Heretic II (1998) - MobyGames (2025)

The Good
While short on actual role-play elements, the fantasy world in Heretic II was well designed (the levels themselves another story, though). The different environments, from the city where you start the game through to the tower of the final boss, look beautiful, and the game does have a few exceptional set pieces.

The Good
Heretic II, unlike the games before it, is an action/adventure. Defiantly. This sets it apart from the previous games in the series, which were merely First Person Shooters with some adventure elements (although perhaps Hexen II was a little bit more).

Heretic II takes place in a high fantasy world. The action begins immediately as Our Hero realizes there is something wrong in his home town that he has just returned to.

The game uses two types of weapons-- Spells and Weapons. Spells take Green Mana, and weapons take their specific type of ammo. All of these weapons are very well designed with great particle effects, and they each have unique strategies. Phoenix Arrows are devastating, but they can blow you up as easily as your enemy, while Sphere of Annihilation spells aren't as powerful, but don't hurt you.

There is also a smattering of defensive magics at your disposal, which use The Other White-- er, I mean Blue Mana. They aren't as useful, but they are fun and come in handy when a real big fight comes up.

Also at your hero's disposal is a kind of polearm. The fighting with this is really well done and it melds well with the fast action of the game. As the game advances, you will make your polearm more powerful, making it more useful then even some pretty deadly magics and weapons.

Not a single one of these spells and weapons was a disappointment; not only was the selection larger then in most a/a games, but they were simply better. This was very impressive.

Another high point is the animation. In most games, characters will switch clumsily from one animation to the other, making it look very crude. Not so with Heretic II. All animations blend almost seamlessly into each other, and great detail has been put into them. If you are standing on a narrow ledge, one of your feet might realistically dangle off the side.

The 3d models themselves are well made, especially given when the title was made. The game suffers from 'pixel swimming', but other then that the graphics would have fit in in a game made many years later.

The storyline is mediocre, but that's not the primary thing that drives the game. There is also none of the hub-action that made Hexen II fun-- well, there is [i]one[/i] hub that you use for [i]one[/i] adventure, but that's it. This means puzzles are a whole lot easier to solve.

The AI is brilliant. I wish action games of today has this quality AI. The early foes are stupid and weak, but that is on purpose; later in the game, you'll meet enemies who can 'phase' to teleport anywhere around you, throw knives at your back, and disappear the moment you throw stuff at them. Each new enemy takes a new tactic to beat! One of the harder ones were large green reptilian birds that would line themselves up for a swooping attack out of the sky, and then fly straight down at you for the kill. If they did kill you, they'd take your head away with them when they flew off! Touches like this make the game really great.

The puzzles were a disappointment-- they were even easier then in Hexen II. Every one was 'go here, get this, come back and go to the next level'.

The Good
Lots of action comes packed in this simple yet satisfying offering from Raven. Heretic 2 picks up after the end of the original Heretic: you kill the serpent rider but get whisked away to some weird dimension, never to be seen again. By sheer luck, you find a way to return to your plane yet once you get there the elven town you called home lies infested by a strange plague of magical origins. Being the only one uninfected it is up to you to save the world, kill the bad guy, restore democracy and get the girl. Well, I made some of that up, but you get the idea right? A serviceable standard action game plot that is moved along by engine-rendered cutscenes as you go figuring out what the heck is going on around you.

In between you get to fight against tons of excellently designed fantasy creatures with an arsenal of magical weapons and spells that make full use of the engine's lightning features and spill forth a pletora of colorful lights and effects. Truly the guys at Raven knew how to exploit the engine to the max, and included all sorts of details like the aforementioned spell effects, great animations and dead on control thanks to the use of the standard fps control scheme.

Plus it can be pretty funny to try on deathmatch!! All that magic whiz-bang going around makes for quite a trippy experience!