HeXen II
Playtime: 14.0 Hours
Base Game Playtime: 10.7 Hours, finished 24 October 2025.
Portal of Praevus Playtime: 3.3 Hours, finished 25 October 2025.
Played this using the Hammer of Thyrion source port, available from the HoT Sourceforge. The current available version from this site is pretty old; there was actually an updated "test" build by Shanjaq that was used as the golden version by the community, but that seems to have been lost after hexenworld.org went offline a while ago. I was able to find this custom patch that someone made on the Steam Forums that resolves some issues, and enables support for higher FPS. I'm not entirely sure if this is based off the Shanjaq HoT build, but it worked well enough for me. In-game, I also set "host_maxfps 288" to make the game feel smoother since the Q1 engine has a default FPS cap of 72, which feels super choppy to me; note that this likely causes some issues with per-frame behaviors, which I go into more detail about in my comments below. I also bound F8 (?) to the in-game screenshot function since the Steam screenshot function doesn't work for some reason, despite the overlay functioning completely fine.
Note that the Steam release of the game does not come with the expansion, Portal of Praevus. This is actually not available for purchase anywhere online (GOG version does not include it either); because it is currently abandonware, I obtained the RIP release for free from MyAbandonware. To run the expansion instead of the base game, the files must be placed into the HeXen II install directory (under a subdirectory), and a "-portals" command-line argument (which can be set via run options in Steam, or via a shortcut flag) needs to be passed to load into PoP.
My playthrough of the base game was done as the Assassin on the "Hard" difficulty (Executioner); I figured it would be best since I already played the Priest & Warrior archetypes in HeXen. I only realized later that this is technically the hardest character to play as, given the lack of strong weapons until the Staff of Set and awkward crossbow & grenade mechanics. Given how frustrating parts of the game were, I don't mind saying that I cheated my ass off with frequent usage of a walkthrough (specifically this one) so I wouldn't go insane dealing with awful navigation, backtracking, etc. I wouldn't say I was 100% reliant, but enough for it to be a crutch.
I played Portal of Praevus as the Demoness on the "Normal" difficulty (Spawn), since I got a bit shell-shocked by the clumsiness of the base game and didn't want to deal with that in the expansion. I figure her gameplay is probably close enough to the Necromancer's style to say that I pretty much covered all of the major archetypes between HeXen I & II. This time, I couldn't find a walkthrough so just played it through blind. Thankfully, the overall design of PoP is far, far better than the base game so this didn't end up being a problem; as can be seen, I finished it pretty quickly.
I was hoping that HeXen II would feel more a bit better than its predecessors because it's the first game in the series (after Heretic & HeXen) to use the true-3D Quake 1 engine, rather than the 2.5D DOOM engine. Unfortunately, that really couldn't be further from the truth; the base game is one of the clunkiest, shittiest experiences I've had to date and feels awful by any standard, whether technical, mechanical, or balance-wise. It's extremely close to being completely unplayable, and I was very close to giving up completely until I finally got the Staff of Set, which turned things around a little bit, yet not enough. Note that I played the base game as the Assassin, which is apparently the worst class to play in SP, which made the early game even more grueling.
First and foremost, the technical issues I experienced with this game are far too numerous and too severe to ignore. Much of this naturally comes from the fact that this game is extremely old, and has the barest fraction of the support that more well-known classics like Quake receive. Hammer of Thyrion goes a very long way to make it playable on a modern system, but it's not able to fix lots of fundamental technical issues. The original Quake engine has an effective framerate limit of 72, beyond which physics would begin to break; taking this into account, developers at that time would also tie certain effects, animations, etc. to the framerate. Additionally, lighting effects are horrible; the game is insanely dark for no reason, and light & shadow effects are not smooth - this might be evident in the screenshots. Some attacks will generate a tiny bit of light, but otherwise a very large portion of the game involves getting hit by something which is completely invisible because half of the screen is black. Brightness, gamma, and various lighting options do nothing to rectify this either.
The character and class mechanics are still very limited in this game, and represent only a minor step forward from vanilla HeXen 1. It once again determines your HP and MP pools, your weapons, and your move speed, but this game also randomizes a couple of other stats on the UI that seem to be just for show; you don't get stronger or faster as you level, it just increases your HP/MP for the most part. However, a new element comes in the form of class skills which are unique passive abilities that your character gets as you play through the game. It's a cool concept, but unfortunately the Assassin once again gets the short end of the stick here -- her skills are a passive cloak in the shadows, and a backstab ability with the knife. However, enemies more or less ignore your invisibility status (and all enemies nearby immediately detect you when you attack), so it's essentially impossible to backstab anything. To add insult to injury, the backstab isn't even guaranteed; it's only a CHANCE to crit if you manage to land a strike from behind an enemy. It might have its uses in multiplayer, but is completely ignorable in singleplayer.
Weapons don't feel good, and are a huge step back from the 2.5D games somehow, even with all their jank. The katar has a tiny range and does little to no damage, the crossbow is extremely weak even when accounting for the 3 homing bolts, and the grenades are almost completely unusable, and are so mechanically buggy and inconsistent that it's almost funny how incompetent their implementation in this game was. They don't have a consistent arc when you throw them, they randomly go through enemies instead of blowing up on them, they have a tiny splash range and mediocre damage, and the bouncing effect seems almost completely random. Having to go through most of the 2nd area with these was a nightmare, and something I'm glad I'll never have to do again. I never touched either one of these weapons after getting the final weapon, the Staff of Set. This 2-part ultimate weapon goes a very long way in making the Assassin feel playable (ironic since a magic staff has almost nothing to do with an Assassin thematically); it's effectively a low-cost spammable AND chargeable rocket launcher that penetrates enemies AND deals splash damage (I think, when it hits a surface). It's as good as it sounds, and while it doesn't fix or forgive the numerous issues that plague this game, I admit I had a lot of fun shooting enemies with this.
Speaking of enemies, the mobs in this game are very hit and miss, mixing some interesting and varied mechanics but never really getting to the point of being actually fun to fight. This is also probably the part of the game affected most by the increased FPS cap though, so they might be much more reasonable in vanilla. The squids could do 10-15 damage in a split second which seems a bit overkill, the angel's lasers is close to an instakill, and all of the were-jaguars in the second zone would basically fly off into the stratosphere whenever they did their leaping attack. But my main issue is that way too many of them spend a ton of time invincible in one way or another which kills the pacing and make combat boring: the mages spend most of the time invisible or teleporting (i-frames), the angels can go into a state where they deflect attacks for like 10-15 seconds, and even the were-jaguars can do a ~5 second battle cry during which they are completely invulnerable. At the very least, I'm glad that they no longer respawn in this game.
Also, bosses are horrible, and might have actually been glitched in my playthrough somehow. I was curious after the first one (Famine) took forever to kill, wasting pretty much all of my ammo, only to realize that I was doing on average 2-4x the amount of HP the boss had in damage before they actually died, and the boss arenas simply do not have enough ammo for them! For the second boss, I emptied my entire mana bar spamming the Staff of Set 3 times (refilling with Kraters of Might) and still did not kill the boss; at this point, I figured it was a glitch and enabled Godmode + spammed Tomes of Power while knifing the boss to figure out how much HP they actually had left. It turns out Death still had around half of his expected health left over... I didn't even bother for War and Famine; doing the same knifing strats exposed that they had ~4x the amount of HP they should have. Finally, for Eidolon's fight, I used ALL of my ammo (with 15 Kraters) and still could not kill him somehow -- I destroyed the Chaos Orb quickly as well, so he's not recovering out of this damage. I don't think I've ever experienced fights that were this insanely broken, and I'm still not sure how that ever happened.
As far as the levels go, the entire game is basically split into 4 main hubs or themed locations: Blackmarsh (Medieval European), Mazaera (Aztec or Mayan), Thysis (Egyptian), and Septimus (Roman). After you defeat Pestilence in Septimus, you go back to Blackmarsh to take on Eidolon's final gauntlet, which is effectively the size of a 5th hub (note maps are not shared between the first and second visits). Theming is solid, especially for its time, and puzzles are thankfully far more intricate and more interesting than the button hunting marathon that made up the entirety of HeXen. Particularly in Thysis and partially in Septimus, you had to actually pay attention to the various signs and notices left around the different areas to get clues on how to proceed, and solutions to puzzles. Some of these puzzles were a bit too obtuse for my liking, though - forcing you to find "secret" walls, or involving very long & boring animations to set or reset puzzle states -- especially offensive when you're trying to figure things out and spinning the wheel around again takes upwards of a minute. I ended up cheating a few of these with a walkthrough just to save myself some time.
Actual navigation around the levels is in an interesting spot, because the movement itself is fun in a vacuum. As HeXen II uses the Quake 1 engine, all of the classic bhop mechanics apply which makes movement feel fast and engaging. For whatever reason, HeXen II never fixed the diagonal walking speed "issue" so you can start your strafe going at a million miles at an hour and maintain that through hopping. However, the downside is that the level design itself isn't very good overall, making ridiculously severe usage of invisible walls and really awful collision boxes that really hurt your ability to freely move around areas. Enemy corpses leave really awkward obstacles and have generally awful hitboxing overall; one of the more extreme but common examples is the fact that you can't actually aim directly at the little spiders; you have to aim at the roughly waist-height area directly above them to actually hit them. No idea what that's all about.
Overall, this game was dogshit and while I'm kind of glad I played it just to cross it off the list, there's no way in hell I'm ever touching this again without some very serious glowups. Seeing as this game is pretty much completely forgotten, though, I don't really have any expectations that anyone is willing to take on that task. It's a pretty interesting tech demo for what can be done with the Quake Engine, but is far too broken to be considered as anything beyond that.
Portal of Praevus
Somehow, HeXen II got an expansion pack in Portal of Praevus, introducing a new campaign and a new class! I don't think any of the fundamental technical issues were resolved, but the new content honestly turns so much of the game around, and my experience with this was an immesurable improvement. The Demoness was a really fun character to play as due to the fact that her basic attack is a free ranged weapon, so I didn't have to spend hours punching people; it helps that the more compact nature of the expansion gives you access to the different weapons faster, including the ultimate Tempest Staff that you can get near the end of the first Hub. While the mana spells (Acid Rune & Firestorm) weren't that great, and were basically just utilities for longer-range strikes or to set DoT hazards that were seldom of any purpose, the Tempest Staff is yet another great weapon, a homing rocket launcher this time (unfortunately, can gib yourself if you're not careful unlike the Staff of Set).
Level design was far better in this one; I didn't mention it in too much depth above but the base game had lots of annoying backtracking to the same places over and over again with incredibly cryptic instructions, while the DLC was a bit more straightforward, minimizing the backtracking and giving you lots of different areas to explore. The overall flow of the levels was also a lot better; it's hard to describe in detail but the enemy placements felt a bit more natural, and even the "gotcha" traps and spawns were more reasonable. The icing on the cake is that the bosses were better to deal with; I juked the first one (Yakman) by trapping him in a corner to be fair, but Praevus was a legitimately fun boss! Other than his Hellfire attack (which had ~100+ DPS due to the lifted FPS cap), he felt reasonable to kill and had interesting attack patterns. The Tempest Staff tore him a new one in pretty short order, but his attacks were no joke even on Normal.
While I thought the base game was terrible, I actually enjoyed my time with the expansion thoroughly; the new class, levels, enemies, bosses were all much more solid, and I appreciate the more compact approach. This is obviously a comment in hindsight, but I feel like the 3-5 hour runtime actually works out better, because with only 4 weapons, I feel like the gameplay just doesn't have enough lasting power for anything more than that in this kind of game. In any case, I'm glad my final impression of this game was a fairly positive one, and I find it a bit amusing that the best part of HeXen II completely abandonware, and is not available for purchase in any official capacity.
