Heretic Treasure Chest

well this is a pretty good set. lots of variety as you would expect for a Community Chest-inspired Heretic wad and quite some fun was had in pretty much all of the maps. E2M7 stands out the most, with all the projectiles in the open areas plus the massive gargoyle attack at the end. yeah, there's bugs, like with E3M8 and the D'Sparil battle, but I was completely unable to get a secret in E3M3 for some reason.

Done with these settings:

- ZDoom 2.8.1

- Bringest Them Oneth, aka skill 3.

- Continuous combined with a wand start mindset.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

This is the first Heretic pwad I've ever played and I enjoyed it a lot. It brings some classic scenarios and a lot of stuff you don't get in the iwad. Visually, well it's multicolored, it's Heretic after all, some nice designing and recolored textures, not much to say. I liked the usage of different themes in a same map, like in E1M9. The third episode has the best looking maps in my opinion. 

Ok, there are only 3 episodes but plenty of maps of varied length and gameplay. I'd say, in terms of gameplay, it's a mixed bag actually, there's many maps that follow the style of the iwads, meaning packs of the same type of monster in corridors, or a very little traps, specially teleport traps. The ones present are quite good, involving moving a lot to avoid high damage. Infighting is possible in almost every map, and some of the later ones have the best scenarios. There're also maps where enemies will start to infight before you even do something, which is not so fun. You'll also get completely long straightforward maps without a chance to return to previous parts, a pet peeve of mine but whatever... A few of my favourite encounters include a massive infestation of nitrogargoyles in a cave, a tricky trap with lots of disciples and iron liches, and a wave of disciples against a malotaur in a ring (I use a decorate to make any monster able to target the malotaur). And more and more.

Secret wise, given that, even the original game is really hard to spot the secrets, I won't complain too much here, but I'll add that in some maps I had no idea how to get their secrets, like not a clue. Wall hunting is needed in several cases. The rewards are good though. Music wise, apart from iwad tracks, there also some nice new midis and Doom tracks too, particularly in E2M5, if it's not remixed though.

I found several bugs that I won't specifically mention because I doubt an update would ever be released... HOMs, monsters that fail to pop up, items that cannot be grabbed, doors that open from one side but not the other side, and particularly in E3M8, you can exit the map without releasing D'Sparil, and if you decide to fight him and company, you can't get out of the arena as nothing is triggered after his death, at least it didn't happen to me, and ended up using kitty to exit. 

Favourite maps: E1M8, E2M5, E2M8, E3M2, E3M3, E3M7. Least Favourite maps: E1M6, E2M3. The other maps are very good, good, and so so. 

Overall, enjoyable mapset, goes quite on par with the iwad and outside of the box too. Give it a chance if you like Heretic. I'll rate this 7/10