DSV3-War

DSV3-War is a megawad showing just how much Kaiser evolves his level design from his very first release, which was the original DSV. of course, that wad wasn't well-detailed and didn't have a whole lot of neat design you see in his later releases, and in a way, neither is this. however, you can tell just how much Kaiser puts effort into making this significantly different from the first DSV.

this is a wad with a lot of inspirations, namely Icarus, Memento Mori, and Plutonia. seeing brown? yeah he's definitely got a Plutonia interest. some levels seem like complete inspirations that make you feel like playing the real deals at times. you've got music from Icarus in some maps, others just use stock music or other custom stuff. apparently the readme says pretty much all you need to know. there's new weapon sprites but there doesn't seem to be much in terms of new functionality for them. there's apparently a new final boss, and before that on several maps you do have to fight some boss shooters, but they're easy. the final boss itself does have way more health than he needs, making it a marathon boss and I hate marathon bosses. the overall combat experience will be tough, even on the lowest of settings. you really need to watch out for chaingunners, who are just about in every location imaginable, and some rooms will have mid-tiers scattered about or the occasional pincer arch-vile ambush. there's some friendly monsters involved, but I didn't load the patch for them and went for the pure and simple approach.

the level layouts of many of the maps, hate to say it, are problematic. Kaiser for some reason loathes standard level progression, and there's moments where it's like you've done everything but you can't proceed. if you're playing in ZDoom, enable trigger lines in the automap, because there's gonna be some random walls that need to be pressed in order to keep going in some maps. this is a big issue. some secrets are so screwed up, particularly that one in MAP06 which makes absolutely no sense as to how to actually get it. you'll also be dealing with a few timed switches where you'll probably wander until you finally realize what opens and closes. hell, there's gonna be switches that open stuff far, far away from where the switch is. it's so bloody confusing and ridiculous. MAP32, the Go 2 It-inspired level, combines this kind of ordeal with key hunting, and while you slaughter a lot, you'll wander a lot more. that's a slog, and I don't like that. some maps also do the Plutonia thing with inaccessible arch-viles resurrecting enemies on platforms, but there's no way to kill the arch-viles themselves (I really really hate this too). some maps do have some broken stuff to them to prevent completionists from being happy.

which means I'm obviously not that happy with this set. Kaiser definitely evolves his style, but compounds it with some very dubious gameplay decisions and obtuse progression almost as if he intended to drag out and maximize the time for each level. at least thematically they are decent, and the gameplay is fun when it is fun.

Good megawad, though with very outdated sprites, SFX and muzzle flash alignment. 

 4/5.

There're some obnoxious counter intuitive puzzles along the way but that aside it's a fair megawad. The maps are well made and the overall difficult is in the right spot for me.