The DWheretic Club plays: Heretic

[Zedonk]

E2M5 The Catacombs

Secrets: 6/6

All of the weapons are fairly well hidden in this map which would make it incredibly grindy if I didn't have an idea of where they were beforehand from having played the game before.

 

The map feels quite generous with its tomes of powers which is good and the trap that gets sprung after grabbing the secret inferno orb was one of my favorites so far (monsters come at you from all sides so you have to think fast!)  Also, I quite like the moment where all the walls descend after jumping into the pit of water after going through the yellow key door.

 

All in all, I think the amount of fun you have playing this map will be heavily determined by how fortunate you are in finding the hidden weapons.  (That's why I'm only giving it a 6/10 because whilst I had fun, there is a huge potential for the map to feel very tedious.)

6/10

 

 

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Heretic

 

Russian Heretic emulated through WINE, bringest them oneth, wand starts.

 

Hey, boom features before boom!

 

I like this map, I really do, it has a pretty look, the start can be a pain, but, if you look properly, you'll get a dragon claw almost right at the start. If you get low on ammo, don't be afraid of using the staff against the sabreclaws. We can see some "boom" features with the water. The design may not be the best, but I like the cavern areas and the ambient itself, the music helps too, the secrets (at least the ones that I found) aren't that obvious, but they have some goodies, weapon 5 and 6 appear as well. Overall, the level is good, the part where you drop to the lava is not that fun, but, it's a fun level overall.

[Walter confetti]

4 hours ago, Lol 6 said:

Hey, boom features before boom!

 

Aren't Heretic have shown already these even before this level, isn't it? What is the boom feauture that wasn't shown before this map? Anyway...

 

E2M5: Doesn't have to do with the Doom 2 level with the same name or with any type of catacomb places, is a big water map with a forgettable first part and a amazing second part, there's some switch hunt action that opens a new section of the map, strong interconnected layout between the various areas of the map with a sense of non lineairity and... not a totally hell looking map, looks like some kind of human place more than a hellish twisted dimension nightmare land, you get almost all the weapons randomly and all the keys... In general, this is a pretty good map with an adventurous fell. After the second section becomes way better.

Edited April 15, 2021 by Walter confetti

[Walter confetti]

Sorry for double post!

 

E2M6: A map that i didn't quite fully enjoyed, is another human like structure but with a more ugly layout and gimmick of the self-titled labyrinth of the title, a big stairs maze in the middle of the structure, bordered by a ice slippery ring around it and four rooms at the corner of the labirynth, you start in one of the corner room where you have a cross a ice river surrounded by lava, every corner room have some sort of vignette combat / gimmick (mostly concerning slippery ice), you get the key, you find the door, you encounter another small combat with a possible gimmick, rinse and repeat until you get into a "secret" room behind a stained glass guarded by a iron lich, cross a unmarked exit teleport in it and it's over. Not an horrible map, but sure one of the lowest point in the wad so far. Not a good map at all imo.

 

Ah yes, it returns the grey toxic liquid from episode 1, surrounded by a slippery ice lake! Yay!

[antares031]

E2M6 - “The Labyrinth”
BP-WS, KIS(%): 100/105/100

 

Cool, another ice on the lava. After crossing the ice bridge on the lava pool, you enter a hub area with all three locked doors for each corner, and a giant labyrinth at the center. Go inside the labyrinth and find a crossbow and a yellow key. If you're extra lucky, you may be able to find a firemace as well, which could be helpful for wand starters. I really like the design of labyrinth, by the way, allowing you to see through the entire maze, rather than blocking your vision with solid walls.

 

The yellow key room gives you a giant lake of poison sludge with gargoyles and sabreclaws. The entrance of lake has a dragon claw on the unreachable ledge. Whether grab the claw later, by taking the teleporter at the center of lake(don't forget to carry the green key, of course), or grab the claw earlier, by using the wings of wrath near the entrance, it's all up to you. The green key room gives you an another labyrinth, with smaller & simpler layout. A small tip for any wand starters; do not enter the teleporter near the blue key, unless you killed every weredragon in the dark bunker.

 

The blue key room greets you with a bunch of golems, and one iron lich as a mini boss. If you found a secret in the hub area, where you can get a morph ovum and a silver shield, you can actually snipe those golems from the top, making this fight much easier. After you defeat the mini boss, the level rewards you with a phoenix rod, a mystic urn, and an exit portal. Kinda useless for wand starters, but it's better than nothing.

[Capellan]

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

E2M6: The Labyrinth

 

As with E2M9 this is a level named after a pretty singular feature which takes up only a limited part of the map's real estate and running time, the central labyrinth itself becoming largely irrelevant as a gameplay space one the player has retrieved the yellow key.  I feel the labyrinth is a more engaging space than the glacier, though, with the constant, disorienting rise and fall of its pathways and the horizontal "slice" carved out of it, through which the player and the monsters alike can see and shoot, but which only the tiny gargoyles can navigate; it's one of the better examples of Heretic getting the most out of the quirks of its bestiary.  Outside of that, there's a couple of large areas off to the north and west of the labyrinth and a rather neat little tangle of dungeons to the south, which on the one hand represents a fairly anonymous space which doesn't have a lot to do with the level's main theme, but on the other hand had enough secrets and surprises that I didn't especially mind.  Overall I found this to be one of the more enjoyable maps of this episode, though it again reminds me that Heretic is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place, that its aesthetic notion of Hell involves lots of samey grey caverns, but when it's not doing samey grey caverns it feels a lot like it's plating up leftovers from the shareware episode.

[ReaperAA]

E2M6: The Labyrinth

Kills = 111/111

Secrets = 7/7

Deaths = 2 (Total deaths in the wad = 3)

 

Another pretty meh map, with being extra annoying at the start when wand starting.

 

At the start of the map, once you cross the icy path (while avoiding the lava pools and weredragons), you enter a square area with all 3 locked key doors for each corner, and a giant labyrinth at the center. You need to inside the labyrinth and find a crossbow and a yellow key while avoiding all the enemies before you obtain the crossbow. Because I don't usually play all of the Heretic maps often, I didn't remember that the crossbow is inside the labyrinth and that resulted in 2 deaths because I got overwhelmed (slightly annoyed at my deaths).

 

The yellow key door teases us with a dragon claw on an unreachable ledge and a wings of wrath nearby. You can either grab the dragon claw immediately using the wings of wrath or you can save the wings of wrath and gain the dragon claw once you enter the teleporter in the room/area at the center of the poison lake.

 

After that is just a series of corridors in the green key door and the blue key door before you eventually reach the exit.

Edited April 16, 2021 by ReaperAA

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Heretic

 

Russian Heretic emulated through WINE, bringest them oneth, wand starts.

 

E2M6: The labyrinth

"I've got balls of steel" - Duke Nukem

 

Hey, I've heard this tune before, secret map of scythe (I dunno torn).
 

Another nice map, at the start of the map I kill the weredragons with the wand and slowly kill the gargoyles with the staff, when you enter the "labyrinth" area you may notice an image, so whenever you open a colored door, step inside the area and press the 180º turn key, and you will see that the image will be open revealing a secret and an item. At some point you'll open a door that will lead you to a "cannon" (Third picture) where you may find the Balls of Steel © weapon. The end (Fourth picture) is good looking, kinda looks like a crypt. We must get used to iron litches guarding the exits. Good map, a little large, but good.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Lol 6

[Doritos420]

E2M5 - The Catacombs

I quite liked this level. If you pay attention you get the dragonclaw very early. The map has an intertwined layout with lots of optional routes and secrets too. Lots of memorable rooms, I especially liked the part where the river dumps you into a miniboss fight with a Lich. Very fun map, one of my favorites in this episode. Like most Heretic maps up to this point, once you get the scroll secret hunting is super easy.

 

E2M6 - Labyrinth

Okay, whose bright idea was it to leave a crossbow in the labyrinth? I basically cleared the whote area of monsters before I got it. Not a bad map, but definitely less fun and more straightforward than the previous level. I enjoyed the wide open area you access with the yellow key. I like how you can use the exploding pods to kill the enemies, then you go inside a tree to get the blue key and teleport back to the labyrinth. When I opened the door to the tree I ended up shooting the sabreclaw into the teleporter, and then stepped through to telefrag him (hilarious). I liked the secret in the final area where you can see that there is a false wall in the labyrinth hub if you keep your eyes peeled.

[Zedonk]

E2M6 The Labyrinth

Secrets: 7/7

This map had me on the run at the very start but the firemace helped keep me alive.  (That was lucky too since the firemace isn't always guaranteed to spawn and may appear in different places on different runthroughs.)

 

At the beginning, you can also see heretic ice right next to hot hot lava which still looks silly to me yet also charming. : )  (If I ever I want ice to keep things cool, remind me to use heretic ice as it can apparently survive boiling temperatures.)  The ice in the 'labyrinth' path was used well in that it made it rather challenging to get past the sabre claws.  Once you find the ethereal crossbow hidden inside the maze however, the map gets substantially easier. 

 

The only other challenging part is the fight with the weredragons in the hellstaff room.  However, since I knew this was going to happen from memory, it was quite easy to just kill them from the outside. 

All in all, a solid map.

 

Like the previous map if one fails to find the hidden weapon early on (in this case that weapon is the ethereal crossbow) I can imagine it getting a little grindy which is why I only give it a 7/10 (otherwise I would give it an 8 or 9 out of 10.)

7/10

 

[LadyMistDragon]

The Labyrinth.

 

Very annoying map if you're playing saveless because of this map's titular feature, but it gets considerably easier from that point, with one exception near the blue key where the shadowsphere you find in a cave above the start is HIGHLY useful.

 

The music has a vaguely jazz back-and-forth rhythm with a haunting quality that completely workd.Lots of rocky areas with ice platforms and lava outside and largely generic dungeon textures on the inside, the exception being, naturally, the vine-colored labyrinth. This texture was also used in E1, but it somehow manages to work much better here. I'm still not certain of the crossbow and mace sphere's respective locations, and that's probably why I died half a dozen times, due to the Weredragons scalding me to bits much of the time.

 

The area where you acquire the red key is kind of nice. You can pick up several quartz flasks floating in the sludge without taking damage. This is also the only area besides the area just behind the blue door where the Time Bombs you find around the labyrinth area are kind of useful.

 

Tomes of Power are quite plentiful in this map, to the extent that you shouldn't have any problems when you encounter major opposition that would otherwise devastate you.

 

Lastly the secret passage with the Phoenix Rod just off the other secret passage to the side of the starting shed is one I wished I'd bothered to look for before. I think it might open when you get the Blue Key, but that's fine.

 

Honestly, this sort of map is just overwhelming at first, due to the reality you're fighting Weredragons in close quarters and the paucity of weapons other than the elvenwand and gauntlets located in a secret which opens when you cross a linedef on the labyrinth side of the starting ice bridge. Needless to say, expect your health to be below 50 percent for maybe half of the map. Eventually, you'll be left with a vast variety of weapons, but the Crossbow at least will be able to carry you until you reach that point (when you get the green key because the nearby teleporter will take you to the Dragon's Claw you saw earlier so tantalizingly out of reach).

[Gez]

On jeudi 15 avril 2021 at 7:05 PM, Doritos420 said:

This is the first map where I found the fire mace. A bit underwhelming like you guys say, but maybe I’ll save up on ammo combine it with a tome of power and then use it on a boss. 

 

You'll be disappointed, bosses are immune. The tomed mace is best used to get rid of damage sponge regular enemies, such as weredragons and ophidians. But for iron liches, maulotaurs, and D'Sparil himself, you'd do more damage with the untomed version.

 

The firemace's high rate of fire makes it also an okay weapon to deal with dense crowds of trash mobs, like golems, gargoyles, and sabreclaws. It's also okay at taking out larger enemies if you can get close.

 

Just don't ever use it, whether tomed or not, against enemies that stand in water, lava, or other liquid sludges. Unless you're really point blank. The balls disappear instead of bouncing when they hit a liquid floor, and yes this is true even for the tomed balls of death.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

 

I think this video will be useful for all of us, from Dwars. (It's on the playlist I mentioned some time ago)

Edited April 16, 2021 by Lol 6

[TheOrganGrinder]

E2M7: The Great Hall

 

I find myself wondering precisely which of this map's various spaces its title refers to, and indeed the experience of exploring the level can be considered a succession of "ah-ha!" moments as you decide that this new area is the titular great hall, only for an adjacent space, even larger and more grand, to be revealed.  I guess ultimately it's the hall with the pillars beyond the blue door, immediately before the exit?

 

Also, crate maze!  Or at the very least, a crate room or as close as Heretic gets to one, though I don't know that we'll see that theme fully developed within this universe until Hexen's third-hub map Silent Refectory.

 

This is a map that, for better or for worse, feels to me like a Doom map, not just because of the pseudo-crate maze but also in its overall layout and the flow of its gameplay; you've got that Tom Hall-esque squishing together of oddly shaped rooms and twisty connecting corridors that feel like they're squeezed in wherever there's space for them, lots of back-and-forth travel as you retrieve keys and bring them to their respective doors through areas that open up and unfold to reveal new threats and pathways on subsequent visits.  It's good fun but it's starting to feel as though the game is running out of innovative steam or bumping up against the creative boundaries imposed by its bestiary, inventory, and asset selection.

[Capellan]

 

[ReaperAA]

E2M7: The Great Hall

Kills = 120/120

Secrets = 4/4

Deaths = 0 (Total deaths in the wad = 3)

 

This map is surprisingly tame map compared to the last 2 maps (especially E2M6). Also I have to agree with TheOrganGrinder that this map feels like a Doom map in terms of its layout and flow. Tom Hall esque map to be precise. This isn't a bad thing in my book though, as I quite liked this map due to the explorative nature.

 

Surprisingly tame map compared to the last 2 maps (especially E2M6). You start at the top of a cliff (of sorts) in the middle of lava with a few gargoyles and sabreclaws along with a crossbow nearby. There are also a silver shield below guarded by a few weredragons. Don't be afraid to go there, as there is a switch that allows you to progress to the next area.

 

Once you leave the lava area. You enter through a series of rooms of various sizes and hallways. This map also has a crate room for good measure.

 

The combat is fairly standard for the most part and I don't have much to talk about. Though there is a secret area having the enchanted shield near the start of the map that can be reached once you get the wings of wrath. That secret area also has a phoenix rod guarded by weredragons. There is also a shadowsphere near the starting area that can also be easily obtained by the wings.

[antares031]

E2M7 - “The Great Hall”
BP-WS, KIS(%): 100/105/100

 

I must say that they picked an appropriate soundtrack for the penultimate level of the second episode. Grab your crossbow and shield on the lava crater, and go into the rocky fortress. The dark storage with wooden crates has a yellow key and a morph ovum. Once you press the switch in the yellow key room, you can now enter the entrance of the great hall. You should be able to find a green key in this area, after dealing with all of those gargoyles and sabreclaws and weredragons. And don't forget to grab a hellstaff from one of tall ledges near the blue key door. You can also get wings of wrath on the right side, allowing you to fly around the lava crater from the beginning. Don't forget to find a hidden hole somewhere, so you can get a highly useful enchanted shield, and a power phoenix rod. You can also snipe some monsters, guarding the blue key in the dark room, from there.

 

Once you get a blue key in the green key room, you can now enter the great hall on southeast. The hall itself is nothing fancy, and just some red pillars and a blue altar with a switch. But be careful with an iron lich on the top, unless you visited the secret area, and destroyed that metallic clown earlier. In overall, this level is not bad, but I agree that this level is much easier than the previous two levels. It would've been better to put some more monsters, especially in the great hall near the end. A small surprise, like an ambush near the end in Doom's E1M6, could be nice. But don't worry, the episode does have a small surprise for you in the next boss level.

[Zedonk]

E2M7 The Great Hall

Secrets: 4/4

In this map you get the ethereal crossbow right at the beginning along with a tome of power and some of the other weapons a bit later on.  A large portion of the enemies were melee enemies like gargoyles and sabre claws.  You can kill the majority of monsters by hiding round corners, popping out to fire and then hiding (I'm going to call this duck and cover tactics.)  However, due to the easiness of the opposition, it isn't really necessary to do this and I always find it more fun to get up close and personnel with most of the enemies.

8/10

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Zedonk

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Heretic

 

Russian Heretic emulated through WINE, bringest them oneth, wand starts.

 

E2M7: The great hall (In reality, the great HALLS)

 

 

The start of the map is very good looking, it makes me feel like I'm inside of a volcano, the rest of the map has nice gameplay, hordes and hordes of monsters, it also has somewhat nice verticality  in some areas. I'm not a huge fan of platforming for items, but, as those items are rather good, it's worthy. It has lots of halls, which is kinda boring, but they have monsters and nice combat. The final area is good looking too, though I didn't find a way to enter in that zone (where the iron litch and the other monsters were). Anyways, I don't think it's a bad map, but, some areas could have been better. The visuals are spectacular.

 

[LadyMistDragon]

The Great Hall

 

The swirling, darkly psychedelic track with a hint of anticipatory rhythm makes for the perfect penultimate track. Even the fact of the map being easier than the last few is sort of indicative of this, with things going quiet in such a way you'll be expecting an incredibly explosive finale.

 

Despite the name, the start has that volcanic look you've become familiar with this episode. The map also introduced a sort of tan colored-lace/whorl texture I don't believe was used extensively in any previous maps that represents a....library or some other of institution? I'm not sure because the walls are rocky in such a way I think there's a slight attempt at emulating a medieval castle. Disciples and Were-dragons appear on this map,m but they're utilized in such a way, it's easy enough to pick them off by peeking around corners and firing. Killing the Wizards with a Crossbow is not the troubling prospect that it might be elsewhere, both because of their limited room to run, and also because you'll definitely have enough to take them on. There are also a couple of Iron Lichs, but with the Tomes of Power you find, they're no trouble at all.

[Walter confetti]

E2M7: Ah yes, is the map with the little wooden crates storage in it... Funny that was the only thing i most recall of the entire map until replaying it today, because... actually this map is pretty good! Looks like some sort of industrial place (in hell. Ok Raven.) with metal assets in as making a sort a building, builded inside this sort of cavernous envoinrment surrounded by lava, pretty neat looking theme! Is this some sort of minery? The layout is reminiscent in some rooms of Doom Episode 1 Techbase (!!) in a very loose way, with it's simply style is pretty striking and give a great sense of a actual place, not "semi-realistic" like the maps in episode 1 but it gives a good idea of what this place, and the titular great hall (is the one with the blue stairs at the end, right?) of the title is cool.

Also i remebered the level for being more hard, but is kinda easy, maybe too easy for a penultimate level episode? But probably the real challenge is on harder skills (playing this on skill 3), but yeah, the level is still fun and the little puzzles are good too. The music is really good, gives a great sense of mistery and danger, like some twisted dark fantasy place... Overall a pretty good and fun map!

[Walter confetti]

E2M8: It's like Doom E2M8 (a circular arena where you enter in it by hitting a switch in a room) but done better. As i wrote before, is a circular arena with various buildings and various ledges with different heights that can go up (for most of the time) or down, it looks to be a great layout for DM! The monsters placement is well done, with mostly small fights against groups of enemies, you have to skip it at the start since you don't have enough ammo, while you are searching for more ammo and more powerful guns the monster horde slowly become bigger and bigger and eventually you'll meet the bosses of this episode, the less "sexy" cousin of the Cyberdemon, the Malotaur, a giant half naked demon (or much better, a minotaur) that holds a giant hammer and various fire magic, like a almost insta-death fire line attack (imagine something like the arch-vile flame attack in terms of damage), a fire crossing attack and a ignorant attack consisting of hitting with just it's huge hammer in your face. After you beat them, portals are lowering and sending you to the 3rd episode of Gungan underwater town, with George Lucas laughing and mocking at you and your bad decision to play this game instead of Dark Forces. Also, after you beat the malotaurs here in this game:

Spoiler

they become your pet serveants in Hexen

Also the music is pretty spooky, one of the best music in the game, gives you the feel that your going to face something serious this time!

 

Overall, a great boss battle map.

[ReaperAA]

E2M8: The Portals of Chaos

Kills = 63/63

Secrets = 2/2

Deaths = 2 (Total deaths in the wad = 5)

 

A really fun boss map that takes place in a circular arena (much more fun than E2M8 of Doom). If you are pistol starting, a good (albeit risky) strategy is to run around the outer parts of the map and try to obtain weapons (crossbow and dragon claw) and some ammo/items before taking the stairs to enter the inner part of the arena where you will encounter 1,2 or 3 maulotaurs (depending on the difficulty).

 

Maulotaurs (Minotaurs that maul you) are the cyberdemon equivalents of Heretic, to a point where they even look somewhat like them in size and looks. They carry a giant hammer and have 3 different attacks. One of their attack is a ground flame wall in which the maulotaur slams the hammer on the ground and a flame wall moves along the ground. Another attack is a stream of projectiles which are emitted when the maulotaurs swing their hammer in the air.  The third is just a melee attack where they hit you with the hammer if you are at melee range. In addition to this, they sometimes also sprint at you.

 

Once you get to them, the wall to the starting areas open and you can let a big infight ensue. In addition to this, 2 small areas at the outer part of the arena are also opened. One of them contain the enchanted shield, mystic urn and wings of wrath. The other contains a bag of holding, shadowsphere and chaos device behind some crushers.

 

Once you get those and and most of the enemies have been killed by the maulotaurs, you can focus on killing them by first grabbing the weapons (hellstaff and phoenix rod) and items (ring of invincibility and tome of power) and then easily dispatch them by activating the ring + the tome and then using the phoenix rod to burn them. You will most likely manage to kill 2 of them and then the last one can be easily killed using other weapons. After they die, some portals open in the central area, which you can use to exit the map.

 

One of my deaths came at the hands of a maulotaur's ground flame wall and the other came at the hands of the weredragons who were near the staircase when I teleported there from the crusher room.

[Capellan]

 

No (audible) commentary on this one due to user error with the microphone.

 

[antares031]

E2M8 - “The Portals of Chaos”
BP-WS, KIS(%): 100/100/100

 

The final level of this episode is a giant proving ground. The area is kinda divided into a few sections, and each section has one kind of monsters. For example, the beginning part is filled with gargoyles, while the right side is occupied by undead warriors, and the left side is guarded by nitrogolems. By running around this giant area, dodging lots of various projectiles, you should be able to find two basic weapons, and some useful supplies from two secret areas. A dragon claw is guarded by an iron lich, but you don't need to kill it now.

 

Now it's time to face the new boss monster, the Maulotaur. This towering pillar of beef with a giant maul is basically a cyberdemon of Heretic, and it's extremely powerful and tanky, even tankier than four iron liches. Besides its high HP, it also has 50% protection against raindrops of empowered hellstaff, and it's immune to any splash damage, such as the blast damage of phoenix rod's fireball. Not to mentioned that it gets highly reduced damage from empowered firemace's super-ultra-heavy balls of steel ©.

 

Like an iron lich, it has various attack patterns. First, it swings its maul to throw a spread of five fast fireballs as a basic attack. Second, it charges toward you to ram you, when you're in mid-range. Third, it pounds the ground to cast a trail of fire, sweeping through the ground in straight line. Each flame projectile is capable of detonating one explosion, once it's touched by a victim, resulting tons of blast damage. So dodging any trail of fire is absolutely important, whenever you face this ancient cyberdemon.

 

The best way to deal with a maulotaur is using a tome of power, an invulnerability ring, and a phoenix rod simultaneously. Empowered phoenix rod's DPS is super-devastating, and maulotaurs have no immune to flamethrower's damage, unlike normal fireball's blast damage. If you're lucky enough to hit all of flame projectiles, you may be able to kill one maulotaur with just one flame orb. Another easy way to deal with a maulotaur is using wings of wrath, so you can deny any deadly fire trails. Not to mention that you also have a chance to dodge fireballs vertically, by fly up and down.

 

If you're playing on hard difficulty, you will face three maulotaurs at the center of the proving ground. The arena has four active teleporters, which lead you to the outside of arena, but they also have useful items for wand starters. Once you kill all of maulotaurs, the game will kill any remaining monsters in the level, including an iron lich from earlier, and will open four more portals to finish the episode. In overall, this is definitely better than Doom's E2M8, and it's a great level to introduce new boss monster.

Edited April 18, 2021 by antares031

[Zedonk]

E2M8 The Portals of Chaos

Secrets: 2/2

On a wand start, you'll have a hard time fighting off all the enemies in the beginning area due to the wand ammo sparsity.  A strategy I used is to just run through the enemies and collect the Ethereal Crossbow and the Dragon Claw in the outside ring (it was easy for me to do this because I already knew where the weapons were.)  Once you've done this, beating the remaining enemies on the outside becomes a matter of simple circle strafing.

 

On the hardest difficulty, you'll find 3 Maulotaurs waiting for you in the center.  These are very dangerous enemies with lots of hit points.  The most dangerous attack you want to watch out for is the ground attack (the one where fire is blasted outwards along the floor) which can easily kill you in one shot.  You can beat them with circle strafing or you can use a combination of phoenix rod, tome of power and ring of invincibility and blast them up close (I actually softened them up with the hellstaff first before doing this.)  

 

In this map, I like the strategical element of working out how to beat the initial enemies with no weapons even though most of the challenge is actually just knowing where the weapons are.  The rest of this is relatively circle-strafe heavy which I still enjoyed because of how fast-paced it felt.

8/10

 

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

E2M8: The Portals of Chaos

 

This boss map moves away from the strictly sequential encounters of E1M8 to something a bit more free-flowing, with an outer sandbox area surrounding the inner arena, and barriers dropping to allow the one to merge into the other when the time to confront the Maulotaurs arrives.  You're free to approach this as you wish; you can handle the outer ring one quadrant at a time, or rush to engage the whole outer ring and drag different groups of monsters into one another in the hopes of triggering infighting, or wake up everything in the outer segments and plunge into the central arena to open the whole map up into a great big free-for-all with the Maulotaurs (hopefully) doing the heavy lifting for you while the waves of disposable minions take some of the heat off you.  The Maulotaurs themselves feel like they've been outfitted from the "greatest hits" of the Heretic bestiary: they've got the gargoyle's charge attack to close the distance which makes them briefly invincible to boot, a broad spray of fireballs that is functionally a souped-up version of the Disciple of D'Sparil's magic missile attack, and a staggeringly huge number of hit points for you to whittle your way through.  The flaming line at least is a new ability, one that doesn't just force you to dodge but briefly denies a slice of terrain to you; the game's monster behaviour isn't coded in such a way as to allow multiple Maulotors to co-ordinate their attacks, but I can imagine a more complex set of rules and algorithms creating encounters that feature one or two Maulotaurs hemming you in with flames while another times its charge or its fireballs to make the most of your restricted mobility.

 

I do find it interesting that the game's creators have once again picked out a piece of music that's quite low-key for this boss battle, in comparison with the more in-your-face quality of the music for most of the episode; the game's generally fast-paced and aggressive tone gives way here to steadily building anxiety that insists you take the confrontation here seriously.

[antares031]

E3M1 - “The Storehouse”
BP-WS, KIS(%): 100/110/100

 

Get yourself ready, because ^{now it's time to enjoy this cool skybox} break time is now over. The final episode of the original Heretic greets you with gargoyles, and disciple turrets on the left. Pressing the switch on the right will lower the wooden bars, and pressing an another switch behind them will lower the ledges with useful items in the previous room. With a new dragon claw, now you can proceed the level, even if you encounter an iron lich (yes, this first level gives you an iron lich) at the water pool. If you want to speedrun the game, you can use its tornado to jump on the rocky floor. Yes, instead of arch-vile jump, we have tornado jump in here.

 

If you want to beat the level with no trick, go into the storehouse with teal concrete wall, and find the yellow key. The area is filled with gargoyles, sabreclaws, and even weredragons, so make sure to hit those monsters with your wand and claw efficiently. Opening the yellow key door will immediately give you a green key, and an ambush with undead warrior ghosts. Once you enter the green key room, you'll meet the last new monster, excluding the final boss, of this game. This new snake monster, called Ophidian, shoots three purple magic bolts first, and then shoots one fireball with its staff. Its HP is decent enough to take some damage, even better than a bulky weredragon.

 

Pressing the switch in the green key room will reveal an another iron switch in the water pool area, with an invulnerability ring on its top. Activating it will lower the floor that you needed to perform a tornado jump earlier. Go into the underground, and witness the fancy aquarium wall texture of this episode. The exit is guarded by an iron lich (yes, this first level actually gives you two iron liches), but a secret hellstaff near the exit will make your job easier. In overall, it's a good opener to introduce new theme and a new monster. The concept of giant domes under the ocean is pretty cool, and I think it's a good wake-up call for players with two boss monsters.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Heretic

 

Russian Heretic emulated through WINE, bringest them oneth, wand starts.

 

E2M8: Tower Of Babel The portals of chaos

 

 

I almost died, but, there's plenty of health, if you know where to look. You may have to collect all the ammo, and quickly learn how to dodge projectiles coming from all directions. After some fights we meet the maulotaurs, who have three attacks that can be deadly. So, yeah, there's not much to say. After going through the portal, we travel to the Dome of D'sparil.

Again, I'll play through Russian Heretic, this time on Black Plague (Cuz I'm a mad man) and continuous.

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Lol 6
Wrote how instead of where lmao