Daniel Level Serie 01

I don't want to be as rude as @NuMetalManiak although I agree with him. He pointed out a lot of relevant things in his review anyway. I finished all the levels in pistol-start in UV under gzdoom because of mandatory jumps on some levels.

I can summarize this wad in three words: long, hard and weird. It took me several days to finish this wad. For me it's not a bad wad. The quality of the levels is however very heterogeneous, as well as their difficulty... It's not at all a wad made for everyone. The gameplay is really special, in the best and worst term of the word. 

I found the levels rather interesting on the whole : rocky landscapes to explore in the first three levels, whole cities to explore, especially the 16 located on the beach, hell levels with a rather chaotic progression... Aesthetically, we are far from the current standards but I liked exploring the maps.

On the other hand the difficulty is really high, which can annoy the player very quickly. Indeed, we are far from meeting the "good" difficulty that we could find in Ribbiks wads for example with well calibrated fights. Expect to run out of ammunition very often, to wake up a lot of powerful monsters just armed with a small shotgun, to die several times before you understand where the important weapons are...

The first three levels really use extreme gimmicks : platforming, no weapon available above the shotgun, extremely limited ammunition... The maplist is really weird. Daniel Level Serie seems to be a bric-a-brac of levels, adding that none of the maps have a name or music, making the whole thing very austere to be honest. Besides, some maps are totally impossible to finish. Map 26 doesn't even have an exit!

In short, I rather liked this wad by its ability to propose concepts. On the other hand, the difficulty is there and the gimmicks don't help to make the whole thing fun.

Play this wad if you want to see unconventional obscure mapping with lots of extreme gimmicks. Otherwise run away.

Despite a single shot is enough to awake all monsters , I think map 16 is my favourite.

chances are, you've probably seen Dal02 by the same author, it was a megawad of mostly small arena levels which was made for some specific playstyle that nobody really uses. and the author of this was also the author of NeoDoom, honestly one of my least favorite wads ever. this is somehow not in the megawads section of idgames, or actually because of what I had to do, ports/megawads. but then again, this is somehow, somehow worse than I had ever expected.

i'm not sure where to start. the levels are of course big, but almost all of them are big for the sake of being big. it takes a lot of the fun factor out of the levels if you're not killing anything for minutes while you try to figure out what you're supposed to be doing. it's not just speedrun-unfriendly or max-unfriendly, it's just unfriendly maps that don't really have much purpose or direction. and that's one of the reasons they are so bad. these are maps that have huge expanses of land, with MAP03, MAP22, and MAP25 probably being the worst overall offenders, as you're expected to head around the level's perimeter in these maps, and staying on the high ground is more troublesome than you'd be led to believe. it takes FUCKING FOREVER PLEASE DON'T MAKE LONG MAPS FOR THE SAKE OF THEM BEING LONG GIVE SOME ACTUAL GAMEPLAY THAT IS FUN TO GO THROUGH. nearly every Eternal Doom level is easier to solve than some of these maps.

if you want to really start this megawad, skip to MAP04. why I say this is because the first three maps have serious balancing issues in gameplay, you'll fight no hitscanners in the first map, and you'll only get a shotgun and chainsaw but they're actually quite late while you pistol imps, and you don't see shotgun guys (or get their weapons) until late in the next map. also these three maps all require jumping to complete. again I mentioned MAP03 earlier but it is the "jump around perimeter map" that really sucks. you don't start getting good weapons until MAP04, which while only average is somehow one of the better maps. the maps that follow it aren't actually too bad gameplay-wise. Daniel's detailing of cities really shines in the sandbox city maps that are MAP14 and MAP16 (a resort town), they are HUGE but actually quite wonderful. his monster and item placement overall however leaves quite a lot to be desired. prepare to fight every type of monster in every map, expecting some really nasty gameplay only at times since Daniel saturates the player with pickups, so you're liable to run into invulnerabilities right before cyberdemons (there was even a map that has a room full of soul spheres). the quality of the levels in the middle is fantastic but is brought down by all the rest, the maps that are long just to be long are awful and completely ruin it, and yes you need jumping for some of the maps which should have been specified in the textfile.

Surprisingly, a good megawad!

I didn't care much for maps 1, 2, 3, 25 and 30 because those need jump for progression. All the other maps are nicely crafted and balanced, being difficult on UV but always fair.