Hands of Necromancy II first playthrough: Episode 1
1With the Hexen-inspired HoN1 behind us, it's time to focus on its sequel - which I initially wasn't expecting at all.
HoN2 plays a bit closer to Heretic in terms of episode design - the expansion episode in HoN1 turned out to be a rather accurate preview. In addition, however, we have a choice between 2 characters - Acheron, from the first game, and Phaedra, a new character introduced in this game. While their weapons and transformations are unique, each respective slot shares similar properties for simplicity of progression; e.g. in both cases weapon 3 can freeze, and the first transformation makes the character smaller.
Since Acheron's weapons and transformations are exactly the same as in the first game, I'm playing as Phaedra in this one. This turns out to also affect most of the game's cutscenes - which take the place of intermission text screens. Unfortunately, I'd say I actually enjoyed the text screens more - they were far more well-written, whereas the voice work in this involves extremely basic writing, is awkwardly enunciated at times which can make it hard to understand, and lacks subtitles entirely (which is particularly odd since even boss dialogue includes them). It's neat to see the artwork and animations involved in the cutscenes though.
Another change I can't not mention is the soundtrack. Luke Jansen did such a fantastic job nailing "Heretic/Hexen but in 202x" in the first game and I was really looking forward to more of that, but we've got a different composer entirely this time around, which seemed pretty clear right from the get-go with the title music which wastes no time building excitement. While this soundtrack is no slouch, I definitely feel like it lacks the charm of the HoN1 OST, and some of the songs in HoN2 feel like they meander without a plan until ultimately ending in a completely different area code from where they began.
I was curious what the developers would invent as bosses in this game, since the premise seems to be "hey, I thought Acheron killed all the monsters last time, what gives?" The boss of E1 is a bit of a neat surprise, but left me wondering whether or not there would in fact be unique bosses in E2 and E3...
PS: If you do want to hear more of Luke Jansen who composed for the first game, he's got a YouTube channel, +lukejansen3540