid penalty? I did vaguely recall seeing the code on the wall, but I forgot where and did not want to go looking. I tried to brute force every combination but that did not work. So look up the walkthrough again and find out that sometimes the codes just do not work. Stupid puzzle. Then for the last jar I could not figure out what to do. Looked up the guide and it just said to noclip, so I guess the game was broken? But I watched a youtube let’s play and the door was just magically open already. The war stage played out similar to stage 2 in that I used teleport to get out of a tricky spot and was sent somewhere entirely new. I never even went to the Zeus and Athena areas. Oh well, I thought I had found the boss awfully quickly. I needed a little bit of help on the final stage because I missed a path to go, then the final boss bugged out after I destroyed the chaos orb. He just stood there, and I instantly died upon killing him. The ending text was glitched and unreadable. I tried multiple times but there was no fixing the end. Ah well, still counts as beating the game.

Despite the excellent keybinding options, this game was a downgrade from Hexen 1 that continued the trend away from fast paced balls to the wall shooting (of Doom) towards the tedious combing for hidden switches and beating your head against obnoxious puzzles. The environments were very nicely detailed with many destructible objects. I liked how the wall humping of Doom was removed by having the “use” command activate automatically whenever the player was close enough, and how breakable walls were very obvious. I will play through again as the other classes at some point though I may use a sourceport.

7.0/10

While some of the level designs are interesting, I can hardly recommend that game to anyone.
Some good concepts that were in the previous game in the series as well: multiple classes with different sets of weapons. Now there are also a couple of passive skills for each class, and a leveling system. Weapons system, though, is a double-edged sword. The whole first episode you are running with a single projectile weapon. In the first game, you had also to assemble your ultimate weapon from three pieces. Here you assemble it from two, and you get both in the second episode. So, first you are spending a lot of time with almost no weapon choice, then you have 3 episodes without new weapons whatsoever. I was playing the Assassin, and her 3rd weapon are grenades, which are totally useless.

Episodes themselves are uneven, and probably were made by different people. The most convoluted is the 3rd one, Egypt. This is a nightmare of puzzles, some of which look like bugs, and I think it's nearly impossible to finish without a guide or some cheats. I had trouble with that episode even while using the walkthrough.

I was glad that I played on the lowest difficult. The bosses are complete bullet-sponges, and some of them also have homing attacks which are almost impossible to avoid. Some regular enemies are also tough as hell. By the end of the game I was afraid that I'll run out of ammunition.

There are also numerous bugs. I was playing the GOG version, that doesn't worth with the unofficial patch. They say that the Steam version does. Anyway, GOG version (1.11) crashes if there are too many explosions on screen (crossbow with Tome of Power, for example). Also, you sometimes can't jump out of water, so you get stuck and have to reload or use cheats to get out.