Hexen: Beyond Heretic

aka: Heretic 2, Hexen, Hexen 95
Moby ID: 1938
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Hexen is the sequel to Heretic. While the Heretic was destroying D'Sparil, the other two Serpent Riders have come to your dimension and slaughtered everyone. Or so they thought. Three humans have managed to escape with their lives and now seek vengeance against the Serpent Rider Korax who remains in their world.

Like Heretic, Hexen is a fantasy game based on an enhanced DOOM engine. All of Heretic's innovations like vertical looking, flying, and the inventory system have been carried over. The new major changes this time around are three characters for the player to choose from and the level hub system. The characters are the Fighter, the Cleric, and the Mage. Each one has four unique weapons and different levels of speed and armor.

The hub system steps away from the traditional "single levels stringed along into episodes" system which had been carried over into the FPS genre from sidescrollers and made popular by Wolfenstein 3D. In Hexen's hub system each episode is still made up of interconnected levels, but most of the levels are connected to a single "hub" level through portals. There are also portals between some of the "spoke" levels. Many of the puzzles in Hexen require travel back and forth between different levels.

Other innovations in Hexen include weather effects, jumping, earth-quakes, and destructible objects such as trees and vases. The game also includes scripted sequences created with a language called ACS, allowing for much more complex puzzles and dramatic scenes.

Spellings

  • ヘクセン - Japanese spelling (on the CD in the Japanese Sega Saturn release)

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

19 People

Artists
Additional Artists
Programming
Level Design
Sound/Music
Project Director
Executive Producer
Engine Tools Programmer
3D Engine
Sound Drivers
Package Design by
  • The Richardson Group/R&D

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 47 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 186 ratings with 7 reviews)

Enormous switch hunt in scary castles.

The Good
It's scary game - this vibe is achieved by gripping music and level design. You will walk in old, ruined castles, marshes, caves, chapels and other places. Sounds are wonderful - they're realistic and help building the vibes. Even Quake and Duke Nukem haven't such good ambient sounds as Hexen.

Most of Heretic's features are also present in Hexen - there's inventory (there are some new items, like Dark Servant, which summons Maulotaur to help you, however Tome of Power is absent), flying and looking up and down. Hexen also introduces jumping and scripting. So, there are earthquakes, falling bridges, and . Level design is also different - there is a "hub system", as in Quake 2 or Heretic 2.

Unlike Heretic, you can select one of three characters in the game. They have not only different look, they use completely different weapons! For example, Fighter uses weapons like axe or sword, when Mage has magical staffs. Also, multiplayer allows max. 8 players during gameplay.

The Bad
Puzzles are really difficult - In Doom and Heretic you found keys and switches in passing. Not here. You sometimes have to search for switch in four enormous levels only to reveal another switch in another level. And that switch lowers platform, there's a key on the switch, the key opens a door, behind a door there is another switch... and so on, and so on. Puzzles should be the same as in Heretic 2 - much easier and more enjoyable.

The Bottom Line
Well, if you're looking for more puzzle-oriented FPS, then Hexen is for you. Its creepy atmosphere and hordes of monsters to slay will keep you entertained.

DOS · by Sir Gofermajster (485) · 2009

Hexen is an excellent shooter that's just not for everyone.

The Good
Hexen begins it long list of innovations by introducing the character to 3 player classes, each drastically different, that they can play. Each class responds differently to enemy projectiles, has a different set of 4 weapons, and use subweapons called flechettes in different ways. Even for a game created in 1995, the graphics are convincing. Though playing the game in DOS is probably not an option for most players, Hexen lives on today mostly through several high quality sourceports/graphical enhancements, namely involving the Doomsday engine. The first thing you'll notice about Hexen is that the environment rocks. Few things are more pleasing than pulling out your big spiked gauntlet and smashing through a stained glass window - except perhaps pounding it through the skull of some of Hexen's more obnoxious beasts. Playing through Hexen is downright challenging. Modern gamers will want to play the game on the maximum difficulty setting to adjust for their ability to use mouselook. Despite only having 4 weapons per character, Hexen involves a good amount of strategy in choosing which weapons for which battle and how to best conserve ammo for them. Especially pleasing about Hexen are some of the more frightening monsters. Once you get to the second hub, you'll be wary to step in water, and for good reason. In that sludge water are some of the nastiest villains to grace a computer screen, Stalkers. You probably have nerves of steel if these suckers don't make you jump out of your chair at least once. Other creative entries into the (limited) bestiary are Centaurs, which are perhaps my favorite FPS baddie to date. Centaurs are pretty much just bad guys with swords. The catch is, they also have a shield that can block your melee attacks and reflect your ranged attacks right back at you! Hexen's network play is quite fun in cooperative. If you can find a friend with voice comm, then you'll really have a blast. Sometimes, putting two heads together is the most satisfying way to finish some of Hexen's "remember that switch 10 levels back) puzzles.

The Bad
The monster variety in Hexen is small. As you slowly chip away at Hexen you'll be fighting most of the same enemies over and over again. The first encounters with a new monster are generally interesting and fun, however, fighting their rehashed comrade for the 1000th may be entertaining, but it certainly isn't fresh. The puzzles in Hexen generally serve more to tick off the player than reward them for careful thought. Most people will want to bring a strategy guide into the mix. Those that don't should keep very, very careful progress of their map if they don't want to spend hours (yes, that's right, hours) hunting the one hidden switch that got away. Unless romping through empty hallways looking for switches is your favorite thing in the world, you're undoubtedly going to find some frustrating points in Hexen. The size of the game, oddly enough, doesn't work to it's advantage. I would guesstimate that 1 out of every 50 gamers who buy Hexen will actually manage to finish it - the fact is, Hexen is just too darned long for how tedious and repetitive it can become. Multiplayer matches are also very difficult to set up, even with the new source ports. The only way a friend and myself could set up a multiplayer match was through ZDoom and Doom Connector.

The Bottom Line
Hexen is comparable to Halo in terms of play. You move around with a limited arsenal in repetitive environments fighting the same old bad guys over and over - some people love the core gameplay so much that they'd give their souls for another hour of Halo. Some hate it. Download the demo of Hexen, and if you manage to want more after you finish it, treat yourself to the full version. If the demo doesn't suit your fancy, you won't find anything else for you in the full version.

DOS · by WJAndrews (32) · 2004

An RPG-Style First-Person Shooter

The Good
Hexen is a very underrated game, in a way it finally enabled the Doom engine to have features it was originally planned to have (like hub level structure). Pretty much every Hexen feature was a major advance for a shooter at the time: real usable inventory with artefacts, health items that could be carried (quartz flasks and mystic urns), three different player classes (mainstay for RPGs, unheard-of in shooters: fighter, mage, cleric), a serious variety of weapons (4 weapons for each class+flechettes), a cartoonish taunting master villain, and just the "spooky-yet-cartoonish saving-the-world ambience". The music is great, though the original had only MIDI scores and a rather low-quality Sound Canvas audio CD. Obviously how great the MIDI files will play depends on the instrument bank for the GM synth the soundcard can drive. The big plus is, with the right instruments the soundtrack is haunting and fits the game beautifully.

The Bad
Nothing really. It could have a bit more detail, like NPCs (there are none). Hexen II introduced NPC-leftover "bait" (like corpses and notes and dead NPCs' diaries, etc.). The Tome of Power was missing (again, Hexen II remedies this).

The Bottom Line
Hexen is one of those games that can baffle people if they have no RPG experience, even repel them. The game is a masterpiece, and plays like a light, fun hack'n'slash adventure. If you're used to D&D and similar roleplaying games, that is. To folks who have never played an AD&D RPG (or anything similar), the puzzles might be frustrating, and of course the game requires the player to actually think, unlike point-and-shoot games where the most difficulty would be gathering ammo or unlocking a door/switch/lift/elevator with a key that has to be wrestled from an enemy (or mob).

Hexen is really more complex, but not by much. There're many items (such as the Chaos Device - emergency teleport; Discs of Repulsion - pushing wave generators; Quartz Flasks - 25 health point restorers) which transform the game from a simple shooter into a strategic delight, both for co-op and deathmatch. Deathmatch simply isn't anywhere as simple or stupid in Hexen, where you can turn an opponent into a pig or teleport out of trouble when nearly mortally wounded. Oh, and of course any player character can fly once the Wings of Wrath are found. Different classes have different weapons and different Flechette styles, too. Flechette is the local grenade. The cleric's Flechette is a gas poison trap, the mage's is a simple timebomb, and the fighter's is a glass grenade. Some of the greatest weapons ever in a shooter are also to be found in Hexen: the Arc of Death, the Serpent Staff, and the Wraithverge.

Puzzles might seem daunting, but really they're all straightforward and there's no set way to completing them - a player is free to travel among several levels at once in a hub. Puzzles though are mostly simple "flick a switch, something happens" or "pick a key, amass a collection of keys" type, except for a few deathtraps (hint: if you fall into a chasm or well, either fly out or use the Chaos Device).

The inventory and playerclasses' unique abilities make Hexen stand out among shooters. Really it's a masterpiece, the game never gets boring, even almost 20 years after its release.

DOS · by Aenn Seidhe Priest (9) · 2013

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

Controversy

The Steam download version of the game is listed as Windows platform because the executables are modified to use a DOSBox variant (v 0.70); additionally the traditional setup.exe is missing.

It is confirmed that neither Valve or id Software contacted the DOSBox project staff and initially the game didn't includes the TXT files that must be present under the GPL license (so they failed to fulfill 2 points of the GPL license).

Two days after the launch, there was an update that includes COPYING, AUTHORS and THANKS.txt of the DOSBox 0.71.

References

  • In the Necropolis, you can find graves that have the names of some of the authors written on them.
  • In the first HUB, "The Seven Portals" there is a secret level hidden. Once you're in it, you can find D'Sparil's (from the original Heretic) heart in there.
  • The villain's name, Korax, is derived from the scientific name of the common raven: corvus corax. This is an intentional joke as the game was developed by Raven Software.
  • The first place in the game where the Porkalator artifact can be found is on Hub 2: "Caves of Circe". Circe was a character in Greek mythology, who transformed Odysseus' crew into pigs.

References to the game

The final boss of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, Mordekai The Summoner, carries a staff very similar to the Bloodscourge, the last weapon of the Mage class in Hexen: Beyond Heretic. It should also be noted that the enemy as a whole looks very similar to D'Sparil, the final boss of Heretic.

Speech

One of the demonic sounds that the enemy Dark Bishop sometimes utters, when played backwards, actually sounds like his name.

Title

In German, "hexen" means "witches", or "casting a spell" when used as a verb. Moreover, the game has a Warlock skill level - a warlock (or "hexenmeister") is the male version of a witch.

Version differences

The PlayStation version can be called notoriously evil for being one of the few games on the system to require one ENTIRE Memory Card (yes, all 15 blocks worth) to save just ONE save game!

Awards

  • EGM
    • 1998 Buyer's Guide - Games that Should've Stayed on the PC

Information also contributed by Dark Dante, Emepol, Macintrash, Medicine Man, Maw and Satoshi Kunsai

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Related Sites +

  • Doomsday HQ
    Home of jDoom, jHeretic, and jHexen. These are hardware accelerated ports of those games ( require original DOS versions to work). Useful to make the games prettier, extended multiplayer support, and to work perfectly on Windows Xp!
  • Raven-Games
    This site is dedicated to older Raven Software games. Here you can get maps and mods for Heretic, including JHexen and Koka's GLHexen, the two best hardware accelerated Hexen upgrades in existence!
  • This is not your world, mortal.
    official game pages at GT Interactive's website, preserved by the Wayback Machine
  • Wikipedia: Hexen: Beyond Heretic
    Information about Hexen: Beyond Heretic at Wikipedia

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1938
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kalirion.

Windows Apps added by Plok. Windows added by Xantheous. Macintosh, SEGA Saturn added by Kabushi. Nintendo 64, PlayStation added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: Xantheous, Emepol, Corn Popper, Alaka, Havoc Crow, Matthew Melbourne, DreinIX, Patrick Bregger, Verm --, MrFlibble.

Game added July 14, 2000. Last modified March 14, 2024.