Hexen : Beyond Heretic

Hexen: Beyond Heretic on Dreamcast is a 2002 community port of Raven Software's 1995 dark-fantasy first-person game, originally published by id Software. The Dreamcast version is associated with Bero's SDL-based port and brings Hexen's demon-haunted adventure to Sega's console. Its setting follows the events of Heretic: the Serpent Rider Korax has conquered the realm of Cronos, and one of three heroes must fight through his strongholds to end the invasion.

Before beginning, players choose Baratus the Fighter, Parias the Cleric, or Daedolon the Mage. That decision changes the feel of the campaign: Baratus favors hard-hitting close combat, Daedolon relies on ranged magic but is more vulnerable, and Parias occupies the middle ground with a mix of melee and distance attacks. Each class has its own weapons and attributes, so the same route can demand different tactics on another playthrough.

Hexen's action is built around exploration as well as combat. Players search medieval-fantasy environments for keys, switches, quest items, ammunition, and magical supplies while facing monsters in first-person view. An inventory of usable artifacts adds another layer to encounters, letting the chosen hero save helpful items for dangerous rooms or difficult enemies. The Dreamcast port supports joystick, keyboard, and mouse input, along with sound and VMU saving.

Rather than sending the player through a strictly one-way sequence of levels, Hexen connects areas through hub worlds. Progress often depends on activating something in one location, carrying its consequence back through the hub, and opening a new path elsewhere. This structure makes observation and backtracking part of the journey, whether the hero is exploring dungeons, wilderness, a seminary, a castle, or the Necropolis on the road to Korax.

For Dreamcast players, Hexen preserves the unusual blend that made the original distinct from science-fiction shooters of its era: spellcasting, medieval weapons, character classes, and puzzle-linked spaces all share the same adventure. The port's Dreamcast-specific support for several control methods and compressed VMU saves gives this version its own place among community software for the system, while its campaign remains the Cronos quest created by Raven Software.