While this game does not require a 3D accelerator card, you would be missing a lot of beautiful effects without one.  All of the magic and special effects used in the game look extra nice, even on slower Pentium machines when viewed with a Voodoo card from 3Dfx.  One of the coolest graphic features of the game is the variety that you will encounter.  The the first town, you will wander in and out of shops and homes.  The outdoor scenes are especially nice, with the ability to climb on rooftops and enjoy the view of the town from great heights.  In just the first area alone, you will traverse towns, palaces, and warehouses.  The levels themselves are very large too.  It will take you several hours just to get through a single level.  While it takes awhile to complete each stage, the game seems to play fast and features a nice variety of scenery keeping the many stages fresh. 

Heretic 2's best features lie within the rich gameplay that sets this game apart from the other clone games.  There is a cool tutorial that has practice scenarios so that you can learn the basics of control that will be required to successfully navigate through the game.  For example, your basic weapon is a staff that has many uses.  Obviously, you can use it as a melee weapon, but you have other options too.  If you run while using it, and time it just right, you will do a spinning move that can lop off any of your  enemies heads, making short work of them.   If you run and jump while using your staff, you will do a cool pole vault jump that is great for surprising enemies and for jumping to places that you could not normally get to.  You have a large variety of offensive and defensive spells at your disposal too.   The defensive spells are truly unique, and add a bit of strategy to a slightly offensive-only minded genre.  There is a large variety of weapons that you will be able to chose from too, many of them with long range capability like fireballs and bow & arrows.  In addition to the huge arsenal of weapons and magic are many moves that you will need to learn to be efficient in combat.  You'll have the ability to customize your keyboard and mouse (highly recommended).  After you have gone through the tutorial on how to navigate, and play for about an hour, you will have learned the skills needed and be able to pull them off quickly so that you will be able to enjoy the game at its fullest.

Normally, my review would be complete, but believe it or not, this game actually has a rich plot.  At certain spots within the game, a letterbox style cinema will be shown at uses your PC to 3D render the scene.  The cut-scenes add to the gameplay, making you want to continue to see what else will happen.  Even the end bosses in each level have something to say before you fight them.  This added story telling really makes a difference.

Overall, Heretic 2 would be an above average game with cool level design and really nice graphical effects.  The added gameplay features and especially the story telling through the use of cut-scene cinemas make this game a very good game, and one of the contenders for being the best game of its genre for the year.  Looking at it from a sequels perspective, Heretic 2 is light-years ahead of the original   Heretic.  Heretic 2 has everything Quake 2 has to offer with the addition of a rich plot, so if you are a fan of this genre, or have been looking for a reason to play 1st person shooter types of games, then Heretic 2 is for you!