First five levels: great introduction to the world with lots of notes to read here and there as you piece out what has been happening.
MAP06: the first half, with exposition, is interesting and atmospheric, at least on a first playthrough. The second part, against the baddie, was tedious. First there's the sneaky part, which is far too linear. I reached the elevator in the throwback-to-first-level part and there I was stuck. There was one Nathriel right outside that camped me out. And another waiting in the room at the end of the corridor. I tried waiting a lot (pointless), I tried going back down and trying to lure them away then running right back up (pointless too and also the already-dodged Nathriels were still around of course), to no avail, I was locked out in an unwinnable situation. So screw it, I decide to just sneak past these two with freeze. They're immune to freeze. Okay, cool. Are they immune to mdk? No, they're not. Alright, onward to the next part! And that last part is a long, tedious boss fight. Grab axe, throw axe, dodge, repeat for a while, then eventually some other weapons appear but it still takes a long, long,
long while. Not a fan of this level.
MAP07 to MAP09: back to the cool exploration/puzzle/action gameplay. No complaint there.
MAP10: first part, I did it all wrong, heh. For some reason I missed the air statuette that's probably intended to be the first you find, since it's in the center room. I first went through the water puzzle, saw the water columns, swam up, explored the ceiling, jumped down to the elevated opening, and from there grabbed the water statuette. Then next was the fire room. I heavily dislike timed platforming in the Doom engine, so savescummed through that part. Got the fire statuette and symbol. Melted the ice in the water part, got the water emblem. Now there was just the issue of air and earth. The earth area being toxic, it was obvious I needed the air statuette to cleanse it. But it was also obvious I needed the earth statuette to explore the air area. I did find out that shooting the glowy symbols on the walls opened something, and there was a ledge running all around the cavern, so after several tries I managed to strafe jump there. No way to reach the cloud spiral, but I did reach the part I had opened, and found out an unmarked secret. No statuette. Drat. So then I went to the earth cavern, and used the time stop shards to sneak past the poison clouds. Grabbed earth statuette and emblem, activated air pedestal with earth statuette, got air emblem. Still no air statuette anywhere. Oh well, got all four emblems, let's go to the central pillary thing -- and that's where I saw the air statuette mocking me.
Anyway once that was done and after some exploration, we finally meet some survivors who can actually serve a purpose. However by this point I've been so accustomed to progressing slowly and carefully alone that I didn't want to bother with AI partners who'd just get killed instantly, so I just told them to stay put. I cheesed the hell out of the library area by using the elevator to squash enemies, that was fun. Then I saw the dormant golems, had the bright idea of pushing them to the elevator kill zone by bashing them with the axe (they move a bit when hit even though invulnerable while dormant), and thus locked myself out since once the elevator was stuck trying to crush them, it was no longer possible to go back up to open the door. Heh. It's true what they say, too much cheese is bad for you. Had to reload a previous save and fight the ninja dolls for real, sigh.
Moving on to the final boss, well it was again another tedious endurance trial as you ever so slowly whittle down a tank's massive supply of hit points, while trying to dodge its bullet hell attacks, and then there are more enemies pouring in to make the task more complex. Thankfully I had a bunch of items saved. And then the end.
IMO the boss fights are the weakest part of the experience. I get that it's hard to make a challenging boss without making it a hit point sponge, but honestly I'd rather be disappointed by an anticlimactic pushover boss than disappointed by an endless fight against a spongy boss. I feel that if I play through Hedon again, I'll just skip the bosses with mdk.
Moving away from map-specific feedback. Most normal enemies are okay but I feel like two of them aren't signaling their attacks well. The shieldmaiden when it's blocking attacks with its shield will end her defensive posture with a "shing sound" and that hurts you. I never noticed her actually attacking -- if there's an animation of her stabbing with her blade or something it's not visible enough. The cerberus, when lounging, is able to hurt you even if it doesn't actually connect -- I was hurt by one bumping against a crate I was using for cover, for example. So it seems that it has a radius damage effect when doing that, too, which could be shown by an aura of flames or something. As is, it just looks like a collision detection bug.
I apologize because my feedback tends to focus on the negative and nitpicky things. I'm terrible at praising the things I like!
I did enjoy it a lot overall, except for the end parts of MAP06 and MAP10. The levels are wonderfully detailed and coherent, it does truly seem like an consistent world we're exploring, and combat against the mooks is very satisfying. The axe is especially fun to throw (it's just too bad we can't dual-wield to have two to throw in a row) so much that I kinda underused the other weapons until the massed battles of the last level.
Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 3:30 pm
