Heretic... Actually pretty great.

[ShotGunGoBewm]

So maybe this is an unpopular opinion (Honestly not sure), but heretic is a fine game. I would always hear the term "Doom Clone" when hearing of Heretic and I guess it steered me away from it. But today I just thought to myself, "Hell, lets give it a go." And sure, it feels Doom-esque, but it's got heaps of cool little QoL things that make it, it's own little game. I like that I have an inventory and can use the boosts at my own leisure. Monsters are well designed and telegraphed, and it borderlines on bullet hell. Anyway, lots of other little things I could talk about but was just curious if I'm standing on this hill alone or is it considered a pretty good game.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by ShotGunGoBewm

[Somniac]

Heretic is generally a great game IMO, a large amount of the soundtrack and levels are burned into my memory. Only problem is that the enemies can feel a bit bullet-spongey and the weapons don't always feel that impactful. There are some great WADs out there for it too, just nowhere near as many as Doom.

[ShotGunGoBewm]

7 minutes ago, Somniac said:

There are some great WADs out there for it too, just nowhere near as many as Doom.

 

Sweet! Just finished the 2nd episode, it's had my attention all day. I'll be sure to scope some WADS out once I'm done with the campaign

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

I love Heretic but I tend to get the impression that the reasons I like it are the same ones why a lot of Doomers don't.

[FistMarine]

I like Heretic as well. In fact, I like it even more than the first Doom, to be honest. As the level design is more varied and more interesting overall. Nostalgia also plays an important role here, as I only had the shareware of Doom when I was a kid (it wasn't until late 2000s/early 2010s I got Ultimate Doom for first time) and while I initially played the shareware version of Heretic, later I found out the registered 3-episode version on a random CD with games. So then I got to play episodes 2 & 3 for first time, though I didn't get far enough before I got stuck. This wasn't a problem when I revisited Heretic many years ago (yes, this includes Heretic SOTSR).

 

I also find annoying when people dismiss Heretic as a Doom clone. It is very similar to Doom in many aspects but then if Heretic is considered a Doom clone, then what Chex Quest is? That game is pretty much a Doom clone with a few gameplay differences compared to Doom. Not trying to sound rude as I like Chex Quest as well but I feel like Heretic is an underrated gem and deserves more credit. Maybe if it gets remastered one day, new people will be introduced to this masterpiece.

 

After you finish the main game (I'm assuming you are playing Heretic: SOTSR which has 5 episodes), be sure to check the extra hidden levels (E6M1-E6M3) and then explore the wonderful world of the Heretic mods. There's plenty of custom wads for Heretic. I suggest to look in this topic for now:

There was another recent topic that listed a bunch of Heretic wads but I can't find it right now. The closest I found was this one:

 

Edited April 24, 2023 by FistMarine

[ShotGunGoBewm]

2 minutes ago, FistMarine said:

 I also find annoying when people dismiss Heretic as a Doom clone.

 

Guilty of this, Haha! But I'm rectifying this atm. Its absolutely worth the 5 bucks it cost me, I've been playing it all day. I'm sold man, its a sick game. Really appreciate the links, I am absolutely going to be trying some of the Community Wads out!

[BGreener]

It’s a very good and great Doom-engine game! Very colorful, decent bestiary, and the tomes of power are crazy fun; they’re basically “berserk for your weapons” before Quad damage was a thing. I actually got into Hexen and Heretic before I ever first got into Doom.

[dasho]

All I can say is that you WILL learn how to clip audio when mixing by testing Heretic's title track.

[Matthias]

Heretic is great.

 

I think it was called a "Doom clone" because in 90s - all FPS games were "Doom clone" and all TPS were a "Tomb Raider clone".

 

Many people also pointed out that Heretic has very similar weapons like Doom. Staff is basically a fist. Gauntlets are some sort of chainsaw. Wand is a pistol. Crossbow is a shotgun. Claw is a chaingun. Pheonix rod is a rocket launcher. And finally - Hellstaff is a plasma gun.

 

The problem is that only these weapons can make a ballenced game-play. Something that is slow, but strong. Something, that is fast but weak and better for small enemies. And so on. This formula simply works.

 

Hexen and Strife tried to have more original and interesting weapons, to look less like "doom clones" but eventually it made the gameplay not so fun. I always killed myself when I tried to use Granade Launcher in Strife. And as much as I love Hexen, most weapons are annoying. Axe is a melee weapon, so you spend like 1/5 of the whole game with it. Ice shards are annoying, because then you will have many frozen monsters in your way. Serpent stuff is ok, but weak. Of couse, Hexen is not a combat oriented game so it really doesn't matter, but it proofs that Doom/Hexen formula works better. And that's why Raven used it in Heretic and made the illusion that they just "reskinned Doom" or something.

 

Also the last problem is that Heretic has no hitscanners, only projectiles, so it makes it less satisfying to kill monsters. You can kill a group of enemies with a shotgun like in Doom. But on the other hand - hitscan wouldn't make much sense in a fantasy game and Heretic simply tries to give players different things to have fun, like artefacts and Tome of Power and so on.

 

All in all, I would say Heretic is not for everyone.

[Redneckerz]

Heretic is often called a fantasy reskin of Doom. In many ways that's true. Most of the roster and arsenal are replaced with fantasy-like equivalents. Level design tends to be less memorable than Doom or Doom 2 imo. 

 

Heretic also does little, if anything else, new with the engine. It was with Hexen that many new changes were introduced (Polyobjects, ACS) that made Hexen the more memorable game of the two.

 

All in all its a perfectly serviceable game. It inspired @fraggle to Heretic 4 Doom in 2019:

 

 

[Matthias]

28 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Level design tends to be less memorable than Doom or Doom 2 imo.  

 

Well it's true the Heretic levels are less momerable and less fun.

 

But to be fair - Doom/Doom 2 and especially Sandy's maps are very experimental and crazy - ideas like Barrels of Fun and putting final boss in the crusher in the map Crusher... but it was still somewhat "small garage company" style.

 

But Raven's levels were more professional, consistent and you could see they tried to take their work more seriously.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Matthias (LiquidDoom)

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

48 minutes ago, Matthias (LiquidDoom) said:

I think it was called a "Doom clone" because in 90s - all FPS games were "Doom clone" and all TPS were a "Tomb Raider clone".

I seem to remember the discussion of the whole "Doom clone" terminology was something that was gone over on this forum once and as I recall my takeaway was that people aren't in agreement on where the line on the term "clone" belongs.  To me it's always implied an extremely close similarity (something that's practically the same game) and a derogatory tone, but other people seem to see it as fine for "vaguely similar game" with no judgement attached.

[Not Jabba]

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

Heretic also does little, if anything else, new with the engine. It was with Hexen that many new changes were introduced (Polyobjects, ACS) that made Hexen the more memorable game of the two.

 

Heretic does a lot of things that are really interesting for level design, but the OG game treated them all very casually given the type of game it was and the audience it was aiming for at the time, and it's only in PWADs that it will be set apart from Doom. It feels a lot less like a clone if you design a whole episode as an air combat game, or create large-scale combat puzzles around Tomed weapon strategies, or make a Quake-style puzzle boss battle where you have to push exploding pods into teleporters to telefrag each of the elder god's tentacles, or make it so all switches can only be walkover-triggered by something that's the height of a chicken, or create a monsterless parkour game revolving around wind/water/ice physics, etc. (or an unlit map where you have to race to the end using a limited number of Torches, or a giant Zelda-esque adventure map where the gameplay involves Toming a melee weapon, or a frantic boss fight where there are many monsters but you only have to kill one of them to end the whole map). Not to mention that vanilla Heretic lets you do voodoo-conveyor scripting without mikoveyors.

 

The thing I like most about Heretic is the atmosphere and setting that it has compared to Doom's. The thing I like second most about it is the way all those unique features spur creativity, even beyond the features themselves (UnBeliever and Serpent's Wake both have some concept maps that aren't using Heretic-specific features as well, but they exist because the game makes it so easy to say, "What if I made whole episodes' worth of concept maps?").

Edited April 24, 2023 by Not Jabba

[DynamiteKaitorn]

I'm not the biggest fan of Heretic but it IS a solid game. Episodes 1-3 are some really fun (albeit challenging) maps to blast through. I do get lost fairly easily since Heretic only has a yay amount of textures and I'm not the best at navigating maps. For what you get, its definitely a blast! The fact Heretic introduced the inventory system to DooM's engine is really neat, meaning I can carry some items to the next level (or rather: 1 of every item.... for some reason... >_>). It was also the first time you could look up and down in DooM's engine, letting you see enemies higher up (sort-of).

 

That being said my main gripes with Heretic are A: Several weapons feel meh to use. Fire-rod rarely spawns and its damage output is average, the dragon claw's upgraded form is a little unwieldy (though is nice for crowd control :3) and the ethereal crossbow always feels like it deals just a tad too little amount of damage, meaning I have to fire 1 extra time, wasting ammo.

[smeghammer]

Yep - had Heretic since forever. I really like it. It doesn't feel like playing Doom to me - well, it DOES, mechanically, but the design - particularly the music I think - make it feel like a very different game. I even made a map for it a while back...

 

 

[yakfak]

Heretic's nice imo, way less stressful than Doom. plus you can point to it as a game where the city levels are better than the rest!

 

the maps are very orthodox though, just key - key - key - bye. i like Hexen even more because of the grand adventure feel

[PsychEyeball]

Not a fan of Heretic. I find the average enemy to be a little too spongey in general and some of the weapons feel like they lack punch, unless enhanced by the Tome of Power. Level design feels mostly very solid but perhaps a little workmanlike, since they often share similar progressions.

 

My post is gonna look like I don't like Heretic but I honestly don't mind playing it. It's one of the first Doom clones but it did set a good precedent. Inventory also was a nice addition to the proceedings.

[Endless]

[LadyMistDragon]

I mean....yes? All personal opinions aside, it's a little higher in player opinion than something like Hexen whose "puzzles" mainly involved pushing switches in out of the way locations and whose combat.....had some funny aspects to it but could get much more dumbly repetitive than Heretic. Heretic has underpowered weapons perhaps, but the soundtrack is fantastic and the Tome of Power is a really nice glory powerup that's hard to spit in the eye.

[Rudolph]

Speaking of which, I look forward to Xaser's Sacrilege!

[Redneckerz]

5 hours ago, Matthias (LiquidDoom) said:

But Raven's levels were more professional, consistent and you could see they tried to take their work more seriously.

Can't argue there. But there is something to say about the more freeform approach by ID versus the more .. factory-like nature at Raven. id was striking Gold. Raven was trying to mine it.

4 hours ago, Not Jabba said:

Heretic does a lot of things that are really interesting for level design, but the OG game treated them all very casually given the type of game it was and the audience it was aiming for at the time, and it's only in PWADs that it will be set apart from Doom. It feels a lot less like a clone if you design a whole episode as an air combat game, or create large-scale combat puzzles around Tomed weapon strategies, or make a Quake-style puzzle boss battle where you have to push exploding pods into teleporters to telefrag each of the elder god's tentacles, or make it so all switches can only be walkover-triggered by something that's the height of a chicken, or create a monsterless parkour game revolving around wind/water/ice physics, etc. (or an unlit map where you have to race to the end using a limited number of Torches, or a giant Zelda-esque adventure map where the gameplay involves Toming a melee weapon, or a frantic boss fight where there are many monsters but you only have to kill one of them to end the whole map).

Its more like a hidden treasure chest. Play the base game and have a good time. But play the PWADS and it opens up wonderfully.

 

In that sense it is why i hold the base game as perfectly serviceable. Meaning it could be even better.

4 hours ago, Not Jabba said:

Not to mention that vanilla Heretic lets you do voodoo-conveyor scripting without mikoveyors.

I love to hear more of this since this is news to me. What are the differences with Vanilla that makes this even possible in the first place?

 

[magicsofa]

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

What are the differences with Vanilla that makes this even possible in the first place?

 

Wind sectors?

[Not Jabba]

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

I love to hear more of this since this is news to me. What are the differences with Vanilla that makes this even possible in the first place?

 

Both wind and scrolling sector effects are in vanilla Heretic, so you can just put the voodoo doll on one of those. They both push players, but not monsters.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Not Jabba

[Redneckerz]

35 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

 

Wind sectors?

 

29 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

Both wind and scrolling sector effects are in vanilla Heretic, so you can just put the voodoo doll on one of those. They both push players, but not monsters.

Hmm and hmmm. Serves me right for not knowing :)

[Gez]

The facts that 1. pod generators exist and 2. pods are windthrust but pod generators are not and 3. pods can teleport (and telefrag) and 4. pods can be stacked can allow to design some very complex Rube Goldbergian scripting systems.

[Not Jabba]

45 minutes ago, Gez said:

The facts that 1. pod generators exist and 2. pods are windthrust but pod generators are not and 3. pods can teleport (and telefrag) and 4. pods can be stacked can allow to design some very complex Rube Goldbergian scripting systems.

Not scripting, since they don't trigger line actions. But you could design lots of great puzzles around all those properties. Being able to move them anywhere and either walk on them or blow things up with them is an incredible amount of versatility for a single object.

[continuum.mid]

3 hours ago, Gez said:

The facts that 1. pod generators exist and 2. pods are windthrust but pod generators are not and 3. pods can teleport (and telefrag) and 4. pods can be stacked can allow to design some very complex Rube Goldbergian scripting systems.

Yet another potentially Turing-complete game feature?

[DNSKILL5]

I actually played Heretic before playing Doom. I had the original registered version which came with this awesome poster with a manual on the back of it. I think having played it first might have helped me enjoy it more because I hadn’t experienced Doom beforehand, so the fact that Heretic is very much a Doom reskin in certain aspects never really meshed with me until I was more aware of the technical side of these games, and even then I don’t care. That seems to have been the entire point. Medieval-Fantasy Doom. 
 

Always loved the world the game takes place in. It is medieval, but so out of this world that it doesn’t have to follow the more traditional aspects of medieval settings. I also find Raven was very good at crafting these types of sprites, textures, sounds, and music all the way back with Black Crypt and ShadowCaster. It’s a shame that Raven is now nothing more than a slave to doing COD stuff now. If any studio deserves some sort of redemption arc, it would be them. 

[ShotGunGoBewm]

Well a bit of an update: Finished the main episodes, expansions not included. I'm sold, it's a fantastic game. I cant remember the last time I sat down and just punched some serious hours into a video game. Only played it on normal difficulty and after seeing the difference in difficulties I am looking forward to playing through on the hardest settings. I used GZDoom with "Vanilla"  settings for Heretic (No Jump, crouch, free look those kinds of things.) Some weapons are definitely lackluster, and that crossbow, I'm conflicted with that crossbow. Sometimes it would ice enemies mercilessly and other times it was like slapping enemies with a wet piece of paper. Monster and Map designs I personally feel were great, except Citadel(E1M5), fuck that map confused the shit out of me, while there were subjectively far harder maps, my brain just couldn't wrap around that one for some reason. And that soundtrack *chefs kiss*

I can see why some people may not like it, but hate? It's a damn fine game. Time to start the Shadow of the Serpent Riders. Then I suppose onto Hexen?

Been along time since I've really enjoyed a game like this, and I'm here for it.

 

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by ShotGunGoBewm
Named wrong map

[Fonze]

Lets not all forget the singular, most important thing heretic brought us over the dolums: the nauseating ability to look up and down until the world stretches and then you try to move and 🤮