Dark Souls is a series that has become synonymous with difficulty, skill, and consistently dying. This kind of skill-based combat was eventually named after the series in the form of Souls-like or Soulsborne games. However, before FromSoftware was able to establish its reputation for the most difficult games around, Raven Software had created Hexen: Beyond Heretic. Utilizing the DOOM engine and upping the difficulty and grim environment, Hexen has enjoyed a reputation for its fast pace, dark tones, and unforgiving gameplay. If any game could be rightly claimed as the first-person equivalent to Dark Souls, it would definitely be Hexen.
Arriving on home consoles 14 years prior to Dark Souls, Hexen was id Software’s sequel to Heretic and the second entry in the Serpent Riders trilogy. Each game in the series followed the protagonist as they traveled between dark and hellish realms in an attempt to slay one of the Serpent Riders, evil monsters not unlike the horsemen of the apocalypse. Hexen was the first game of the trilogy to give players a choice between three playable classes – barbarian, cleric, or mage – which each had unique stats and weapons for fighting demonic denizens. While Heretic was more of a high fantasy palette swap for DOOM, Hexen began incorporating more difficult mechanics that players hadn’t seen before.
Hexen was made up of several hub locations with branching portals. Rather than entering every room one by one, eliminating the enemy, and moving on, Hexen had to complicate things in a way all too familiar for Dark Souls players. Discovering a switch or solving a puzzle would activate something in an entirely different location within the hub area. Hidden paths were not just secret bonuses, they were necessary to complete the game, and much like the Souls series, there was no guides or markers for players. Just like Dark Souls, players would be expected to explore the decaying, gothic realms in search of their own answers without any help or prompt on the next objective.
Hexen Laid The Groundwork For More Difficult & Complex Games Like Dark Souls
The comparison to Dark Souls doesn’t end there either. Each of the three classes has access to only four weapons: a starting weapon with unlimited ammo, and three unlockable weapons which consume blue mana, green mana, or both. Each weapon is useful in different situations, but the enemies are relentless and will easily swarm the player. The cleric’s mace, for example, takes roughly half a dozen hits to slay a single enemy despite the fact players will often find themselves surrounded. Repeatedly dying is an expected part of the game as players learn to adapt to this dismal environment.
This is, of course, without considering Dark Souls‘ narrative and aesthetic similarities as well. Hexen drops the players into dark forests, dungeons, a seminary, and a necropolis – each with gothic overtones. These places are dark and unsettling, surrounded by twisting paths and hidden areas in a complex network. The player is tasked with combating an ancient evil to bring peace to the realms and is encouraged to find their own way through the darkness.
Hexen earned its reputation for being a difficult experience. With swarms of powerful enemies, limited weapons to defeat them, complex puzzles, and tasks that span entire environments with absolutely no guidance on how to complete them, it’s easy to see how Dark Souls and Hexen can be comfortably spoken about in the same breath. Given that Hexen is 14 years older than Dark Souls, however, it may be better to state Dark Souls is the action RPG of Hexen.
