Heretic II - Mission Summaries
General Observations:
1. Excellent graphics, especially the indoor areas.
2. Beautifully detailed temples, palaces, towns.
3. Models are not very well-detailed, but considering the game is several years old, this is not really a big issue.
4. Rudimentary interaction with non-player characters via cut scenes.
5. Fairly good voice acting, although they could have avoided American accents.
6. Reasonable story line. Very limited scope for character development, so it was not attempted.
7. Somewhat useful training program at the beginning of the game, particularly for those only used to first-person perspectives.
8. Cut scenes are not bad, particularly the opening scenes. No cinematics, but that's not a real issue here.
9. Good ambient sounds and enemy alarm & attack sounds.
10. Music is generally good, and occasionally haunting.
11. Many levels are generally quite linear and straightforward (but see note on hubs, below, and have occasional side areas to explore).
12. The use of hubs makes the levels interesting, not only because the player needs to return to areas previously visited, but also because it often gives the player a choice about which level to visit first.
13. The fights are seldom overpowering in nature - most fights are with weaker enemies who occasionally attack in packs, inflict moderate damage, and can be warded off with relative ease.
14. A wide variety of weapons, and a goodly assortment of enemies to try them on.
Mission Summaries:
Silverspring Docks
1. Cool scurrying rodents that can be squished. Take note that these rats can and do bite.
2. Very nicely done map, with interconnecting pathways and visible but inaccessible areas that one gets to visit as the level progresses. While this is definitely not a linear map, it's fairly easy to find your way around.
3. Fairly decent medieval town architecture, including a tavern, cisterns and aqueducts, and tower turrets.
4. Most of the enemies, except the Disease Spreader at the end, are fairly easy to dispatch.
5. Moody music, accompanied by the occasional wailing of a baby and the sobbing of its mother.
6. I like the fact that Silverspring Docks and the next level, Silverspring Warehouse, form a hub, allowing the player to return here after visiting the warehouse level to pick up any goodies saved for later.
Silverspring Warehouse
1. Very nicely laid out non-linear level. The player sees areas that are at first inaccessible, but gets to visit those areas later. In particular, the player criss-crosses areas and has the opportunity to re-visit previously cleared areas.
2. Decent architecture, in keeping with a medieval town. Plenty of crates to give it the warehouse look.
3. A couple of nice devices used in this map - first, some Sidhe try to drop a crate on the players head. If you're not careful and are standing in the wrong spot the crate will crush you. The other device is the use of a crate sliding down a ramp to break a hole through a wall, allowing you to pass through. Finally, you need to raise an underwater trap door in order to make progress.
4. I picked up the Hellstaff, which I found to be somewhat weak and which uses up ammo at a quick rate. Nevertheless, it's one of the few rapid-fire weapons in the game.
Town of Silverspring
1. Nice moody and haunting music continues.
2. Picked up the Thunderblast Spell, which is really effective close-up, but somewhat weak at a distance.
3. Architecture has subtly changed from Tudor-style houses to stone-turreted castle-like structures. Very nice use of stone arches and steepled roofs. Great use of street lanterns, torches, etc. to provide lighting.
4. Mostly linear, with one area requiring player to back-track a little.
5. Nice looking palace close to the end of the level, with the entrance blocked off by fallen boulders and "guarded" by dragon statues.
Silverspring Palace
1. Beautifully rendered and textured palace architecture, with expansive arches, royal motifs, and colorful murals. Even the ceilings are beautifully textured. Particularly nice-looking was the astronomy room. Overall, a very impressively designed and authentic-looking level.
2. Very linear level, but no complaints there. Nice progression from the lower areas for cargo loading & unloading, through the somewhat rough-looking guard areas, to the servant's quarters with the work benches, hearths, and pantries, to the more elegant, marbled and carpeted main palace areas.
3. Good fight at the end against the Watcher, but the player is slightly at a disadvantage by having to constantly aim upwards. The voice acting for the Watcher is sinister and very well done.
Darkmire Swamps
1. Nice way to start the level, after having defeated the Watcher at the end of the Silverspring mission and fallen through the floor of his chamber.
2. VERY atmospheric, with the swirling mists and the shrill cries of Harpies circling overhead. The "quicksand" nature of the mire is a cool device - you have a limited amount of time to reach solid ground before sinking under and dying.
3. The Harpies are a formidable enemy that can take up to 40 percent off a player's health. And if a Harpie kills a player, it flies off with the player's head. How cool is that?!!! The G'Krokons look very cool, but are quite weak. Likewise, the Gorgons look cool (sort of like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park) but are fairly easy to dispense with. The Myxini, which look like barracudas, swim just like fish - mostly lazy swimming with occasional darting to one side or another. A very nice touch.
4. Decent architecture, with broken flagstones littering the mire, partially destroyed bridges, damaged palace and temple-style areas.
5. Sinister music, which fits very well with the level.
Andoria Healer's Tower
1. The bars that raise the stone platform that covers the stairs is a nice device. However, it took me a while to figure out what to do, and how and when to activate the switch.
2. Nice use of the saw that lowers from the ceiling to hack at the player if he/she is not careful. Other cool devices are the "jets" that shoot the player back up from the pool near the beginning of the map, and the wheel that floods the area, allowing the player to rise through the opening in the ceiling.
3. Horde of Gorgons that rush at you was fun, but somewhat easy. I finally met the Ssithra, which is a cool amphibious enemy that spouts cries such as "killll himmmm", "die, landlubber", and "join ussss" while shooting arrows. They are quite easy to defeat individually, but are more of a challenge when swarming. The one area that was challenging was after meeting Siernan; it was filled with Ssithra as well as Harpies, and it was easy to take quite a bit of damage.
4. I picked up the Storm Bow, which is one of my favorite weapons in the game, and which finally allows me to deal justice to those damned Harpies. Works well on the Ssithra too.
5. Mostly linear map, except for the beginning. Still, the architecture, which is in the temple and palace style, is very good. Siernan's chamber was typical of an apothecary, and very nicely done. The rest of the map, with partially flooded areas was done well too.
6. Upbeat tempo to the music is a nice change from the heavy and dreary music of earlier levels (which fit those levels very well, don't get me wrong).
Andoria Plaza
1. This is a wonderful hub, with different directions to explore.
2. Again, excellent temple/palace style architecture. In particular, one device that was well used was the water columns, which allow the player to swim through to the other side, but also allows the player to swim up or down the columns to other areas in the map.
3. Some decent fights, but overall fairly easy. You get the morph ovum spell in this map, but I found the spell to be more a novelty than providing significant defensive capabilities.
4. Every time I tried to exit the final area towards the entrance to the slums the game would crash. I tried using the "kiwi" cheat code to noclip through the doorway that was "causing" the crash, but that didn't help either. Finally, I used noclip to bypass the small outdoor area completely, and reached the entrance to the Andoria Slums without crashing the game.
Andoria Slums
1. Very nicely connected level, with underwater passageways linking different areas.
2. Great broken-temple architecture.
3. Some decent fights, particularly the area after you pick up the Firewall Spell. Plenty of Harpies, which, as I mentioned, I do NOT like one bit. I found the Firewall Spell to be quite ineffective at far ranges, and quite effective at close range against the Ssithra. It's not too effective against the Harpies.
4. The Lizard King was a decent challenge, with it shooting flaming arrows non-stop, and the arrows destroying hiding places such as the rocks behind which a player could hide.
5. Upon entering the area right after the Lizard King, where the Ssihtra jumps down while a part of the ceiling starts collapsing, the game crashed on me. This might have happened in part because the falling rocks killed the Ssithra. The next time I played the area I backed out as soon as I knew the cut scene of the breaking ceiling was going to happen. That way the Ssithra didn't jump down until after the cut scene played out, and the game did not crash.
6. I did not intuitively know how to fill the container with Earthblood from the pool. The icon for the container would appear on the screen, but I didn't know that I needed to press the "use" key to fill the container. Finally, I read a walkthrough which simply said "use the container", and I put two and two together.
7. Music is a nice combination of heavy and upbeat.
Andoria Academic Quarter
1. The entrance to the Academic Quarter form the Andoria Plaza is not easy to find. I found it quite by accident, but perhaps I would have found it eventually upon thorough exploration of the Plaza.
2. Some pretty decent fights, particularly in the area with the Phoenix Bow. This is a powerful weapon, but the Ssithra are able to jump out of its way (which is pretty cool) in open areas of combat.
3. The architecture is quite nice, especially the area with the Phoenix Bow.
4. In the area with the Phoenix Bow and the chamber behind it there's a mural that shows the evolution of the Ssithra people from water-dwelling amphibians to walking, sentient beings that worship the Sun. I thought this was a very cool touch. Another cool touch is the fish-shaped skylight on the ceiling of this chamber.
Kell Caves
1. The architecture is a nice combination of temple-style and caves, complete with falling boulders.
2. I liked the part where I had to swim through an underwater door and along extended underwater caverns, while being chased by hordes of Gorgons. The first time I swam through without realizing I was being followed, and all of a sudden I have these bastardos springing up at me from out of the water. Being able to use only the weaker spells underwater, facing multitudes of enemies, and having a limited time to hold my breath before losing health made for quite a fun challenge. I played that part over and over again, because it was so much of fun.
Katlit'k Canyon
1. Rocky terrain, blue skies, skeletal remains of Gorgons, the chilling shrieks of Harpies. What more could one ask for?
2. The music is quite sinister, yet upbeat.
3. A very cool trick employed by the game developers is to force the player to use the staff to leap over wide chasms, and have an enemy hidden and waiting on the other side. This almost forces the player to fight the enemy with only the staff. This is particularly unpleasant (in a good way), when the enemy on the other side is a Cauthorian assassin.
4. The Sphere of Annihilation spell is quite powerful, especially compared with the other spells I'd picked up so far.
5. The T'Chekrik warriors are worthy opponents. Good projectile and melee attacks.
6. Very nice-looking entrance to the T'Chekrik Hive, with massive statues of T'Chekrik holding up balconies that overlook the courtyard below.
K'Chekrik Hive (Parts 1 & 2)
1. Creepy, yet upbeat music. This, accompanied by sounds of insects skittering nearby.
2. Very hive-like architecture, in keeping with the name of the level. Nice night sky.
3. Excellent fight in the beginning, with enemies on ledges above the player on both sides of the entrance.
4. Good mission based hub - find the warrior's amulet to open the door to the next level; find the T'Chekrik Heart Gem to get the warrior's amulet.
5. As with many other Heretic2 levels, the K'Chekrik Hive maps are interconnected, and allow (sometimes require) the player to return to previously visited areas.
6. I got a cool upgrade to my lance-staff. Now, I use it all the time.
7. Cool cut-scene at the end, when the player is surrounded by T'Chekrik, and the boss whacks the player down to his knees.
The Gauntlet
1. Again the music is creepy but upbeat.
2. Very cool effects and traps - collapsing rock bridge over lava, giant bear traps that snap shut on unwary players, flames shooting out of walls, rotating maces that knock the player into lava pits, giant cleavers slicing up and down, and the usual doors opening with enemies springing out. They are all implemented very well, and I had to reload saved games on many occasions. In fact, the various traps require frequent saves. It'll be cool to see how the level can be played from start to finish without saving.
3. The area with the crushing pillars, floors that teleport the player back to the start of the area, and the deadly sink holes that dump the player in lava, is very cool and imaginative.
4. The map is aptly named, and overall, it works very well in the story-line.
The Trial Pit
1. Nice boss fight with the stegosaurus-looking giant insectoid.
2. It's cool how one of the T'Chekrik is fighting the boss and distracting it, allowing you to whack away at it.
3. I was suprised when the roof collapsed, after the boss knocked down the pillars supporting it. I thought I was a goner for sure, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was safe while the falling roof had killed the boss. How cool is that?
4. I picked up the Metal DooM spell. Let's see how it works out.
The Lair of the Mothers
1. Nicely done level, which looks quite like a hive. Once again, the level is well inter-connected, allowing the player to return to previously visited areas via newly-discovered routes.
2. The giant slug/larva looked formidable, and was a cool touch, but turned out to be quite harmless. It could have been made into an indestructible boss that simply guards that area and requires the player to avoid its attacks.
3. The smaller slugs were a minor nuisance, and were easily disposed off from outside the chamber. They should have been made inert (and indestructible) until the player picks up the idol artifact, after which they could have "woken" up and attacked.
4. The final boss fight with the Hive Priestess was a worthy challenge. Her ability to teleport and send homing projectiles make her a tough adversary. If I had known I was facing her in the end I'd have saved my gold armor and spirit shrines until just before entering her chamber. With no armor and 100% health when I entered, I barely made it out with 12% health. And that was after I'd been pummelled into submission quite a few times. Still, overall, it was a god fight.
The Ogle Mines Part 1
1. It would have been nice to have some health at the beginning, seeing as how I only had 12% health when I entered. Fortunately, there are no serious fights in the beginning, and a spirit shrine is available after a short while.
2. Nice, atmospheric level that looks very much like a mine, with machinery, mine cars, tracks, etc.
3. It's very cool how the little mine workers (Ogles) are dominated by whip-wielding slave-drivers (Overlords), but turn on them after the player attacks the slave-drivers. It's also cool how they sing and dance while they work.
4. This is a fairly linear level, that circles around to bring the player back to where he/she needs to exit the level.
5. The mission is to find a wheel so that a mine car can be used to "leap" across an acid-filled chasm to the next level.
The Ogle Mines Part 2
1. The music is a curious mixture of haunting melodies driven by a pounding beat.
2. The map design is non-linear with some back-tracking, but I never had a sense of being lost.
3. The map has a nice (and different) mission - to activate power for a trestle to carry you across a slime pit, you must first find raw ore, refine it, and obtain a suitable power source.
Morcalavin's Dungeon
1. The map has nice lighting and textures.
2. The mine slaves hung by their hands, and the screams in the background are nice medieval touches.
3. Moraclavin's torture chamber is nicely done, with little traps (like the vertical coffins with spikes) for the unwary player.
Cloud Fortress
1. Finding the secret near the map start makes it a little difficult to proceed because of the height of the jump.
2. I finally got outdoors again. The bonus was the mountains that look like those in DooM Episode 2.
3. In one of the areas a chandelier falls and crashes on a table, which scared me shitless.
4. The laboratories were very nice looking, with various specimens suspended in glass-encased liquid, etc.
Cloud Living Quarters
1. Nice fights before the Fortress Key is picked up.
2. Very nice kitchens, storage rooms, bed chamber, library.
3. Secret library area below bed chamber is cool, with the lowering bed as a neat trick.
4. The switch in the library was not easy to find, and I had to use the walkthrough.
5. The map has excellent connectivity, including doors that only open after the player has explored the map.
6. After closing the sixth Tome and using the passageway to return to the start area, it was not clear to me that I needed to go back through the entrance door back to the Cloud Fortress. I had to use the walkthrough.
Morcalavin's Inner Sanctum
1. I had visited the area outside the Inner Sanctum on my way to the laboratories, and it was good to return there.
2. The battle with Morcalavin was quite tense, especially in the latter half when I discovered that he cannot be killed and when I was gradually losing my armor and health. It became even more tense when I realized that I had a very small window to place my Tome in the proper place. After missing the opportunity a few times and being shoved off the platform, and having to restart from a saved game because otherwise I'd be fighting Morcalavin with all his health regained, I truly realized how tense it could be.
3. The closing cut scene was well done.
4. Wonderful, moody music during the end credits.