Completed: 8/25/14 in 13 hrs on Cardinal (Hard) Diffculty.

I decided to up the difficulty for the playthough of this expansion and let me tell you it was much more difficult then expected. The worst enemies are those damn Swamp Stalkers. They hide in the water and in doing so they are untargetable and likely to ambush you. One map also had 4 Death Wyverns in it and the first game had it was a boss. They really tried to up the difficulty this time around.

Deathkings as well as the original Hexen included an inventory system and character selection. They should have added some new mobs or a new playable character in the expansion as they did with Hexen II but I forgive you guys. :)

Deathkings is a fun game if you don't mind the retro PC graphics and gameplay. It tells you how far we have come in the genre, why some newer titles have failed. Because you don't need high resolution textures for a game it just needs to be fun and Deathkings does that. Incredibly difficult.

I fear the art of Hexen will never again be replicated. The 90s are over.

Good old Hexen and its Add Ons. Me and my friends played this for hours and hours killing each other, playing COOP ect. I think the atmosphere survived the ages, but for some reason the gameplay/graphics feel so poor I cannot bring myself to go back and play it again... yet Duke Nukem and DOOM I can easily play again.

This game was not made for those faint at heart. It was difficult, dark, and strange. You can get stuck on some level for hours that would normally only take 10 minutes because they would hide buttons, hidden triggers, or just the requirement of killing a monster hidden behind a glass window you can only shoot from a distance.

The three chars to choose from are very very different and add a interesting element to the game that old school games really didn't have. I would only get it for Nastagia, for those that never played it... you will not like this game.

HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel is an expansion pack for Hexen, released in 1996. It doesn't feature any new gameplay elements, instead it adds more hard levels for single player and adds more levels and improvements for Multiplayer and Deathmatch. But since everybody uses Zandronum for multiplayer in Doom engine games anyway, it's only just more levels.

Now, if you will try to play the game right as it was installed by Steam you will be met by disaster. It really got to be the worst out of all games that id software published here.
Most importantly, the game is unpatched. It's original release. A flawed original release, where develoeprs somehow forgot to link music of Hexen to new levels. So, unless you download and patch the game up, you will have to enjoy some silence. Amazing. Check community guides on how to do that.
Then, as usual, DosBox isn't configured good. It lags and so you have to go to game's directory, open the needed .conf file and edit "ddraw" output to "opengl" one.
And then if you want to choose your control and music device, then you will have to go to game's folder again and drag "setup" file over "dosbox" to launch it.

Expansion pack pulls quite an excuse plot twist to justify action: The evil or the sphere teleported you away into land of the dead where you have to defeat Deathkings before being able to return. Who are they anwyay. Ah, right, they just reuse end bosses from Hexen.

So, game adds three new hubs to conquer. Which totals in around 30 levels. They don't use any new textures. Though there are some interesting inviroments anyway. But it's more of Hexen but harder.

The thing is, Hexen was already too dragged. It didn't had enough of variety in combat and weapons for each class. It had tedious part. And bringing even more levels that are also harder and bring no new gameplay elements, well, it's not a good idea. At all.
Yes, it has a sin of using bosses of Hexen as tough enemy. You fight big mage demon at the first level of the second hub already.

It doesn't help that I had glitch two different glitches on the first hub. First, there weren't enough of fire masks, key items, in the first world. Yes, I checked with walkthrough on all spots. Somehow, there wasn't. Somehow. And then on another level magic bridge just didn't appear either. And wyverns, bosses of Hexen, got stuck in walls too. So, watch out on first hub.

And main problem and difference in difficulty is monster respawn.
Original Hexen would spawn Ettins, common melee weak enemies, after each 10 minutes. Or at least it feels so. It was there just so player will not get lonely while being lost.
Dark Citadel rushes you down and beats you up. It can spawn hordes of any kind of enemy more often. And shielding centaurs that are incredibly annoying or flying imps that shoot fireballs at you aren't good enemies to respawn.
What it means is that you will have to rush levels down, having to solve "puzzles", saving/loading and doing other things while being rushed down and under constant heavy pressure. Killing enemies in this game doesn't bring any benefit, there is no leveling or such. You only waste mana and time. A lot of them. So you will have to try not to pay attention to them as you have to rush rush rush your way. And if you get lost, like everybody does in Hexen, then it will not be pretty.
It gets really bad on the main level of the last hub, Citadel itself. It's pretty much a hall with teleporters and switches. With water pools for no reason. And enemies not only respawn all time there, they also teleport around when reaching water pools for some reason, with without any special effect. You will be telefragged at least once.

Actually, perhaps it's easier to play as Mage here. His basic weapon, that don't require mana, is a ranged one.

So, Deathkings isn't good expansion pack It feels like it just milks on Hexen more. It's hard not in a good way, it's buggy, it brings nothing new outside of levels and it just makes Hexen outstay it's welcome. You miss nothing.

Note:
- Follow this guide to easily fix the in-game music. I recommend doing this before applying gzdoom or the Neural Texture Pack below.
- Read this thread before playing (the guide's for og Hexen but same steps work here using the respective folder). This will guide you through the quick & easy gzDoom setup that dramatically improves the experience on modern hardware and allows for native use of the Steam Overlay. This also allows for a much greater level of visual customization.
- Strongly recommend installing the Neural Texture Pack as well unless taking the purist approach. Excellent visual upgrade across the board.

This is an expansion pack for HeXen: Beyond Heretic and has the same aesthetic, mechanics, characters, weapons, visuals, audio, gameplay, etc. As such, I recommend checking out my og review for the base game for commentary on that stuff.

What DDC brings to the table is new levels and they are very well designed. I enjoy them more than those of the base game in regards to both the action and the adventuring/puzzle solving. They're of a comparable quality to the base game but the flow has an amped up intensity & sense of urgency and it feels like there's a bit more care and polish. They adjusted the game balance to have slightly less labyrinthine exploration and more balls out "holy crap that's a lot of enemies at once" combat, and I love it. It's a good length for an expansion and if you enjoy the base game I strongly recommend playing this as well. Worth it at full price if you're a fan of the series or og FPS.

At first, it seemed like a sloppy mod rather than an expansion, but over time it grew on me as I noticed everything it had to offer. This is more of what the first game offered, but I have to say that the level design here is a lot more impressive, with tons of subtle details. The moving floors, the earthquakes, the objects that talk back, the way the ground has a more natural flow, such as the ice in the caves merging with the rock, all are good creative steps forward from the original and seem genuinely inspired.
My only complaint is that most of the time, it only uses assets from the original game. Same textures, same enemies, same classes, same items. It's still really fun, but I can't see why the only new things here are the levels. I would have loved to at least fight a new final boss, rather than an endurance run of monsters and all the classes. Oh well.

Bigger and badder Hexen, in form of an expansion released just 2 months after the main game. Back when they came packed with same amount of content as the main game itself, if you can believe that. In short, that is the only good part about it.

On the technical side game is 1:1 copy of regular Hexen with expansion .wad thrown in. It is not patched so the MIDI music isn't mapped to correct levels. You can read about it here[doomwiki.org] and get the patch here[www.doomworld.com]. Recommend using your own DOSBox install to apply the patch manually, if you opt for vanilla experience like myself that is. Doing so is not as trivial as it sounds so likely easiest way is just to plug the wads into a Source Port of your choice and play it using a modern scheme.

As far game is concerned the levels have been more thoughtfully designed (but still largely labyrinthine) and cross-level switch triggers actually have meaningful messages this time. No more running around backtracking to examine every wall yet again. I mean you still shall, but you'll have an idea where to go at least. Most Hub levels aren't just filler in terms of size and complexity but you can see real work put into them. Why this wasn't a goal in the main game is anyone's guess.

No new weapons, monsters or items have been added. Unsurprising considering 2 month deadline but how the items and puzzles have been recycled and reused feels so cheap I can't begin to describe it. Like I was playing Hexen one more time but with slightly re-arranged identical puzzles and solutions to them. The 3 Hub bosses are the laziest copy-paste job of the '90s! Boring to say the least, not to mention lore breaking. Let's not even involve logic into the mix.

The boredom was often and abruptly interrupted by the most annoying change of all. Monster respawn mechanic was put into overcharge...! Whereas in Hexen you had a steady respawn of 2 weakest (and melee) monsters every 4 minutes, in expansion things are different. That was annoying and unnecessary by itself but now all regular enemies are in the respawn pool and the count went up from 2 to 3 - to around 10 by the final Hub. That's 10 new enemies every 4 mins that respawn in your vicinity every time. Such joy.

Imagine a pigeon ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on you 10 times every 4 mins, that's about how annoying we are talking about here. I had rooms filled by enemies to the brim so they even couldn't move... And as cherry on top they do not drop ammo when killed. Yeah!!

Add the same 'ol Hexen's problems: poor weapon choice and behavior, mediocre monsters, tedious switch puzzle hunting and you quickly realize there is nothing to be excited about here. Avoid like the plague unless you are a die-hard fan, or a sucked in sucka like yours truly.

The graphics, enemies, environments, music, movement are all great. The thing that lets the Hexen games down is the level design. I cannot stand running around searching for switches to flip in no obvious order. If it weren't for this switch hunting level designs I'd be a massive fan but this kills it for me, I don't have time to run around the map 20 times looking for switches and paths that aren't obvious. It just kills the difficulty, compared to a game like Doom where you didn't have to search so much for keys and switches.

It's same and just as as good as Beyond Heretic, but it's a bit harder. Not as hard as The Ultimate Doom compared to Doom, or Shadow of the Serpent Riders compared to Heretic, but hard nonetheless. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2977222875

HeXen was already a pretty hard game, but Deathkings of the Dark Citadel managed to make an even harder game, and with methods that are far from being fun: enemy respawning.

Yes, the original game let Ettins respawn, but just that. DotDC, however, allows the respawning of any kind of enemy (with the exception of Wyverns, thank God) so you will find yourself rushing everywhere trying to solve the puzzles as fast as possible, leaving you with a sense of Nightmare! DOOM difficulty, but far easier (unless you play in the higher difficulties).

But even with the flaws it has, Deathkings of the Dark Citadel is still a fun experience, just a little annoying and less enjoyable than the original game.

P.S: Some people complain that if you play with the Fighter you will have to go through a map with four Wyverns without any ranged weapon. In the same map you can find the Hammer of Retribution before that encounter. Just explore! (and jump!)

I just finished my first playthrough of Hexen today, and while it was a frustrating and confusing a lot of the time, I did get some enjoyment out of the cool atmosphere and level design. Then I tried this expansion, and... it was soggy and terrible, and it got a big nope out of me.

Already, the first hub is filled with clown car after clown car of enemies, and it was a giant slog to get through. And then all the enemies begin respawning, just as I tried to begin exploring the map.

Sorry, but nope. I'm not doing this.


EDIT:

Okay, so I got into the clown car and then they pulled a gun on me telling me I couldn't leave until I finished this expansion.

Honestly, it's just more Hexen, and thus I both like and loath this game. On one hand, I enjoy navigating the gloomy, foreboding world and solving its cryptic puzzles while fighting hoards of enemies. And on the other, well... the cryptic puzzles and hoards of enemies (AKA, minotaurs) can also be really annoying.

Even with that, there's nothing quite like this series, and overall I had a good time with this expansion.

Still gets a thumbs down because I'm a masochist.