Quake was a game changer it popularized 3D game game engines and forced all of us to get a 3D Accelerator. Or well some of us. I personally played on Software mode and didn't get a GPU till like 1998. Hexen II is not Quake, and in some ways more important than Quake. While Quake dazzled us with its engine and speed Hexen II showed us what that actually meant. Games with 3D engines made by the best. Up till now most companies made their own bespoke engines for their game, but id had been licensing their engines out now for a while and Quake is where it really takes off. Raven Software is that studio that takes engines id makes and then turns them into real games that aren't just tech demos.
Third in Raven Software's Serpent Rider Trilogy Hexen II released in fall 1997. If you are at all familiar with this game then you are probably wondering "well is it any good?", and depending on who you ask you are going to get myriad of answers. It's hard and fairly unforgiving. It's confusing and doesn't hold your hand at all. it is like the antithesis of modern game design in so many ways. This makes it fairly inaccessible to a larger audience. You have to really put in the effort to play Hexen II.
The system requirements look rather quant by today's standards but back in the day this got a lot of people to upgrade to a Pentium for that raw speed. GL Hexen was pretty much the same as GLQuake outside of improved lighting. 3dfx Voodoo cards where the mainstay here.
I am rather lucky enough to have a pristine complete copy of the game. Inside it has the game disc the registration card and a lore booklet. yes this game has a very large lore booklet of which I am going to show off a few pages. I miss the days when getting a game was more then just getting a digital code.
The game has Four classes with very distinct play styles and let's be honest the Assassin is broken lol.
Like many of the games I show here they are available digitally on GOG, but if you have a heart try to track down the physical game and an ancient PC to play it on in software mode preferably.