While Hexen is technically competent, the experience itself is more frustrating than fun.
Hexen is set an indeterminate period of time after Raven's other Doom-engined game Heretic,, set on the world Kronus, which is inhabited by humans unlike the elf world of Hexen. After D'Sparil was defeated by the elves, his stronger brother Korax came to Kronus to take a crack at the mortals. He conquered all the world except for the three heroes of the game: Baratus the fighter, Parias the cleric, and Daedolon the mage. Just like in Hexen, there's no sign of your fallen compatriots, except for the ubiquitous Ettin monsters, which are said to be the corrupted remnants of Kronus's armies.
Hexen is the first, and still one of the only single-player FPS games with multiple player classes. There's the fighter, who is fast and strong but relies mainly on close-quarters attacks; the cleric, who is middle of the road in his speed, strength, and range; and the mage, a frail character who wields powerful magical attacks. With any character except the Mage, you will be getting in melee range often.
While fast, brutal hack-and-slash combat could be excellent, Hexen's gameplay. Both the player and the monsters have too many hitpoints and take a lot of hits to kill. Especially as the Cleric, killing a monster in the first few levels requires a tedious sequence of attacks and dodges. Doing this eighty times per level is not fun at all, and the consequences for a mistake are fairly light. Only the fighter has some of the hectic pace that made Doom so great.
The graphics are good by 1995 standards, with flashy weapon effects, translucency, and fog (a first for the Doom engine). Hexen adds a powerful scripting engine (later recycled and expanded for the ZDoom source port) to the Doom engine, although in Hexen many of the scripted sequences are largely gimmicks (one of the more memorable scripted events is in the Shadow Wood, when an earthquake strikes and a stone pathway collapses under your feet). Still, Hexen is overshadowed graphically by contemporaries like Tyrian and Terminal Velocity.
The sounds are good, with lots of creepy monster noises, painful-sounding weapon impacts. Especially satisfying is the crack on impact of the fighter's fist, which is the only really fun weapon in the game due to its good damage, good speed, and entertaining double-power punch every third strike. Unfortunately, the music is largely forgettable, with boring Gregorian chant songs on the CD and quiet, boring midi tracks if you would prefer not to use the CD. However, you can pop your own CD in and the game will play tracks from it.
Unfortunately, the game is let down by frustrating and poorly conceived puzzle gameplay. Many puzzles make you search several levels for various key items to unlock a new area. Hexen's hub system joins many of the game's 40 maps into several super-levels. Within these assemblies of levels, one may miss items or some element of the puzzle required to unlock one (Hexen often has puzzles within puzzles), requiring you to search levels over and over again. Sometimes a locked door will just stare you in the face and make you wonder what you did wrong. Even the boss level has several scripted traps that will lead to several cheap kills before you figure out how the traps work (hint: don't stand in the middle of the aisle).
Like Doom, Hexen features very limited multiplayer with palette-swapped players, only with eight players instead of four. The multiplayer was largely pointless even in 1995 since Hexen multiplayer was (a) not very fun, (b) the maps were not very good for multiplayer, and (c) overshadowed by the highly popular Doom multiplayer. Very few players will play Hexen outside of singleplayer.
While Hexen is technically competent, the experience itself is more frustrating than fun. The game itself will take you several hours to complete at the minimum, and the tedious gameplay and irritating switch and item puzzles will turn many players off long before them. Some may like the puzzles, although there are games that do it better, but if you're just in for a brutal good time, you're better off playing Doom, Quake, or even Rise of the Triad.
What's Hot: Good graphics for 1995 (even if it is the Doom engine dressed up), interesting fantasy setting, longer than most early FPS games, actually requires you to think on occasion
What's Not: Dull, slow-paced fighting, irritating and poorly-executed puzzles, lame music,
Also Try: Doom, Heretic, Rise of the Triad, Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake