Hands of Necromancy II

I have a soft spot for small teams doing things big studios abandoned in 1997, so Hands of Necromancy II landed squarely in my wheelhouse the moment I saw it running on GZDoom with pixel-perfect sprite enemies and a color palette that feels genuinely oppressive in the best way. This is a dark-fantasy first-person shooter built in the tradition of Heretic and Hexen, but it is not a nostalgia cash-in. The HON Team, essentially a one-person French operation by developer Emmanuel Frechou, has constructed something with its own identity: a magic-slinging, corpse-raising FPS that earns its place beside the retro shooters it admires. The character choice is the most interesting structural decision here. You pick either Acheron, the returning Crimson Mage from the first game, or Phaedra, a newly introduced Dark Witch with a completely separate spell set. Acheron carries a Magical Sword and a Fire Staff, picks up a Frost Ring that rail-pierces through enemy lines, and leans into a more resource-tight playstyle where ammo pressure is real. Phaedra counters with a life-draining Dagger, a Bracelet of Fire, and a Hell Grenade that fragments across a wide area. The two characters play so differently that community players report the difficulty gap between them is notable - Phaedra tends to feel more fluid, Acheron demands tighter resource discipline. Both share the core necromancy mechanic: fallen enemies can be raised as temporary undead allies, which shifts the feel from pure run-and-gun toward something a little more tactical and strange. The transformation system is where the game finds its most original voice. Rather than simply unlocking new weapons, you gain monster forms with traversal utility baked in. The Swamp Serpent lets you slither through tight corridors and spit acid. Hell Burner grants immunity to lava and acid surfaces. Stone Breaker punches through cracked walls. These are not just combat tools; they are also the keys to secret areas and level progression, giving the sprawling 27-level campaign a Metroidvania texture that the original game leaned into harder. One criticism players raise is that the sequel pulls back on that hub-and-key exploration feel compared to the first game, making it slightly more linear - and the backtracking required to find Skull Keys and Snake Keys in the large stages can shade into the classic 90s frustration of wandering corridors wondering what you missed. That is a genuine tension the game does not fully resolve. Level design is serviceable rather than inspired in stretches, and the difficulty curve has abrupt spikes that can feel unearned. Where it earns goodwill is in its atmosphere and soundtrack. The score is composed by Spanish musician ASCIIMOV (Oscar Martin), and it does exactly what a gothic FPS soundtrack should: it stays in the room with you, dark and propulsive, without becoming wallpaper. The voice acting is charmingly imperfect, delivered with French accents into English lines, and it gives the characters a personality that a lot of budget boomer shooters sand away in favor of generic growls. There are cutscenes rendered as animated still images that communicate story beats without pretending to a budget the project does not have. That honesty about its own scale is something I respect in small releases. Steam players currently rate it Very Positive, and that feels right. It is not the rarefied tier of Dusk or Hrot, but it is solidly in Ion Fury territory for the genre faithful. If you have never touched the first Hands of Necromancy, the sequel is self-contained enough to start here. If you loved the first game's denser Hexen-like puzzle structure, know that the sequel trades some of that complexity for a broader character roster and a more forgiving ammo economy. Both tradeoffs are arguable. What is not arguable is that 27 levels, 26 enemy types, 4 bosses, two distinct playthroughs, and a GZDoom engine that supports Vulkan rendering represent serious value from a project that most gaming press ignored at launch. Kai, Scout Team