This expansion offers more of the same, but slightly refined and with a higher difficulty. It does not feature any new weapons or enemies (I haven't fought the boss yet but I'm near the end and I don't think they'll surprise me this late), which is a slight disappointment, but I found the level design better and more interesting here compared to in the main game, and I found the switch-puzzles more intuitive and thus more enjoying (or perhaps I'm just accustomed to hunting for switches now since I played this directly after I finished the main game). In any case, if you enjoyed the main game and want more then you can't go wrong with this expansion since it's more of the same (which is why it gets the same score as I gave the main game).
This game is a sequel to Heretic, I do not know why they've opted to change the title, but in everything but name the game is clearly set in the same world and seems to take place after the first one. However, Hexen opts to switch this up quite a bit. The mood of the game is darker and it is more atmospheric, which is a good thing. But along with these changes they've opted to make the game less focused on action, and much more focused on solving vague "puzzles" (I hesitate to call them puzzles because they amount to running around and scouring every inch of the map for a myriad of different switches, which open up doors or walls at other parts of the map, quite often very far away and with little indication of where you should go after you've pulled the switch). I must say that I'm not a fan of this new focus for the game at all, and I don't quite understand what design decision led them to the conclusion that this was a good idea. A large part of my playtime so far (I'm at the last section as I'm typing this) has been spent on running back and forth between already explored and empty areas searching for what part of the level was opened up by the latest switch I pulled, so that I might find another switch and do the same thing again (and again). In any case, the game is not bad by any means, but I would much have preferred if they stuck closer to the Heretic-design and overall I'd have to recommend Heretic over Hexen.
I played this game expecting a bigger and better, or at least refined, version of Supreme Commander, but that is not what I got. The game takes the unfathomable move of reworking the resource system to work more like they do in traditional RTS-games, rather than the energy and metal balancing that has been present through Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. You can no longer queue units like you were able to before, paying for things piece by piece as you gather energy and metal, you instead purchase them wholesale and when you dont' have more resources, tough luck, better wait until you have them before pressing the build button. I hear that this has been reversed in a patch after some time, but I can't imagine that this would work well when the game is built around the new economy system. To me that single decision breaks the entire game, and it now feels like some corporate investors wanted to make the game "more like C&C", leaving the game feeling more generic and just lacking in soul and identity.
