Comments on individual levels

[flarefan]

I'm starting on this late, so I'll have to skip over the first few levels:

The Cathedral - This level reminded me of a review for Hexen II which said the tasks one must perform to progress are as obscure as the requirements to find secret areas in most games. Needless to say, this makes me uneasy. The exit is practically impossible to find; after ages scanning every part of the environment multiple times, the best I could do was find the exit to the secret level. Yeah, the regular exit is harder to find than the secret exit.

The Graveyard - Yikes, ethereal enemies galore. Plenty of pickups too though, and fighting the enemies on the raising and lowering platforms was derpy fun. I'm amused at how much less of a pain this secret level is to navigate through than the non-secret level which preceded it.

The Crypts - Appropriately massive and winding. I like the use of elevated areas, with numerous opportunities to snipe enemies, and finding secrets is fun.

Hell's Maw - Geez louise, what sadist designed this level? Onslaughts of enemies which you don't have enough firepower to fend off, then they put you on a narrow walkway over a damage-inducing floor with a boss that can wipe out your health in two seconds and knows how to lead a target, and then you need to cross a huge damage-inducing floor loaded with Disciples and other dangerous enemies. After inching my way across this level to the end, I checked guides to find out how you're supposed to beat that insane boss, and they all said the same thing: You have to spam ring of invincibility and tome of power. Well, I didn't have a ring of invincibility and still managed to defeat it, so I guess this makes me king of Heretic players? (More likely, it means I persisted until I got lucky.)

The Crater - I like how they introduce the first weredragon. I don't much like how they throw a half dozen of them at you at once. Typical of early first-person shooters, it feels like they designed this level without taking into consideration that it's the first level of an episode, so the player isn't going to have the same arsenal as he has later on. On that note, though, I was quite surprised that this level contains all the weapons from episode 1 (excepting the gauntlets) plus one which wasn't in episode 1. They did a good job of holding back plenty of surprises for the non-shareware episodes.

The Lava Pits - The chamber under the lavafall is one of my favorite secrets so far. Such a cool idea. Most of this level is pretty reasonable for difficulty, but the last stage is very cramped and intense, so I just ripped through it with the thought that I could reload my save and be armed with forewarning. However, when I reached the end I found I was still in pretty good shape, so I just proceeded to the next level. It was fun to dispense with my usual cautious playstyle.

The River of Fire - This level was surprisingly easy. Plenty of room to maneuver, enemies mostly come at you one at a time, plenty of pickups, and at this point you have much more powerful weapons than you ever had in episode 1.

The Glacier - Woohoo, now this level is fun! Dangerous, especially with how few health pickups there are, but fun. Having everything split off from a hub area makes navigation easier, the ways enemies are introduced is unexpected, and there's plenty of good use for the more powerful weapons. Also, I always love it when there's a level map to help you find secrets, and there are plenty of them to hunt down in this level.

[flarefan]

The Ice Grotto - The massive ice field was an interesting challenge. Wandering the halls of the wooden fort really shot my nerves. Enemies always seemed to pop up when I least expected them, and the tight confines made me nervous about any encounter.

The Catacombs - A fun level. Lots of sniping, and I enjoyed the theme of riding down the waterfall into greater danger. I found the switch hidden by the rushing waters, too.

The Labyrinth - The area which obviously gave this level its title was a blast. Ultimately it's a straightforward challenge, at least with the help of the automap, but it's a unique and just plain cool use of 3D graphics. I also enjoyed breaking into the little mushroom house in the middle of the glacier. The brownish-yellow honeycombed fort was more of a nerve-wracking experience, but let it never be said that I don't appreciate the occasional nail-biting challenge mixed in with the more lighthearted moments.

The Great Hall - Shockingly easy for an episode's penultimate level, even boring. Enemies come at you in isolated groups, and there's an abundance of pickups of every kind. Finding all the secrets was fun, though.

The Portals of Chaos - Wow, what a contrast this is to the final level of episode 1. Still enemies galore, but plenty of room to evade their attacks and whittle down their numbers slowly, and lots of ammunition pickups. The boss encounter is even easier; instead of a narrow walkway around a lava pit, you've got a wide open area to maneuver in with plenty of walls to duck behind, plus plenty of handy teleports and a ring of invincibility right there for you to exploit. They should have swapped this level with the final shareware level.

[flarefan]

The Storehouse - Sheesh, this one is worse than The Crater for first level balance. Nothing like having to constantly run around foes in narrow passageways due to lack of decent weapons, and having to open up secret areas to get the few decent weapons that are available in the level. Oh well, I guess now the rest of the episode will seem easy by comparison. The first appearance of the blue wall textures near the end of this level took my breath away; very striking.

[flarefan]

The Cesspool - This has to be the most gorgeous cesspool the world has ever seen. Absolutely lovely. As expected, this was a lot easier than "The Storehouse", though I did struggle with shortage of ammunition early on. It was a relief to finally get that ethereal crossbow.

The Confluence - This might be my favorite level so far. Engaging labyrinthine design with plenty of intense challenges but plenty of pickups to deal with them too, including lots of armor. I love armor. I also love it when everything in the level branches off a starting hub, and this particular starting hub sets a perfect balance for being an intense but not overwhelming entrance to the level. The secrets were all intuitive and fun to find, and the normal routes opened up gradually without being overly confounding. It's rare that I find a level which seems to go on forever yet never becomes dull, but this one fits that bill.

[flarefan]

The Azure Fortress - Pretty elaborate, with some strong challenges, and the elevator ride at the beginning is a nice touch, but a few too many teleports for my liking. The spiral staircase enclosed in darkness and the crossfire from three angles were probably my favorite challenges in this one. For the second level in a row there are oodles of armor pickups. And once again I found the secret exit before I found the main exit! At least neither one was too obscure this time.

The Aquifer - Again there are more armor pickups than I can use; I'm getting the sense whoever designed this level wanted the player to have armor at all times. I love all the opportunities to shoot ironliches through windows like helpless carnival game ducks. Overall, though, I found this one much less interesting than the two previous levels, making me wonder why they chose it for the episode's secret level.

[flarefan]

The Ophidian Lair - Not much to say about this one. Similar pattern to the previous levels, though the slicer guys suddenly racing out into the hall was an unexpected surprise.

The Halls of Fear - For such a an ominous title, this is a pretty routine level with an abundance of pickups. Lots of armor and ammo, ammo everywhere. I'll admit that the hidden wall with enemies behind it annoyed me, though. And I used a ring of invincibility to help deal with the Maulotaur. First time I've seen one of them charge!

The Chasm - This level seems a bit easy given that it's the final regular level of the original mail order release. The wind-blown chasm was an unexpected new challenge, though. I enjoyed digging out the last several secrets for this level, all the more so since doing so involves flying, and since the items prepped me nicely for the final level of this episode.

D'Sparil's Keep - The opening sections were decent. Not too fun being dropped into a cramped space with enemies, but the design is cool. I like having a multi-form final boss, especially so in this case since D'Sparil's first form seemed much too easy. After I failed my first attempt at his second form, my thought was, "Well, he's definitely harder than the Maulotaur, but he's not ridiculous like the Ironliches. A pretty decent difficulty."

About 15 attempts later... "Okay, did no one try playing this utterly broken boss even once before they started shipping this game?" Apparently on my first attempt I lucked out in that D'Sparil never summoned up an unreasonable number of Disciples. I hate it in general when a boss has one move that is obviously much better than any of his other moves, since it makes you wonder he doesn't just use that move over and over, and this is a particularly egregious example because there's no way to deal with it if he just keeps summoning more Disciples. (Yes, I know about the trick of running around so the Disciples' attacks hit D'Sparil, but that's cheesy from a gameplay perspective and doesn't make sense from a story perspective.) And it would have been so easy to fix. They could have set a limit of three Disciples on the field at any given time. Better yet, they could have set a way of averting the move, say shooting D'Sparil within the three seconds it takes to complete the summoning chant cancels the summon. His teleporting would make this tricky to pull off, yet the challenge would have been fair.

Ultimately I resorted to save scumming so that D'Sparil never summoned any Disciples. He becomes an utter joke using that strategy.

[flarefan]

Catafalque - Yet another insane opening level of an episode. At least this time I expected nothing less, what with this being essentially a post-game episode. And this is a brilliantly designed challenge. That said, I didn't have much fun with the shortage of ammo. I tried conserving ammo by luring enemies into the crushing ceiling, but that didn't work too well. The crushing parts are so narrow that it's hard to get an enemy caught under it even once, and even the piddling gargoyles take multiple crushes, which means trouble because once they get past the crushing ceiling they're right in your face. I ended up having to kill a Disciple with nothing but unenhanced gauntlets. And of course, I simply fled from the Maulotaur.

The Blockhouse - They managed to pull off two low-ammo levels in a row. Impressive. Establishing a beachhead at the beginning was a royal pain, though; everywhere you run, you've got at least three enemies attacking you. It was very satisfying when I was finally able to crack open a tomb of power and use the hellstaff to vaporize all the ophidians on the central pillar with just a few shots.

The Ambulatory - And suddenly the difficulty drops way down. Lots of low-end enemies back in town, and plenty of pickups. I finished the level with 100 health, 200 armor, a ring of invincibility, a tome of power, an urn, a shadowsphere, a morph ovum, and a healthy stock of ammunition for every weapon. Fun and refreshing after the previous two levels. It seems with this episode the developers got lazy about tagging secrets; in "The Blockhouse" entering the moat area doesn't count as a secret, and in this level the area accessible only by opening the exit door and then rapidly backtracking before the secret wall closes doesn't count as a secret.

[flarefan]

The Sepulcher - The actual level completion was pretty routine, but for the first time I didn't stumble upon the secret exit unaided! I had found 4 out of 6 secrets and I had neither a map scroll nor anything in the level that looked out of place, so I nearly just went ahead with the next level, but... The secret exit seems to always be on the fourth level, and having found all the secret levels thus far, it seemed a shame to miss one, so I consulted a walkthrough for a hint.

The Mausoleum - I loved the opening phase. Lots of action, lots of good ammo, and no reason not to run through the halls ripping through enemies with all I'd got. But I hated the ensuing endless cycle of hitting a switch and then wandering aimlessly through every inch of the poorly lit level until stumbling upon whatever change the switch made. Ridiculously slow-paced and frustrating. I had to consult a walkthrough to find out about the teleporter that opens up at the bottom of the stairs. I also did not care for all the mandatory lava walking, even if they feed you plenty of quartz flasks to manage the hit to your health.

The Great Stair - Another pretty reasonable level, though I got stuck at a few of the puzzle elements, like the elevators that look like raised walls. I liked the opening mystery; it reminds me of a level in Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. The small army of Disciples appearing on the stairs after you grab the blue key almost made me wet my pants. After dying against them once, though, I used a morph ovum to help thin the herd and then found that you can just back into the narrow passage behind you and deal with them one-by-one with the Hellstaff. So, some good challenges, but I came out with 100 health, 200 armor, every artifact a guy could ask for, and full ammo for most weapons.

[flarefan]

Halls of the Apostate - Good grief, the means of accessing the green door is so obscure. I had to rely upon a walkthrough to get over that hurdle; no idea how they expected anyone to figure that out. Some fun bits here, especially the narrow walkways in the climactic room, but that taunting green door rather soured the whole experience.

Ramparts of Perdition - Oh yes. Running around ramparts doing battle. Loved the scenario for this one. Some of the best sniping action in the game, too. They really threw in a ton of sniping opportunities into this episode. I got stuck on the green key, though. After wandering the entire level several times over, I found the passage to the trigger had opened up seemingly at random. They throw way too much ammo at you in this one, but the combat was still a challenge. Every time I got a fresh armor pickup, I seemed to lose a good chunk of it in the next encounter.

Shattered Bridge - Took me a long while to find the yellow key. Once again, when the pathway to it opened up it seemed to do so at random, without me doing anything. Was hoping for a new boss, but instead we get an Iron Lich fight the way it should have been done in episode 1: plenty of open space to run around in, and lots of ammunition. Except that this episode you get the Phoenix Rod, and the level gives you two tons of ammunition for it, so I slaughtered them in about five seconds without even using any artifacts. Kind of an anticlimax, but I'll gladly take that over the royal pain the Episode 1 and 3 bosses were.

[flarefan]

Ochre Cliffs - At first I wondered why everyone says that this is a hard first level. Right off the bat they give you all the ammo you need, and continue to do so throughout the level. Weapons are made available right when you need them. The enemy hordes are considerable but not overwhelming.

Then I ran into the two Iron Liches in the dark chamber. Oof, not an easy encounter. Then they throw another four Iron Liches at you in an area with lava. I had to look up how to get into the drainage area in a walkthrough, because there was no way I was taking on four Iron Liches without a Phoenix Rod. Arguably worse were the puzzles; just way too many instances of hit trigger in one part of the level, run around looking for the subtle change in another part of the level. Overall, though, I found this a much more reasonable opening level than The Storehouse and Catalfalque.

Rapids - Ooo, this was fun. Wandering through this level, I really got a sense of fighting through the rapids and gasping for breath as I pull myself up onto a piece of shoreline for a brief respite. Surprisingly, they don't throw many annoying situations at you here; there are challenges but they mostly were fun ones. The ammo was definitely sufficient but not to the point where I didn't need to take care of how I use it. One of my favorite levels so far.

The Quay - I had the thought that they were throwing me more ammo than necessary. Then I ran into the roomfuls of ophidians and the maulotaur. Yeah, you can snipe the maulotaur safely, but it takes a lot of ammo. I ended up with nothing left for ammo but about 50 runes. Fortunately I figured out how to get the map scroll without trouble, and once I had cracked open all the secret areas I was in much better shape for ammo and had 100 health and 200 armor to boot. I like that I'm three levels in and still am nowhere near filled up on ammo. Also, yay for a secret exit that was (slightly) harder to find than the regular exit! Seriously, I liked the manner in which this secret level was hidden.

[flarefan]

Skein of D'Sparil - I did not like the start of this level. Fighting sabreclaws in the narrow corridors was dull, and I do not like it when normal progress is barred by the need to activate hidden triggers. I very nearly turned to a walkthrough, but after about an hour of blindly running around pushing walls I stumbled upon it.

Fortunately the rest of the level is a lot more fun. The two lava rooms in particular looked very cool and were a thrill to play. Okay, the four Iron Liches were a bit of a nuisance because I had used up all my flame orbs and those whirlwinds kept throwing me into the lava pits, but I persevered and triumphed with the help of a few Quartz Flasks. Then, because I couldn't figure out how to get out of the room, I used a Chaos Device. In general I enjoyed how much this level made me use the abundance of artifacts available. I only wish I had put the ridiculous number of Wings of Wrath to more use; I navigated the top of the opening "skein" the hard way, repeatedly finding that hidden trigger and running from one narrow walkway to another. Overall, really enjoyed this stage.

Courtyard - Nice to have lots of golems for a change. The beginning assault was particularly fun. Lots of annoying bits where it's hard to avoid taking massive damage, but I resisted the temptation to reload saves too much, trusting (correctly) that the level designers would enable me to easily end the stage with 100 health, 200 armor, and full ammo for every weapon. That seems to be a habit of theirs. The secrets in this level were fun to dig up, and not too obvious even with the map scroll.

Hydratyr - I was a bit careless early in this level and lost all of my armor. This led to a curious situation where I was faced with a scarcity of health pickups for a considerable stretch. The teleporter room was a neat changeup in the layout, and I made some good use of artifacts, like equipping a Ring of Invincibility to freely blast away at the horde of Disciples with my Phoenix Rod and using powered-up Ethereal Arrows against the surprise Nitrogolem gang, but overall I didn't like this level too much. Red axes kept coming at me from nowhere, and most of the design is too routine.

[flarefan]

Well, I've finished the game. Not sure that anyone but me cares (this board's a little dead), but I'm glad to have finished it and to be able to say that I overall enjoyed all five episodes. My thoughts on the final three levels:

Colonnade - This level was like a refueling stop after the previous level's draining. Lots of easy enemies organized in manageable configurations, and lots of pickups. I greatly enjoyed this, though it was a bit suspicious to have such an easy level this late in a post-game episode. I kept fearing the other shoe was about to drop. There were plenty of surprises, but nothing I couldn't manage with fast reflexes and some help from the ample ammunition and artifacts you get. The secrets were fun to dig out; I always love it when they throw you a map scroll to help with that. The bit with the three switches was especially satisfying to work out.

Foetid Manse - Ugh, way too many Ophidians in sniper positions. Playing sniping games with Ophidians is neither fun or genuinely challenging; it's just tedious. And the bit where entering the room triggers a ton of Disciples and Sabreclaws right next to you is just cheap. I had a spare Ring of Invincibility to allow me to just cheese it, but you shouldn't have to cheese it. In spite of all the nuisances, I finished with 100 health, 200 armors, full ammo, and every artifact. Yeah, I held off on grabbing the Enchanted Shield until the very end. I liked the whole concept of infiltrating a mansion, but this level ended up being not fun at all.

Field of Judgment - This is probably the most unimaginative level in the game, I'm sad to say; just a ton of Maulotaurs tossed onto an open field. Having to use a Wings of Wrath to get onto a platform six inches above the floor is a very unintuitive puzzle, too. I still had decent fun with it, and I must admit it caught me off-guard when I realized, in the midst of battle, that while the level gives you plenty of ammo, armor, and artifacts, they give you precious little in the way of health refills. It's a very reasonable boss fight, though; I honestly cracked up at the story text stating "Not even the fight with D'Sparil and his disciples had been this desperate."

[^1Romanov77]

I figured out the shooting wall puzzle in Foetid manse by pure chance, that was "The Spirit World" bad tier level design.

[hoaxey]

Originally posted by flarefan:

Well, I've finished the game. Not sure that anyone but me cares (this board's a little dead), but I'm glad to have finished it and to be able to say that I overall enjoyed all five episodes. My thoughts on the final three levels:

Colonnade - This level was like a refueling stop after the previous level's draining. Lots of easy enemies organized in manageable configurations, and lots of pickups. I greatly enjoyed this, though it was a bit suspicious to have such an easy level this late in a post-game episode. I kept fearing the other shoe was about to drop. There were plenty of surprises, but nothing I couldn't manage with fast reflexes and some help from the ample ammunition and artifacts you get. The secrets were fun to dig out; I always love it when they throw you a map scroll to help with that. The bit with the three switches was especially satisfying to work out.

Foetid Manse - Ugh, way too many Ophidians in sniper positions. Playing sniping games with Ophidians is neither fun or genuinely challenging; it's just tedious. And the bit where entering the room triggers a ton of Disciples and Sabreclaws right next to you is just cheap. I had a spare Ring of Invincibility to allow me to just cheese it, but you shouldn't have to cheese it. In spite of all the nuisances, I finished with 100 health, 200 armors, full ammo, and every artifact. Yeah, I held off on grabbing the Enchanted Shield until the very end. I liked the whole concept of infiltrating a mansion, but this level ended up being not fun at all.

Field of Judgment - This is probably the most unimaginative level in the game, I'm sad to say; just a ton of Maulotaurs tossed onto an open field. Having to use a Wings of Wrath to get onto a platform six inches above the floor is a very unintuitive puzzle, too. I still had decent fun with it, and I must admit it caught me off-guard when I realized, in the midst of battle, that while the level gives you plenty of ammo, armor, and artifacts, they give you precious little in the way of health refills. It's a very reasonable boss fight, though; I honestly cracked up at the story text stating "Not even the fight with D'Sparil and his disciples had been this desperate."

I thought your reviews of each level were very interesting, so there's someone that cared! I love Heretic.

[Ffabbia]

The Lava Pits - The chamber under the lavafall is one of my favorite secrets so far. Such a cool idea. Most of this level is pretty reasonable for difficulty, but the last stage is very cramped and intense, so I just ripped through it with the thought that I could reload my save and be armed with forewarning. However, when I reached the end I found I was still in pretty good shape, so I just proceeded to the next level. It was fun to dispense with my usual cautious playstyle.

My method here is to use the Necromancer Gauntlets along with a Tome of Power and just Yolo charge though the final rooms, zapping everything that moves. The tome+gauntlets keep my health topped up so no need to worry about monsters or lava. After everything's dead I like to backtrack and grab any armor that I saved.

In fact tome+gauntlets is an effective solution to most of the game's more dangerous situations. You can easily take out a single Maulotaur that way, and save all your ammo in the process.

[Ffabbia]

About 15 attempts later... "Okay, did no one try playing this utterly broken boss even once before they started shipping this game?" Apparently on my first attempt I lucked out in that D'Sparil never summoned up an unreasonable number of Disciples. I hate it in general when a boss has one move that is obviously much better than any of his other moves, since it makes you wonder he doesn't just use that move over and over, and this is a particularly egregious example because there's no way to deal with it if he just keeps summoning more Disciples. (Yes, I know about the trick of running around so the Disciples' attacks hit D'Sparil, but that's cheesy from a gameplay perspective and doesn't make sense from a story perspective.) And it would have been so easy to fix. They could have set a limit of three Disciples on the field at any given time. Better yet, they could have set a way of averting the move, say shooting D'Sparil within the three seconds it takes to complete the summoning chant cancels the summon. His teleporting would make this tricky to pull off, yet the challenge would have been fair.

Hellstaff + Tome of Power works wonders for D'sparil, as the fire rain will take out the Disciples almost as soon as they've spawned in. In between I'll keep blasting him with the standard Phoenix Rod (the 'flamethrower' Tome effect sucks, use the standard missiles).