Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-1915529-20120523190003/@comment-1496755-20120529072125

Heretic II is pretty cool because it introduces something unexpected - third-person view. This adds a new dimension to jumps, climbing and melee fights with the Staff (which feel slightly similar to the lightsaber fights from Jedi Knight).

Hexen uses a very advanced version of the Doom engine and thus offers a lot of new features. Monsters start using some interesting tricks - some carry shields that can reflect your shots back at you, others lurk underwater. Even if you kill everything in a level, you won't be safe - many maps have scripts running in background that spawn small groups of new monsters at random locations in random time intervals. Also, the environment itself features new traps - like poisoned arrows, which make you lose some health for a few more seconds after you've been hit (until the poison wears off).

Hexen II brings a lot of cool enhancements to the Quake engine and, of course, enemies are affected by them. You can expect to see monsters that teleport around, can paralyse you, make the ground shake when they stomp it with their foot, and other unusual effects. Another new feature is readable objects (a window with text appears on the screen when you touch them) - you have probably seen the message near the start of the game, which gives some basic clues about the hub's main puzzle.

There are the familiar centered messages as well, just as in Quake. They usually appear to notify you that some object is unusal (related to a puzzle, useful or dangerous in some way). Therefore - you should keep your eyes open all the time - explore everywhere and touch everything.