I've finished
Hexen II, through the Hammer of Thyrion sourceport.
I used the openGL executable of the sourceport but with settings that make it look like the software mode, it looks really nice but then again I have always found the Quake engine to hold up really well at high resolutions. I has a very minimalistic aestethic that really shines at higher rendering resolutions. You can still use software mode with a separate executable but it's limited to 4:3 resolutions.
I didn't bother with importing the CD music and just went with the MIDI tracks as with VirtualMIDIsynth and the Timbres of Heaven 3.94 soundbank it sounds just as good if not a bit better than the CD recordings (which makes me think they might just be sound canvas recordings like with the first Hexen) and it's much less fiddlly, I only had to lower the volume using the VirtualMIDIsynth equalizer since my chosen soundbank is a bit too loud.
I've played with the Crusader, the Necromancer is a villain protagonist according to the manual and in the end the exclusion of something like the wand the mage had in the first Hexen in favour of a melee weapon makes it more into an evil version of the crusader anyway.
There are experience points that allow to unlock one or two not very useful abilities and get you more health and mana so they probably took out respawning enemies to avoid level grinding though at least it is possible now to just concentrate on the puzzles once you clear all monsters. The puzzles are also a bit more elaborate, especially considering the environments it sort of feels like a first person Tomb Raider with much less platforming.
Except that I was stuck with the zodiac puzzle in the ancient Egypt part because one of the clues is apparently wrong or several depending on the way you look at it, I'm frankly surprised there was this big of an oversight especially considering this game was made pre-internet and is not a Sierra adventure game.
After the ancient Egypt part the puzzles get back to being fairly easy and more a matter of exploration than anything else with no misleading clues that I could find.
The ancient Rome/Greece part tends to be low on ammo though and I had to use the Kraters of Might I had in inventory several times to refill my mana, which was rather unfortunate since the last two horsemen will put a strain on your reserve of health and mana artifacts.
The return to Blackmarsh fared a bit better in that regard and I was able to build the reserve of health artifacts back up before the final boss.
Note that I was playing on the default difficulty which is also the easiest but considering how the last two horsemen and certain enemies are I might have spared myself a good amount of frustration.
In my quest for the backlog I've also finished
Sam & Max: Hit The Road.
One of the few Lucasarts adventures I didn't complete in my younger days, I did start it at a certain point but for some reason I never went through with it.
I think it might have been because the interface is a bit awkward to use. It uses an animated cursor that is too big for pixel hunting and often only highlights an object if a possible action is selected which makes finding interactive spots a bit more of a chore than usual. There is also no visible verb bar. The GOG version comes with the hintbook in the game folder however which allowed me to actually being able to pick up objects and interactive spots that I completely passed over because the bigass cursor and absence of the verb bar didn't allow me to pick they weren't supposed to be part of the object/interactive spot beside them. Then of course there was me being a dumbass that often forgot the game runs on cartoon logic.
Really, though teenage-to-early-twenties me was much more adept at adventure games in general and considering I wasn't particularly good either that's saying something (I remember a guy in my class who solved
Monkey Island 3 at Mega Monkey difficulty in three days
by himself).
Finished Hexen: Deathkings of The Dark Citadel
I don't know if the final battle being that easy is supposed to be a relief or anticlimatic.
I've been playing this expansion at the default difficulty like the base game but the respawn rate and what respawns just put too much pressure when you are supposed to explore the levels to find weird secret passages that you need just to proceed with the game.
Playing Hexen for a short while last year made me realise I don't play many games with instant-death conditions similar to bottomless pits.
It's not really that bad, but I am someone who played Dark Forces keyboard-only on and off for twenty years so I'm probably fairly used to it.
