The Brotherhood of Ruin

Outstanding placement and number of hell knights (in my opinion, hell knights are top tier monsters in Doom 2). 

Very fun mapset, with original visuals and pleasant music. The inescapable lava pits are annoying though, but shouldn't be too much trouble beyond an annoying jumping sequence on map01.

Done with these settings:

- GLBoom+ 2.5.1.4. complevel 9.

- Ultra-Violence.

- Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

A couple of playability notes first, I'd suggest any player to use a Boom compatible port for this, as well to expect not 11 but 7 maps, despite what the text file says. Also, it could be more suitable for a first time to try on a lower difficulty and continuous, I'll explain why later...

So, a nice looking set indeed. It consists of linear mid-sized maps, with super tight gameplay most of the time. The texturing is really good, it's only one theme, presumably Mayan (history isn't my strong suit), or just old civilization like another comment says. Maybe it can feel repetitive after a while, but since this isn't a common theme in Doom, I always enjoyed it. Some great midis too, particularly map 04's music and the Heretic tracks. A thing that caught my attention was the particular usage of liquids: one who still has little experience in the game is accustomed to simply walk on the water, but in this case the author built the pits so you will submerge into the liquid, plus an effect that makes you see everything in another color (e.g. if you get into water, you'll see everything blue). Whatever that boomism or MBFism is, it's really awesome imo. On the other side, the majority of the lava pits are inescapable, which made the environment more realistic. 

About the gameplay, the set has linear maps consisting of super tight rooms, corridors and some open areas, with monster placement being on the "mixed bag" side. The progression is quite clear most of the time, with the usual switches and keys to find plus some backtrack in which you may or may not find the places repopulated. More often you can return to previous areas, except in a couple of maps, but since you're intended to go in a straight line most of the time, exploration is rarely a thing in this wad, which is fine, but with the ambient theme (Mayan) I felt like some non-linearity would have been great, for variety. Returning to the monster placement topic, since space is constricted most of the time, it can get tricky to avoid your enemies' attacks, if not also uncomfortable, as details like trees can get in the way, and that was annoying sometimes. The author placed tons of tanky monsters on UV, particularly hell nobles, coupled with ammo scarcity all the time. Now that for me was a bit disorienting, I like to restrict myself to what the map offers as much as possible while playing in sequence. So in order to kill everything I found that you're obliged to ignore monsters that don't initially pose much of a threat, and there's no point on backtracking to kill them later. Either that or bare with ambushes of pinkies/spectres, barons obstructing the path or on ledges, even meaningless monsters outside of the gameplay area, and my ammo was just getting lower and lower, I could rarely restock on it. This is why I suggest continuous with freedom of choices, I didn't see any information about whether the set was created with pistol starts in mind or not. However, this is just a personal view, you might find it more challenging playing each map separately... Oh and, what NuMetal said about doors, yes a lot are unmarked, reason why you should use the custom automap frequently. 

Secret-wise, not all maps contain secrets, the ones that do have them hidden in the usual way, pay attention at the textures and their differences. You might find some easter eggs too, only I had no idea what they represent. Whatever, I don't have favourite maps, since none of them particularly attracted me so much on a gameplay perspective, but I did liked them in general, if I don't take in account the ammo "issue".

Overall, worth it for the looks and music. Heh, too bad gameplay didn't fully convince me, since the wad received a lot of praise from others. My rate is 6/10. 

quite fitting wad, but a lot of unmarked key doors and weird progression. nice style overall though, medium-sized levels, moderately difficult combat, that's what you'll be getting. obviously some Hexen vibes, which are neat, but gameplay is strictly Doom with the temple flair. few traps believe it or not, but when they show up they can be nasty.