An interesting story told four different ways...

User Rating: 9.3 | Hexen II PC
By JOE714 | Review Date:
Hexen 2 originally shipped with more bugs than a hotel mattress, but my roommates and I played it anyway, over and over. The game was an ambitious endeavor, in that its developers pushed their scope beyond the basic run-and-gun Quake routine to add a more adventurous role-playing aspect. Like Heretic and Hexen before it, Hexen 2 sicced the player on a trio of nasty, serpentine wizards. With two down and the toughest foe remaining, four very distinct characters were available for hours of hacking and slashing (and freezing and burning) through four large areas. The hubs and artifacts returned from both previous games and were even more essential here. Weapons and the effects of certain artifacts and armor were unique to each character class, plus the scenery in each exotic episode was rarely repetitive, all of which added up to a very high replay value. However, the solution to each “fetch” and “follow-the-pattern” puzzle remained the same for each persona, so those elements provided little challenge after enough practice. Still, the enemies were suitably gnarly and numerous and the range of battle tactics was wide, so Hexen 2 delivered on the action as long as the player didn’t miss an important key, clue, or relic -- in which case the lulls spent while backtracking through a cleared hub were worse than an afternoon at the DMV.

Notable Feature: The use of experience points allowed each character to earn two specialized abilities, which differed in usefulness from very little (the Paladin’s Divine Intervention skill never proved itself a particularly worthy replacement for the Quickload button) to extremely handy (with enough practice, the Assassin would make mincemeat out of even the Four Horsemen with her vicious Backstab).

Favorite Weapon: The thin beam of the Crusader’s Lightbringer staff not only burned straight through an entire pack of critters, it also allowed for plenty of fancy bank shots that would make any pool shark proud.

Favorite Enemy: Dealing with a roomful of Fallen Angels was challenging enough to give anyone hives. Not only did they rebound any shot while their wings were closed, the only means of scoring a hit placed the player directly in harm’s way; although (slightly) vulnerable with their wings unfurled, Angels had their own version of the Lightbringer that hurt a lot.

Favorite Level: The Egyptian hub displayed an amazing level of detail (for a Quake-based game in 1997, mind) in its wall textures and statues. That episode’s arid tombs provided an interesting change of pace from the moist dungeons and caves that dominated the Serpent Rider trilogy overall.

Hexen 2 is one of those excellent classics that -- as long as you can get it up and running on a modern PC -- is worth a replay every few years. FPS titles with a fantasy theme seemed to slip beneath games set either far in the future or the 1940s in terms of popularity over the past decade, so the use of mana as ammunition is still a unique and exciting experience.

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