After killing Cirae-Argoth, the game ends with a cinematic sequence showing her corpse turn into a skeleton, which then suddenly rises and attempts to flee while laughing until it's hit and shattered by Grondoval's magic missile. Grondoval loses consciousness and awakens in a different location. The dragon Ikethsti arrives again to tell a cryptic message, saying the whole plot was really an elaborate set up as Cirae-Argoth was not her real master and Grondoval's kindred has never disappeared; it was actually only Grondoval who has vanished. (This scene directly contradicts much of what was written in the game's manual, including text beyond the introduction section) Ikethsti also tells him his trials are far from over, and they will see each other again (apparently hinting at another sequel that has never arrived). In the final scene, the witch's skull swallows a butterfly and vanishes into the ground while ominous music plays. Computer Gaming World, baffled by the ending cutscene, included it in their 1996 list of the least rewarding endings of all time. Reception Witchaven II received mostly poor reviews. Computer and Video Games criticized the quality of the game's cinematic cutscenes and the enemy AI, as well as its overall feel of a rushed expansion to the first Witchaven instead of a more proper sequel. A review in Next Generation said that the game "is an improvement over the original, but it doesn't stack up to comparable games in its genre." The reviewer argued that hand-to-hand combat from a first-person perspective is intrinsically unexciting since the player character can neither aim nor move around as much, and complained of controls that are less than responsive. However, he praised the Build level editor as being better documented than the one in Duke Nukem 3D. Brett Jones of PC Gamer US wrote: "Where Duke takes players on a wickedly frantic and bloody ride, Witchaven II has you slogging, trundling, and hacking your way through dark levels and mindless enemies from start to finish," and adding: "If the controls weren’t so bad and the enemies so boneheaded, you might find Witchaven II’s sinister design a welcome change from the norm. But those little touches aren’t enough." Daniel Jevons of Maximum panned the game, saying that "The graphics are sluggish (despite using the same engine as Duke), the controls are unresponsive, the collision detection is dodgy (particularly on close combat), and the game commits