ShoDemo

Just finished Hexen 2 and I got to say, it was very satisfying as a game and I really enjoyed its puzzles.

 

First of all, let us all be silent for a few moments, in memory of Tyranith. He helped the player in his journey, with the notes he left behind and he was so close to beating Eidolon, but he failed for obvious reasons.

 

Also, in Hexen 2 I chose the Paladin, who is a holy warrior fighting in close combat most of the time (his sword is really effective), although he can fight from a range too. His Glyph of the Ancient form is a grenade thrown to explode in a small spherical area and it is quite strong. I would say it is the best form of the item, without playing the other classes. And the powered up weapons are mostly powerful ranged versions of the existing attacks (examples: Vorpal sword, Axe, Purifier)

His weapons are :

1. The Gauntlets (whenever you equip them, the Paladin slams his fists, which creates the sound of an earthquake in the process, pure badass-ery)
2. The Vorpal sword (a nice and simple melee weapon)
3. The Axe (for ranged attacks, explodes just like the Warrior's Hammer of Retribution)
4. The Purifier (this is the coolest weapon in the Paladin's arsenal and I found myself using it quite often, because I had plenty of mana and Kraters of Might, cross shaped, golden color, essentially a Nailgun on steroids)

So, the Paladin is the Warrior of Hexen 2 and he plays in a great way. He is very fun overall. But I should have gone with the Crusader. From what I get, he is supposed to be the Cleric and I loved the Cleric. I might try him in the expansion.

 

Now let me continue with telling my thoughts about each hub.

 

Hub 1: Blackmarsh

This hub has a medieval theme, which I enjoyed a whole lot. The enemies were kinda fast for me at the beginning, but I got used to it later.

 

Here you have to face Archers (they are ok, although they can be tougher compared to Doom's low tier enemies), Spiders (kinda annoying at the beginning, although they die pretty easily if you learn how to use your melee attack properly), Golems (I used to kill them either with the Vorpal sword or with the Glyph of the Ancients and they are awesome enemies), Fire Imps (Afrit with more advanced behavior), Archer Lords (HAH GAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!! Yes he teleports around and he throws explosive Lost Souls! Not that fun of an enemy, to be honest.) and the Ice Golem mini boss (if you do the puzzle, he is the same with the other Golems).

 

The puzzles in this hub were very logical and I got great amounts of satisfaction, when I would find a hidden room (examples: The altar room in one of the buildings in the castle, the hidden inside the fireplace room, e.t.c.). I found everything without a problem. The Mithril potion to be placed in the wall underwater, the bones of King Leoric being placed in the mill, in order to become dust and be used in the orange fluid room, the thing you put in your eye to see the magic stuff, the magic found in the tailor's closet, used to enter the King's place, the shovel used to dig up the item near the Blacksmith (that one appears on random locations from what I know), e.t.c.

 

Funny moments:

1. I once called my sister to show her that I could fire a ballista in the game and I accidentally shot the tower, to reveal a teleporter inside it, that lead to a room with the Stable key or something (I was shocked).
2. The catapult throwing a sheep in the air and then me going on the catapult flying like crazy.

(@42PercentHealth, you were right to have been playing with the teleporter. It is very fun)

 

Boss: Famine

For a rider of the Apocalypse, he was very lame. I just hugged him and stabbed him in the ass with my sword quite a few times. His attacks were totally worthless and I threw a Glyph of the Ancient to kill him, once he started teleporting around crazily. (he had a nice white explosion though)

 

Hub 2: Mazaera

Now this hub has an Aztec/ Mayan theme and it is easily the scariest of all the hubs in Hexen 2. I could have let the game and played something else, because I don't like horror games and this one started scaring me a bit.

 

In this hub you have to also face Scorpions (piece of cake), Were Jaguars (Fast warriors with sword and shield, that can be dangerous at first and if they start screaming without moving, then they can start leaping around and kill you if you are careless) and Were Panthers (Were Jaguars on steroids). These enemies destroyed me a few times and I thought I would lose tons of essential for later resources to beat them, but then I found two techniques to kill them efficiently:

1. Take the sword and hit, dodge back, hit, dodge back, e.t.c. With this one, the enemy is less likely to live in order to power up.
2. Throw axes until they die, but they may power up.

The puzzles here were mostly a piece of cake (as in simple) and there were some cool challenges in order to get the four elements.

 

Funny moments:

1. I had the two skull, but I forgot where to use them and so I roamed around endlessly, passing by the needed place a thousand times, until I am like: "OH HEY!!! THE TWO SKULLS GO IN THE TWO ALTARS!!!" *FACEPALM*
2. The moment when I grabbed the Ring of Flight and I start leaning to the ground when I turn around, I was like: "Hey, why am I turning like this?". Then I look up to Death's place and I start floating. "YEY I AM FLYING!!!" (they implemented the flight mechanism perfectly, compared to Heretic and Hexen)

 

Boss: Death

Famine, have a look at this and take notes! This is a cool boss, while you are not! Seriously though, I have Death flying on a Pegasus and I chase him by flying near him, while firing with my powered up Purifier. You can't go wrong with this one.

 

Hub 3: Thysis (aka Egypt)

First, let me post a song:

Now let's continue.

Thysis is in my opinion the hub with the hardest puzzles to solve, but the most satisfying (I went around for hours, but it was worth it). And its theme is like it should have been. Plus it has time travel (Raven didn't know that I love TNT MAP04, so it is a cool coincidence that I can time travel).

 

Here you have the addition of mummies and some of them have devastating ground attacks, but it was a matter of time before I learned how to dodge those, or the arrows they throw. The combat here is a lot more relaxed and I like it.

 

The puzzles here are extreme. I was so proud of myself when I saw the prophecy: "Ra will fly in his chariot high in the heavens above the palace of the Pharaoh and only then the staff of Nefertum will be released."

and I thought: Ra is the God of the Sun, so when the sun is higher, so will Ra be. But at what time is that? 12 o' clock. Where to do this? In the solar clock thing. Then I went near the wall that protected the staff and it crumbled apart!!! YEY!!!

And I visited the palace of the Pharaoh, where I saw that I had to set the one wheel to Isis. 

In this hub I also gathered the 4 jars, I got both crowns, e.t.c.

 

Things that annoyed me: This hub was almost perfect for me, but I hated two things:

1. The jar ground puzzle, where you have to find the randomized pattern on the floor. For this, I had found the 3 possible patterns and I spammed the diagonal one, until I got it right. What a fucking disaster.
2. I will say one word and tell me if it disgusts you, because for me, it is one of the worst words that I encountered in a game. HIPPOPOTAMUS!!! You may think: "But Shotgun, how can hippopotamus be a bad word?", to which I answer: "THE WHOLE FECKIN MAP DIDN'T HAVE A HIPPOPOTAMUS, YET I HAD TO SET THE FECKING WHEEL TO HIPPOPOTAMUS!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS GAME??? DID YOU SMOKE CRACK??? WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE GREAT PUZZLES BEFORE AND AFTER THE WHEEL??? DID YOU HAVE TO USE HIPPOPOTAMUS??? FOR GOD'S SAKE, THAT IS BY FAR THE WORST THING IN THE GAME!!!" (If it was indeed written somewhere, please tell me where. I free roamed for hours until I looked at a walkthrough to solve only this puzzle. I didn't look at a walkthrough ever again in this game.)

Boss: Pestilence

This boss reminded me of Famine, although it was harder. I beat it quite fast although I wasted some healing items in the process.

 

Hub 4: Septimus

From here, Hexen 2 becomes lighter on puzzles and starts having more dangerous combat, which I found to be a neutral, according to my tastes, change. It was kinda disappointed losing the interesting puzzles extremely quickly, but at least the levels were changed for more exploration and combat.

Note: In the whole game I had been saving items and now I had 15 Tomes of Power, 8 flying spawnable imps, 15-16 cubes that shoot fireballs, 15 Kraters of Might, 4 Mystic Urns, e.t.c., so that really helped with the less ammo in some places.

 

The new enemies that are hard are the Archer guys that shoot only red arrows and make a creepy sound from which you know its them (those guys ate tons of my ammo).

Also there is the medusa

,which is accurate to Greek mythology, because it can turn you to rock and it has some of the most annoying homing attacks in the game (I didn't know something like that in the 3rd grade of primary school history, but oh well). When I saw one, the procedure was simple:

1. Pull out Purifier
2. Power up
3. Obliterate
4. No ammo because there were Archer Lords before, so use Krater of Might or search level for more ammo.

The puzzles were very simple and I only got a bit lost in the process of searching for the second donation in the Forums of Zeus. The stones on the other hand were placed in totally easy places to find. Also, I got some goodies in the Temple of Ares, because I found some breakable walls around the levels (I got all of the items there except 3 or 4). To sum up, it is an ok amount of puzzles after playing Egypt.

 

Funny moments:

1. My War was a retarded boss because he got stuck on a pillar.

Boss: War 

His arena is huge and well designed and he is a strong boss, but he couldn't stand a chance, because I had 8 Icons of the Defender at that point (used only one to kill him and some Tomes of Power).

 

Hub 5: Blackmarsh

Blackmarsh is the last hub before Eidolon and to be honest, I was kinda sad that it didn't use any of the already existing places in the first hub. It was all totally new. I appreciate the minimum puzzles though, because it is the end of the game and I was starting to get tired (game, you surely know what I want).

 

The enemies are a mishmash of all the hubs, but the new additions are some of the toughest enemies to kill, due to their high HP and Protection against attacks. I am talking about the Fallen Angels, who are supposed to be deceptively beautiful and very evil! The normal Fallen Angel was easy to handle with the Axe (technique: wait until it is ready to attack and then shoot it while dodging), but the Fallen Angel Lord was a pain to face, due to its deadly laser (technique: Tome of Power, Icon of the Defender, Purifier or otherwise use 8-10 Glyphs, because the damn thing blocks the damage).

 

The puzzles were the easiest in the game. I mean, play a music sheet, clean a cross at the holy water, which the game tells you is holy and place it in the altar, complete a circuit with a golden sphere, use crowbar to open some bars, find the Soul key e.t.c.

 

Boss: Eidolon, the oldest Serpent Rider

Eidolon has a map with ammo before the encounter, so that the player is full and then comes the encounter. I walked up to the wall where Eidolon was hiding and then I see Eidolon jumping from inside with fury. His design as a boss is very nice, although he looks like the devil. I start hitting him with the powered up Purifier, while being protected by the Icon of the Defender and then he becomes HUGE!!! (reminds me of Power Rangers enemies, only there was no Mega Zord here)

Later, I damage the 3D Chaos sphere (that was a cool design and seeing it in person was great) and I start hitting Eidolon again, until he starts dying for more than 10 seconds. What a great boss! I surely liked him more than Korax and maybe more than D'Sparil. (for me Eidolon>D'Sparil>Korax)

 

This is the end for this game and overall I believe that there wouldn't be a better game to finish the series. Yes. it is full of hard puzzles at the first half, but they are logical puzzles most of the time. I used the walkthrough only once, while in other games I looked at it 2 or 3 times and this tells something about Hexen 2.

Next I am going to play the expansion for Heretic and Hexen 2 and I am done with the series.

 

 

Problem with Hexen 2: I unfortunately forgot to download the music for the game (had the Steam version), so I played without music, but it wasn't bad at all.

 

Hexen hubs in a nutshell (at least I tried):