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At the very start go through the door to the left and 'lock and load' with a shotgun and some shells.  But after that you're in for a tough slog with over 250 monsters to kill (if you're on UV).  The first few fights are the least fun as you only have a single barrel shotgun with little ammo to take out _a lot_ of troopers at a distance.

As the level progresses you get access to the bigger weapons and the level becomes more fun.  I've always been a fan of blasting away large groups on imps with the Super Shotgun!  Some rooms are so freaking hard I was tempted to just give up... for instance the red key room.  In a typical Doom trap walls open up to reveal imps, chaingunners and a few Pain elementals.  The only way to do it, that I found, was to hide behind a Pain elemental and hope for the best.  I won't even go into that damn Arch-Vile and is Hell Knight buddies...

Despite Thomas' claims on his page that his levels are for the 'average doomer'.  I would only suggest UV to the gods out there.  I couldn't do it myself - there just wasn't really enough health and ammo.  I received quite a shock when I thought I had found a secret room...  Upon opening the 'hidden' part of the wall a Barron of Hell appeared and clawed me to death.  What kind of a secret is that?? :-)

The architecture of the level is actually very similar in quality to the monster placement.  That is, it improves as the level progresses.  There was nothing special about the ligting, but there were a lot of 'shadows', as the title suggests.  Texture placement kept to the bronze theme well.  But I grew tired of the bronze theme quite quickly, it's just a little too boring for my liking :-(

Shadows in Bronze is not a bad level, but it's not as good in many respects as Thomas' previous work.  It would also have been nice to see this level 'boomed out' with all the trimmings.  It's definitely one of those wads that you need to play through a few times to appreciate though.