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Hands of Necromancy - Heretic and Hexen-inspired GZDoom boomer shooter

toughasnails

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This is coming out in a couple of days and it looks like it won't be an early access release (a rarity for this genre). there is a demo avaiable.



The blurb on the store page invokes only Heretic but the hub structure, combat, visuals are much more Hexen. Which can be either a positive or a negative depending on where you come from but I'm definitely in the first category.

So try the demo or of course feel free to bitch about the game without ever planning to play it.
 
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Fedora Master

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:prosper::npc:
 

Curratum

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More fine gameplay and commentary, brought to you by your resident Russian vtuber femboy! :lol:

 

Lemming42

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The demo is fun. It does suffer a bit from being such a direct copy of Heretic/Hexen - you're using a weak-ass wand to shoot bat-gargoyle-things who are flying around shooting fire at you in a brown and grey ruined castle, they could literally release this under the name Heretic 3 or Hexen 3. But it is a quality product and plays well. Seems like it has quite an interesting range of enemies and weapons too.
 

Lemming42

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Liked the demo enough to buy this. It's fun. It's basically just Hexen (maybe leaning a little bit more toward Hexen 2 than the original), but with the twist that you're a shapeshifter. There's plenty of weapons and they're fairly effective and fun to use, but ammo is scarce enough that you're forced to use your various forms frequently, so the shapeshifting mechanic feels fully integrated into the game and not just a lame gimmick to let you past the various Metroidvania ability gates.

Recommended, toss it onto the pile of throwback shooters marked "NOT SHIT".
 

Curratum

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The issue with this for me is that I hate Hexen's guts. I mostly hate Hexen 2's guts too. The puzzles are annoying, you never feel smart or satisfied when you figure it out, it's always an annoyance and a door hunt in samey-looking mazes. If this is more of the same, it's really not the thing for me.
 

Lemming42

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Haven't come across anything as bad as Hexen 1's switch hunting so far. The game works similarly to Hexen with the hub areas where various portals must be unlocked to travel to different maps, and you've got to keep coming back to the hub to bring newfound keys and items, but there's none of Hexen's "one ninth of the bullshit nightmare puzzle has been completed" crap with switches hidden in the most obtuse locations.

Most of the puzzles are about navigation, like, the object/key/switch you need to reach is usually fairly clearly visible and the challenge is to figure out how to get up to it. After you get your shapeshifting abilities, the puzzles become more Metroidvania-y. For example, you reach a huge pool of lava that kills you when you walk on it, but you can see a key on the other side so you know there must be a way across. A bit later in another map, you find a Demon form power-up which allows you to walk across lava unharmed, so you know to travel back to the lava pit from earlier which you can now cross. Another example, you see various cracked walls in the first episode. Later, you get the Golem form, and the game tells you that it can punch through cracked walls, so you know to go back to the janky walls you saw earlier to smash through them to access new areas. Stuff like that.

There's also an objectives screen that really helps by telling you which map you should be searching in, plus a hint of what to do. Basically, imagine Hexen 2 with somewhat more intuitive map design, and the game giving you reasonably clear hints on what to do next. And much better combat.

The only real problem I had so far was navigating E1's hub area, which is a little bit sprawling to the point where it can be tricky to remember where the portals to each map are, but it's not too bad. The demo is pretty lengthy, I think it's the whole first episode, so you can get a thorough feel of the game from that.
 

Shackleton

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
Not really seeing how you play a necromancer. The title suggests controlling hordes of the undead, not shapeshifting and casting various missile spells. First inspection reveals no summoning or pets, should probably have been called 'Hands of the Shapeshifter' but guessing that doesn't get as many points on the 'cool title board' as necromancer.
 

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I bought this today but sadly due to being busy i wasn't able to play it until now - and now i need to go to sleep so i really only played for about half an hour, but it looks like it'll scratch that Hexen level design itch - the two maps i've seen are non-linear with lots of forking and twisting places, underground areas, secrets (including non-marked secrets that are secrets because, well, they're just in non-obvious places) and the game allow you to move between maps - in fact the first map has a couple of locked doors that i assume you'll find the keys in the second map. Speaking of the second map it had this in an underwater area:

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Not exactly "part 3 of 4893 of the puzzle has been solved" but i guess it has to do with the shapeshifting thing mentioned before (and i guess whatever the thing in the second map's start will give me shapeshifting power). Nice, nice.

I've barely scratched the game's surface and i don't know if it'll even be as Hexen-like as Hedon was in terms of level design, but so far it is giving me good impressions (well, and if it does end up being simpler, at least the visuals have an appropriately grimdark fantasy style). I was smiling the entire time i was playing the game :).

Not really seeing how you play a necromancer.

You can use the Hand of Necromancer item to resurrect enemy corpses that fight for you. Not sure how much it helps, the enemies are very weak at the beginning but perhaps in later stages with stronger enemies it can help (especially if there are any imp-like or other flying enemies that shoot projectiles - there are some imps or whatever they are in the early level but AFAICT they only do melee damage).
 

udm

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Looking forward to hearing your impressions on the later levels Bad Sector. It looks like a quality product. Too bad it also appears to be going the path of Arthurian Legends in terms of sales :(
 

Yeoman

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Completed the first episode, here are my thoughts on the level design:

Despite the Hexen influence, the levels have good flow (i.e. letting the player feel where he should go next without explicitly telling him) and are really well-paced. There is always a good sense of progression and a balanced mix of fast-paced exploration and combat. At the same time, the levels evoke a sense of adventure, they are interesting to traverse and each feel thematic. For example, one level starts you off in an industrial like place and you later end up in a chapel flooded with lava, that is just ridiculously cool and inspired.

The levels also use verticality, not quite to the same extent as Quake, but just enough to make it feel and play very differently from Doom-based games. The levels have a lot of tight quarters combat like in Quake, which I really enjoy, but the game still mixes in a moderate amount of wide open combat like in Doom II for an overall nice blend of varied encounter design. The game occasionally has dark areas where it becomes difficult to see, which I also enjoy and I commend the developer for not shying away from using low visibility areas or rooms in an action game.

Additionally, the combat balance is spot on, you'll want to use most of your weapons often and you'll also want to use the transformation abilities often for combat which makes the metroidvania aspect not just feel tacked on. I basically don't use the other forms in Castlevania: SotN unless it's required, but I use them a lot here. Health items are too plentiful though, but maybe that will change in later episodes.

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toughasnails

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Despite the Hexen influence, the levels have good flow (i.e. letting the player feel where he should go next without explicitly telling him)
In the first episode in particular, the "metroidvania' element (various transformations) helps a lot too. Whenever you unlock a new one you simply search for areas that can now be traversed by it (narrow passages, lava) and you p much know that's where you should focus on going next.
 

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Yeah the levels are great and the verticality with often several overlapping floors was kinda unexpected for a Doom-based game (though on the other hand it makes the automap much harder to read, especially since it fades out the other "floors"). The objective log which says stuff like "-Place A- i need to go to Place B for the Key C" helps people who might have had issues with the Hexen-like level design (though the levels are not as complex as Hexen 2).

I've only finished the first "episode" so it may improve later but two things i think would need improvement is that the levels are often very dark with low contrast (i.e. technically something like, say, Doom 3 is darker but it also has higher contrast, but Hands of Necromancy's dark areas have a dark "gray"-ish look). This has been something i noticed despite playing in a dark room with no other lightsources.

The other thing is that i'd prefer it if instead of a series of dry "you need key A to open door B" you'd get something a bit more imaginative - like how in Hexen 2 you need to crush (IIRC) Loric's bones in the Mill to build the transmutation potion to get rid of the underwater barrier that has the Castle key. From a mechanical perspective you still pick up item A to bypass obstacle B, but i find the "delivery" in Hexen 2 more interesting - and often instead of telling you outright what to do you only get a hint, so you have the additional layer of having to understand that too.

Hands of Necromancy do have some areas like that (e.g. fixing the bridge near the end of the first episode) but most detours are spelled for you outright (funny enough in the beginning of the game there was an underwater area blocked with bars that told you "Only Serpents can pass" -or something like that- and i thought that Serpents are some sort of cult or something and i'd need to find something that identifies me as one, kinda like the amulet in Hexen 2 that identifies you as member of the Brotherhood of Hunger, but no, it turns out i literally had to become a snake :-P).

Also i'd welcome some "puzzle" that is slightly more involved than pressing a button to open a door in the next room - even Duke3D had a couple of toggle button sequences that were long enough it'd take ages to brute force them and were instead found in other areas of the map.
 

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