Tag 2 appreciation post

[nathanB404]

  I ain't afraid to say it. But, tag 2 IS a masterpiece. A flawed, yet misunderstood masterpiece that is. 

 

 

When I think of Passion and Ambition, I think of The Ancient Gods Part 2. It's clear that ID weren't afraid to take risks with eternal, and were willing to go full on balls to the walls with tag 2. And honestly, i cant help but applaud ID for being THIS experimental with doom. And honestly, tag 2 (and the entirety of eternal) is the most ambitious doom game we've ever seen to date. 

 

 

There's just soo much character and personality with tag 2, just this one single dlc. From the environments to the new demon types (even if they're just reskins of older types from the previous eternal campaign cough cough cursed prowler cough cough). Still the effort, passion, and creativity was there!..it just needed more time in the oven to be fully realized. 

 

 

 

 

[Cantleylads]

I feel as though the pacing and difficulty got mixed up in TAG2. Whilst I at least understand the decision to tone down the difficulty from TAG1, the way I would have hoped they'd have pursued this would have been to maintain a higher level of engagement through persistent but relatively low challenge. Both the ARC Complex and Cultist Base ML's spring to mind - neither are soul crushingly difficult but both require a higher level of player engagement than a typical base campaign mission. A more frequent but less gruelling challenge may have made it far less controversial of a DLC.

 

I mean, it sounds (going from the pre-release conversations in the Bethesda streams with Hugo and Josh) and even looks like the maps were originally designed with high capacity demon encounters. It seems as though it was decided that this approach was too exhausting for the general audience, which is fine, but that's where the lower intensity approach would come in. There doesn't need to be incidental double Armored Barons and Tyrants everywhere, but at least some more mid tier heavies to keep us more occupied, more often? What we got was so much open spaces with minimal demons, very frequently. A fully upgraded Slayer can easily manage more standard heavy demons with enough familiarity of gameplay mechanics, you know what I mean? Equipment cycling in DLC2 should probably be an expectation by this stage of a playthrough.

 

I guess this is a long winded way of saying that a few more heavy demons outside of the main arenas, with perhaps a couple of extra compensatory BFG Cells and other pickups would have gone a long way. To have more demons to cycle the sentinel hammer with would have been a net positive IMO. Great to encourage (or even mandate) it's use, whilst adding more meat to those who don't need it, regardless of difficulty. Of course, all of this got addressed in subtle ways in update 6.66, I just wish there was a fair bit more, especially in Immora.

 

Speaking of which, in Immora, there's a double Pain Elemental fight with many shotgun shells and Stone Imps? As well as the Mancubus and Hell Knights in the area before? I think we needed much more moments like this sprinkled throughout almost every area of each level. As it stands, the pace breakers feel unwarranted because the general engagement is already low outside of the main arena fights.

 

For context, I am a base campaign UN player but not exceptionally skilled, I'm also a console scrub.

[DiceByte]

TAG 2 is still amazing, I just wish that the dark lord wasn’t just another marauder clone. First time you see the marauder formula, it is awesome. Then the second time, you meet the gladiator, which basically PERFECTED the marauder formula. But the third time, the Dark Lord, it just felt… off. It’s hard to explain why. I still love the ancient gods part 2, it just could’ve had a better final boss. The ending though… it was perfect. Perfect. Down to the last tiny detail. Who knew the word “no” could hit so hard?

[whatup876]

1 hour ago, DiceByte said:

 But the third time, the Dark Lord, it just felt… off. It’s hard to explain why.

Might be because of what he is conceptually (and how i keep repeating the "he's 5 ideas at once, that could've been cooler if seperated" comment) whereas the Marauder if but a high tier enemy type.

The Marauder could also be forgiven for "not being a rival enough, what if he had more guns" part since he's like id's first attempt at such an enemy.

And perhaps, the Marauder's main point is less "mirror match" and more "testing your distance and reflexes".

[xdarkmasterx]

My biggest disappointment with Dark Lord is the way they built him up to be this rival style boss fight who fought like you did (they even made him look like you, for some reason) but in truth he's just another gimmick boss who god blocks everything unless you hit him during 1 specific attack, the rest of his moves are slow and predictable. And of course he constantly spawns adds. We were promised Vergil and got Bowser instead