NightFright, on 21 August 2025 - 01:07 PM, said:
After playing the first three episodes of the remaster (with enhancements), I gotta say this version of Heretic feels like a new, different game. Not only have the levels been modified to such an extent that they can be considered completely remade from scratch - many of the weapons are now so strong that the Tome of Power almost becomes entirely redundant.
Admittedly, the original Heretic had a very low amount of textures and looked boring after a while with its repetitive visual designs. But does it justify such drastic changes? As a mod I'd have no problems with it, but as an official re-release, I'd prefer if the new content had been some sort of DLC or at least a separate menu option you have to choose deliberately, not a default you need to deselect first to get the original experience.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate this remaster and the effort that went into it. However, it could have been realized with a softer, more sensitive approach. Personally I'll probably play the enhanced stuff once before returning to the originals I know and love.
Honestly, I cannot decide if making the enhanced levels the default is good or bad. After all, this is marketed as a remaster and you get the DOS originals if you hadn't purchased them before anyway.
I did not immediately realise the extent of changes from playing through the first couple of levels from E1, but firing up E2 and E3 it was immediately obvious that the levels got a considerable overhaul -- and so far I can say it feels like a moderate improvement, actually. I have to confess that although
Heretic was the first
Doom engine game that I ever played (but very briefly and I was little), it was never one of my top favourite games. I appreciated the shareware E1 that I played much later in the early 2010s, and I do believe that it's kinda more varied than
Doom's E1, but when I decided to try the DOS registered episodes last year, it felt a bit more like a disappointment really. I got to E2L3 and the design felt a bit repetitive, with all the caves and lava and more caves and more lava. The overhauled levels in the remaster appear to introduce more variety to this, giving off some
HeXen vibes in certain places, even.
There's still the option to switch back to the original levels, isn't there? I think it's fine. After all, there are games from the 90s where the shareware version had even more drastic changes in level design between releases, check out
Radix for example.
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