[First Playthrough done on Hardcore using only Auto-Saves]

Hedon episode 1 is a fine but deeply flawed intro. There's a lot to love in its pastel looking environments and great sense of place where you feel like you are exploring a (very horny) culture in areas filled with decent puzzles to solve and stories to be uncovered, sometimes happening at the same time as the player, but gets bogged down by areas that are too wide for the type of enemies the game has, feeling like it never manages to balance exploration and combat in their design with some very dull and long slaughtermap sections in flat arenas that only require basic circle strafing and some very odd mix of music genres with tracks that are decent in a vacuum but get used in unfitting moments. It's an experience that gets better as it goes along with some good moments but the issues never truly go away.

Hedon 2/Episode 2 however is a fantastic experience that improves on what was already great and what was lacking in episode 1. The environments while still feeling vast and complex have more cramped areas where enemies can be used to their full effect with obligatory fights being more small encounters with good combination of enemies and less long waves of hordes, all while not sacrificing the believability of the environments that are now less linear in its progression thanks to episode 2 going for a hub approach rather than a linear level progression. While the hub system can make puzzles more obtuse due to having to explore multiple areas they are designed in a way that rewards paying attention to your surroundings and reading things carefully, what you need to do never becomes confusing or feel like you were given misguiding hints. But the most important part is how they add to the adventure, NPCs come and go from neutral areas, conquered locations get a guard or two keeping an eye on things, companions will comment on old areas you have been and unmarked quests will reward people willing to seek them, they are small details that really add to these locations feeling lived in, making it easy to grow attached to them by the time you have to leave, all this coupled with the more diverse biomes that get more fantastical and unique as you go along makes Bloodrite feel more grandiose but also more intimate compared to the green forests and lava caves of the prequel. The way it uses its music is more consistent and fitting of the situations and areas you are in with soothing tracks accompanying most of the early areas while leaving the metal tracks with its heavy riffs and fast tempo to the action focused levels, it never feels jarring and executes on its promise of a multi-genre soundtrack with the unique individual tracks being better and mixing well with the licensed unused Unreal music.

My only major complaints is that I feel the enemy roster isn't quite there yet, there isn't enough roles being filled (knife cultists in particular feeling like filler) with a function overlap between some of the them and I wish the rewards for the more obtuse optional riddles and puzzles were more unique, there's 2 unique items in the game that get rewarded like that and their usefulness can be debatable due to being placed so late into the game.

If I was only reviewing episode 2 then the rating would be higher but as it stands as a full package Crystal Heart is a decent but flawed introduction to the amazing game that is Bloodrite. This won't appeal to the people that only care for doom engine experiences that involve pistol starting God machine with no saves but if you enjoy exploration driven FPSes with a sense of adventure and fun but obtuse puzzles like Hexen 2 and don't mind how horny game can be at times then I 100% recommend sticking to it all the way to bloodrite even if you end up not enjoying Episode 1.

Also best flamethrower of 2019.