Base Ganymede: Complete

One of the best Doom 1 megawad ever! I've been playing this (with Brutal Doom mod though haha :D found it just perfect for this megawad) for some time and I say that each map here has unique design and environment. All maps serve good gameplay, not so easy, not so hard. A 5/5 for sure!

This WAD is an unbearable slog.

The level design is just about the best thing about this WAD. The maps are well built and fairly easy to navigate, and it's pretty good in utilizing the vanilla resources as well as good lighting to make the maps visually interesting.

The combat design is repetitive and absolutely unbearable. This WAD has one trick, and it reuses that trick excessively and endlessly for every single map. Every room is a trap. Every hallway is a trap. Every switch is a trap. Every item is a trap. Every trap is another trap. Monsters will either instantly pop up from the ground right in front of you, appear from sudden closets right behind you, or teleport in and completely surround you, and you'll have no choice but to take some unavoidable damage. You almost never have a moment to take a breather. Encounter design never deviates and becomes predictable by Episode 2, and outside of the pseudo-puzzle boss maps, the WAD never tries anything different.

The maps are also excruciatingly stingy with resources, withholding ammo in general but especially for higher tier weapons, rarely allowing you to have sufficient firepower against massive groups of enemies, or worse, the numerous Barons and hordes of Cacos, making combat extremely tedious and boring when all you have to rely on is the shotgun and/or chaingun. Rockets and Plasma are very rare, and the BFG doesn't even make its first appearance until halfway through Episode 3. Secrets are also unrewarding with many of them being paltry amounts of low tier ammo or a medikit if you're lucky.

Also, a forced death exit mid-episode to strip you of your weapons for a Tyson map with practically zero ammo? F*** off.

Oh wow, I really loved this! I appreciated every map and it has been a step up from Fava Beans, my last WAD. I am a largely unskilled and inexperienced doomer so this may have aided my enjoyment.

I loved the episode structure: first maps were warm-up through to big maps with larger enemy counts, through to maps with interesting mechanics but low enemy counts. Just had a ball with this. Tough in places but not unreasonable.

Highlights for me were (if I have to limit to two maps per episode):

E1M5 - Long level with a cyberdemon in the nukage at the end 

E1M6 - Circle straffing a cyberdemon on a stairs

E2M3 - Loved the fast tempo of the map

E2M4 - Tyson Imp punch level, wow I had to skill up

E3M2 - Tough but fun with lots of routing to consider

E3M5 - Loved the map but particularly the cyberdemon arena at the end

Sorry, but I also loved the gimmick maps (E1M8, E2M8 and E3M8) - you have to try these - short and really interesting. Also enjoyed the secret maps (E1M9, E2M9 and E3M9), short, punchy and fun!

Basically, loved the mapset and the variation across all of the maps, really fun. If it is useful I have uploaded my playthrough to my YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSh0vj-6E2chQqx744Ajl2w

Could have used a bit less nukage, but overall it was pretty enjoyable. 

Nice, tight level design. E1M8 was an amazing puzzle map.
It's surprisingly difficult for a Doom 1 WAD, but for wrong reasons: constant ambushes, monsters teleporting right behind you. Also, there is a serious lack of medikits. Fights with 5 % health and hitscanners all around are common.
Still, it was quite fun.

Monster pop-in became unbearable by E2M5. The only thing that saves this from being complete garbage is decent level progression (I never got lost), but still not worth your time as it will probably leave you annoyed.

The Good:

-  Nice, clean Maps. Nothing fancy.

-  Not a slaughterfest, but loads of challenging dog fighting.

-  Very little puzzles.

The Bad:

- Too many small, nonlinear Maps.

- WTF was with M1E8?!?

- Wayyyy too many "poison ponds" for my taste. I don't think there was a single level that didn't have them.

- Very few secrets - most of which were unrewarding. A Med Pack isn’t exactly what I call rewarding - unless you have less than 10 hit points. So if a reward for finding a secret is a Med Pack, what is that telling you?!?!

- Wasn't into starting new chapters (with just a pistol) during the same episode.

- Monsters that suddenly spawn from thin air just because you're walking towards a switch.

In Short:

If you like dog fighting, then Base Ganymede Ep 1 is for you, so bring your itchy trigger finger.

It’s was average as far as fun game play goes. I don’t think I ever saw more Specters and Lost Souls in any other non-slaughter game. The only things above average in this WAD was the amount of monsters, barrels and poison ponds you'll endure.

Not the best WAD I've ever played, but not the worst, either.

2 1/2 out of 5 Stars.

If you like your Doom levels to play out like a series of intense combat puzzles, then this is certainly up your alley. BG throws a lot of enemies but not a lot of resources so if you do want to play on UV, I'd recommend playing continuously. Pistol starting every level may turn BG from a challenging megawad into a punishing one. To keep the player on their toes, BG likes to ambush the player with monster closets and teleport spawns. Unfortunately, BG likes its teleport spawns too much as there instances when the player is ambushed by sudden imps while a pinkie teleports behind them. Even for a Doom megawad, BG plays this card too often.

While the levels never really wowed me, they deftly elicit that vanilla Doom vibe without becoming a DTWiD clone or repeating structures from the IWADS. They're also on the smaller side, which means that they don't meander and getting lost is never a problem. Although BG likes it crowds, I never saw the monster count ever exceed the high 200s. Tough fights in smaller levels is BG's bread and butter.

If you can overlook its overreliance on teleport ambushes, BG is a worthwhile megawad especially for vanilla Doom fans. It's vanilla compatible, feels like Ultimate Doom without being a lookalike, and plays much tougher. While it may not suit everyone's taste, BG is sure to have its fans.

I had fun from start to finish. Very neat and clean maps.

Playability notes: Designed with vanilla limits in mind, so just about anything's good (PrBoom+ should use -complevel 3). Both pistol start and continuous are decent: the mapset itself will occasionally rob you of your progress with death exits anyway.

Base Ganymede: Complete is an especially challenging mapset given Doom1's limited possibilities, but runs out of ideas about halfway through. The aesthetic theme progresses quite differently from the original, so don't expect the same experience on that front, either. There are plenty of novel encounters that keep the player guessing and give considerable options to work with, but eventually the later maps fall into a predictable scheme with only the occasional upturn.

The main approach of the mapset is to throw a lot of enemies at the player and see how they handle it: sometimes ammo must be found only after wading through enemies and sometimes it's present beforehand. Avoiding damage is often the most difficult aspect, and a high priority must always be placed on the ever-present hitscanner types. The combination of these facets leads to both open and closed styles, as there are cases where retreating is the best option and cases where duking it out works more favorably. There are even a number of slaughter-like encounters, though with Doom1 capacity the resulting gameplay is short and simple (typically a break from the rest).

Unfortunately, the mapset only has so many tricks to throw, and around the second half of the second episode there becomes fewer and fewer variations in style. Enemies teleporting from behind become commonplace; dealing with a  squadron of sergeants around the corner is an irritation rather than a surprise; a few too many demons to blow through with the shotgun turns to tedium. The general scarcity of health makes these frustrations all the more irksome, too.

Some highlights:

• The most troublesome maps in the set also tend to be the longest, which feel a little too long compared to the rest. E1M3, E2M5-M6, and E3M4 all share this quality. That said, many maps are fairly bite-sized, which fits well with the high overall difficulty.
• All of the secret levels are quite short, though none of them are that hard to find either. E3M9 in particular felt incredibly rushed, though what little there is still managed to be enjoyable.
• E1M6, E1M7, and E2M4 are good examples of levels with distinct personality in the gameplay, with great consideration put into the entire level's progression.
• Of the boss maps, E1 is my personal favorite simply because it goes against the typical grain of "shoot enemy until it dies", though it does so with the inclusion of a choreographic mandate. The other two play fairly interestingly as well, but lack the same engaging quality of the first.

For those of you who enjoy mapsets that favor various challenging encounters, I can gladly recommend this as a mapset worth your time (though it may drag in a few places). If you prefer simpler combat and more room to breathe, skip around at your discretion and consider lower difficulties.

Base Ganymede: Complete is a lot shorter than you'd realize. the levels are of the modern quality and the fights get progressively difficult. it's not true to traditional Doom fashion, going for fierce run and gun with groups of small monsters as well as some big monsters in numerous locales. again, I still have a low opinion on some of the cheaper teleport ambushes, but with replays it doesn't bother me as much. the maps are of varied qualities and sizes, most medium sized, some like E3M4 which is broken are large, and some small maps to lighten some moods. I wish these levels had names, and I wish E1M8 could've been better. but overall, Base Ganymede is quite a challenging Ultimate Doom megawad.