Continuing on in Heretic, I started running across even more new weapons in the second episode, like the firemace and phoenix rod, roughly analogous to a grenade launcher and rocket launcher, respectively.

The rest of episode 2 was fairly uneventful, though I missed the secret level. The final boss turned out to be a pair of minotaur-like creatures, which weren’t too dangerous as long as I maintained my distance, but they had tons of health.

Episode 3 started out rough though, with plenty of the more dangerous monsters right off the bat, including iron liches, before I’d barely found any weapons. I just barely managed to squeak through in spots, mainly by avoiding the first iron lich completely. This episode also introduced a naga-like creature with a rapid-fire low-damage attack, with the twist that the first attack is followed up with a stronger single blast a split second later, so if you strafe to the side to dodge the initial volley, you could still get hit by the second.

The ‘final’ boss had two phases: at first he’s riding some kind of hell-dino-horse-thing, and he’s fairly easy to beat since he only has a close-range attack. Then comes the really annoying part, where he starts summoning in those annoying wizards like crazy. My only hope was to just keep constantly moving so that the wizards wouldn’t hit me, firing at the boss when possible, which wasn’t often because he’d teleport around, quite often just after I’d caught up with him and only hit him once or twice. It took a couple tries, but I lucked out and down he went.

That ends the original Heretic episodes, and although there are two ‘expansion’ episodes, I don’t think I’m going to bother with them. I’ve had my fill of nostalgia for now, and other games await.