Unholy Realms

Now, i wouldn't say this wad isn't good just because every single action you take results in traps, but unless you have a trap-fetish you're gonna have a bad time. Add tons of archviles on top of that, and you will get rekt so much that you'll start saving before every linedef. But i wouldn't say that's necessarily a flaw, that's more of a "taste".

That being said, you can notice a pattern very early - everything you do, every suspicious hallway will result in ambush. With that in mind you can easily predict dangerous moments and come prepared, and i'm sure that author knew it too, because the closer it is to map 30, the more unfair traps become, and you have to predict them to survive. Again, it's not that cheap if you consider how easy it is to predict the next fight, though it's hard to say what exactly there will be, you'll get surprised by more and more ambush ideas until the end.

Maps are pretty fun and look interesting, with lots of optional paths, inter-connections and fights despite being short, and secrets aren't cryptic, you just have to try to look around. Battles are challenging, to say the least, but you can skip many of them and just run when overwhelmed, which i'd say is a good design - the fighting gets mainly forced on you by monsters, not the map. Author also considered camping and retreating, so not a lot of cheese is available. And one of the best things there - lava and blood doesn't hurt you most of the time! So it's mainly you vs creative ambushes, no damaging floor butting in to ruin your day.

The music is amazing, the main reason i even endured that trap-fest. All in all maps look exactly as they are intended to be: fun, challenging, and even fair if you consider how easy it is to predict the next ambush, but this kind of combat is not for everyone, and not for me either.

Okay WAD, but a bit too long, and all the map numbers are hidden.

Level design is good and consistent but traps are repetitive and predictable. Some of the traps don't work at all, which prevents getting 100% kills on some maps. Also, MAP30... let's just say that it started to lag A LOT towards the end but it could have been due to the mod I was playing with. Overall, I think this is a 4/5 - definitely worth checking out.

I have really mixed feelings about his megaWAD. On one hand, they're beautiful to traverse through and they're crafted very well. On the other, the gameplay feels really unfair between teleport and monster closet ambushes. I don't like having to save in front of every door I come across before entering it but that's exactly what I did after the first few levels. These kinds of ambushes are frequent and in almost every level (as far as I can recall, at least), which makes for a tiring experience (and not the good kind of tiring).

I'll definitely play it again in the future but I'll likely pop in a power fantasy mod like Trailblazer with it to equalize this ambush-saturated megaWAD.

And there goes another wad in quite a while, played through GlBoom+ on UV.

So let's see what do we have here. Unholy Realms is a 32-level megawad consisting of levels designed primarily for gameplay, and not so much on other aspects such as look and atmosphere. It features an amazing, uplifting new soundtrack fit for epic battles, a new background, font, and HUD, but no ENDOOM screen, enemies, sounds, textures, or weapons. It is a medium difficulty wad with a few difficult levels near the end, but that's to be expected, so it should be accessible to most players.

The first half or so of the wad features compact or cramped levels with a low enemy count. The best strategy in these levels is to constantly move, there's no time to rest, however these maps are nowhere near unfair or blowing the mandatory damage through the roof, it is simply their design, expecting you to be a fast mover. As you progress, the levels become more open and the enemy count, along the difficulty, increases in steps. The enemy count doesn't go higher than close to 500 in a single levels, so there's no need to worry about potential large waves of enemies, but don't let your guard down, simply not having to deal with great numbers of enemies doesn't mean they're no threat, the later levels will definitely test your reflexes and skills with their enemy placement and some platforming.

For the most part, the levels are well designed and are fun to play, but there are some problems here and there. A few levels feature poor lightning which will make seeing the enemies difficult at times. Moreover, some include rooms which go completely dark as you progress and enemies will ambush you, making you guess your way out of them. Luckily, these rooms do not feature unfair enemy encounters or traps, so getting out shouldn't pose much problem, just keep in mind that at times, the wad wants you dead real quick.

After all is said and done, the journey culminates with a questionable Icon of Sin MAP30, which also features a little over 200 enemies. I find it questionable because some design choices don't make much sense to me, or rather, the fact that you also have to pick up 3 skulls doesn't, not to mention that there are 2 blue and red skulls. What do the extra 2 located inside a room opened with the orange skull do, I have no clue, I could not find a way to pick them up in my playthrough. On top of this, the layout can also be confusing, after picking up the keys you might spend quite some time figuring out how to reach the platform that teleports you on a descending pillar to blow the brains of the IoS out, so be prepared for potentially running in circles. It's not terrible, but it's not great either, it simply lacks, it had potential to be something much grander but this potential wasn't reached. Given the size of the map it could've easily been a slaughter level instead of... whatever it ended up being, sort of an amalgam of multiple ideas which might've sounded cool on paper, but not in practice. And while being on the subject of issues, a very small number of maps suffer from a really bad HOM effect in certain areas. Whether it's a port related issue, I do not know.

There isn't much else to add this time around. The levels are good, but nothing really stands out of the crowd for me, so I have no favorite maps, but don't hate any of them either. It's worth the time, and it's also a good example of how cramped combat should be done, even if there isn't anything particularly brilliant (Hell Revealed 2 I'm looking at you).

This was like a nice modern take on something inspired from The Innocent Crew with strokes of Matthias Worch - all of which I know the author Brian Knox took inspiration from beforehand. The first episode didn't do a whole lot for me but it really started to pick up in the later parts leading up to episode 2 and onward. Great soundtrack from the talented John Weekley and a few guest maps to mix things up a little. I played on HNTR for a more casual experience and felt even there some parts of the megawad felt rather cruel - namely in the third episode. Overall I had a blast going through this wad finally after so long and was rather surprised to find a collab map between me and DeathevocatioN find its way into the mapset.

Done with these settings:

- Crispy Doom 4.2

- Hurt Me Plenty.

- Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

A megawad with a lot of hot stuff in it. Aesthetics are nice, thematically as usual, starting with a bit of tech/factory/sewers, then getting deep into hell. Not much to say, the first episode has some mishmashes of colours that sometimes look weird, reminded me of JPCP (like that marble texture with blue triangles, here they come in yellow, red and green), while the second and third episodes look more serious, including Plutonia and gothic textures. There are a bunch of nice tracks to hear, though I spent more time hearing monsters everywhere than the music lol. 

Action is reminiscent to Scythe. Also Vanguard (according to kmxexii) but I've only played the first one. In addition, there are a few notable guest maps, which contrast from Knox's style. So, basically maps are challenging and demanding. I really like how many of them are constructed like big arenas with lots of buildings, where action is inside and outside, makes good use of environment. Monster placement is well thought in general. Some maps have hectic starts, being surrounded by crossfire while looking for weapons (for pistol starts), followed by teleport ambushes, and some maps include different setpieces in tight rooms. There is an abundance of instapop traps, requiring a bit of foreknowledge to come out alive, though I don't recall any bullshit moments. Only map where I wasn't able to kill everything by myself was map 21, a secret is considerably mandatory to do that and I never found it. In other maps, a few monsters fail to teleport out of their rooms, or simply never wake up, making 100 percents impossible (map 23 is the worst case). 

Secrets are mostly easy to find, with a few requiring to guess what a switch did or what triggers a tall pillar to lower (I see you map 26). It actually caught my attention that many maps have lots of secrets, since almost all of them short and arena-style. The exception is map 29, that has none, well it's a Joshy map so it's no big deal.

Oh yes, favourite maps, let's see: 02, 17, 19, 22 and 29. It's hard to pick favourites since I, more or less, liked them all in the same way. Only map I didn't like was 30, not only because it's IoS but progression is highly obscure (unlike any other map in the set), and it has a 3-times lift, fortunately it's slower so a safe rocket is always guaranteed.

Pretty satisfied with the mapset, recommended to anyone who liked Scythe and has a fetish for instapops (not that I have one...). My rate is 8/10.  

the soundtrack and the whole first episode are amazing. Unholy Realms past the first episode outright demands you practice it though. you'll be seeing overuse of action starts, teleport traps (some of which don't even work), and gameplay that requires foreknowledge. some slaughterfests are easier than this. a good player will certainly have their work cut out for them upon playing this. my advice for many of the levels: put priority to kill the hitscanners and the imps, plus any notoriously troublesome enemies first. this set definitely makes the smaller monsters more dangerous than you'd be led to believe. the secrets are among the tougher to reach, so hopefully you can find the best ones.