Hexen - Curse of the lost gods

Map 01: The whole map is one big fight, and I personally really liked it. I enjoyed running around the map using the artifacts littered around in order to kill the swarms of baddies. My only real complaint would be having to kill all the enemies to progress which could be pretty annoying if one of them hides in a really obscure spot.

Map 02: Pretty classic hexen map. It was good but it was the most forgettable map in the wad due to the relatively generic theme. Also the swamp key segment was probably the worst part of the wad due to the amount of stalkers and lack of health. It also fell into the trap of over using slaughtaurs which got annoying pretty fast.

Map 03: ...The idea behind this map and the atmosphere was extremely cool. I personally loved the puzzle with the 5 switches near the start and it was probably my favorite part of the wad. But... The lack of railings made falling off a very common occurrence and the layout got confusing at times. I don't know if it was intentional but in order to get to Yorik's statue I had to jump on the pillars used as decoration. The main complaint would be the over use of wendigos at the start and a pretty anti-climactic boss fight.

The sublevel was really fun to explore too.

General: It seems common for hexen wads to do this but there was no 4th weapon. The 4th weapon is the funnest weapon to use and while it could break the difficulty in some sections I think it would be worth it because the majority of the time you are stuck hitting things with your second weapon which feels repetitive.

Overall: While I was pretty negative in this review I still gave it four stars for a reason and that is because this wad is a lot of fun. You could tell every room had thought put into it and the entire wad is just gorgeous. If you can look past the small problems this wad is a amazing experience with a solid story as well.

Must play for any hexen fan.

Tough Hexen adventure with great architecture/texturing. It doesn't follow the standard hub formula, with a mostly linear level progression. A variety of environments are explored, from a standard fantasy castle to a foggy swamp/canyon to a massive fortress inside in an icy cavern. The wad uses a selection of custom textures (made by the author himself I believe) that look great and fit in with the stock texture set very well, allowing for some very beautiful architecture with liberal use of arches. Each level is quite massive and elaborate (excluding the final map), with a high level of non-linearity, interconnectedness, and optional exploration. The first level will probably turn many people off due to the huge amount of enemies one must face with only the first weapon. It is challenging, but it's doable with the wise usage of items (and the wise choice of not playing as the Cleric). It's probably the hardest level, as the difficulty decreases significantly once you get your 2nd weapon in the 2nd map. The ice fortress segment is split into 3 levels, and requires some backtracking between them. The first part, Lower Tartarous, was my least favorite level (and the main reason why I didn't rate this 5 stars), as there were several annoyances like frustrating platforming, sequence-breaking, and confusing level design that made it drag on for much longer than it should've. The final level, as I mentioned, is much shorter than the others, and as such feels rushed/unfinished. It's not a bad level, but it certainly would've been nice if this was finished. Overall it's a great wad, and what's here is mostly very polished, so I would recommend it to Hexen fans.

Well as a creator of megawad "Fucking Hexen" I could look like a jealousy ass because I didn't get into Cacowards and you did, but... Yeah, the levels look epic and the architecture is breathtaking, however the gameplay itself it too way hard. It was sometimes absurd, like... if you play as Fighter, you spend lots of time only with the basic weapon and it takes some time to get another one. In first level I had to kill thousands of slaughters only with fists. I had to fight with Zedek boss only with fists and... in the end you won't find the last weapon. Ok, it's just not quite right.

I found this to be very convoluted, and grand architecture got in the way of an otherwise amazing idea. For example, I personally enjoyed the little secret entrances to Tartaros the best parts of the game... they were very trippy, and I still don't know how getting the secrets in the seemingly unrelated map managed to register on the proper map of Upper Tartaros. Yorick's Skull seemed to be overall irrelevant to reaching the end stage, which I found interesting. In fact, I don't know what placing it did at all to the map, except for release a horde of Afrits.

Thanks for all the fish.