Scythe

Absolute classic, and a gem of a mapset besides. Last few levels get a bit iffy, but overall very solid!

A little slow to start, but MAP11 onward definitely makes up for it

Classic Megawad. Love to come back to this one with different gameplay mods but the vanilla experience is still rock solid.

I love this WAD very much. It certainly gets challenging in the later levels just as promised, but Jesus Christ MAP 28 is so cruel. I'm always just a tiny hair away from reaching the exit. I guess I'll never be able to finish this WAD in its entirety and I'm not about t skip the map or cheat to get past it. Kinda demoralizing to get so far and fail so miserably. Oh well. 

Great with gameplay mods. Would give this five stars if everything was like map28. 

If it wasn't for map 26 and map 28, I give it a 5 stars for this one, but why add the original doom 2 music when theres already some?

There is some great stuff here, but the early maps are forgettable and the WAD only picks up in the last third. Map 28 is awful.

100% certified classic. I'd give it 5 stars if it wasn't for MAP28.

I had tons of fun with this one, I remember playing it with the USDQC guys back in the day. The levels were fast paced and decently challenging.

How can I summ this wad up.

"You stand in a corner and slowly take down monsters one by one."

Ok no let me try again.

"Imagine plutonia but with more monster closets and slower combat." Yea that's about right.

One of my favorite wads. The action is fast and the maps are short, sweet, and to the point. The only exceptions are the slaughter maps at the end, but I enjoy those as well.

Really Fun Maps in my favorite style (Short Maps).
I'd like to see this style done more often probably with insane details or not.

Want your Doom simple and short to the point? You don't like wandering around being lost, looking for switches and you just want to kill a lot of monsters? Scythe is your WAD.

Scythe is kind of a tricky beast. It starts off really easy and light, pitting you against measly zombiemen and imps in very forgiving scenarios. Few levels have more than 100 monsters. But don't expect things to be easy all the way through, as Episode 1 slowly escalates the odds and privileges tricky fights against few strong enemies in tight arenas. You're not going to start facing major opposition until Map 11, Sneak Peek. This early map gives you the perfect example of Scythe shedding away its early sensibilities and shows you how ruthless the WAD can be and how important it is to be prepared for anything. The spawning arch-vile cavern represents the first true challenge of the level pack.

Episode 2 slowly prepares the player for the end game of the WAD. The monster counts get much higher, the stronger enemy types like revenants, mancubi and barons of hell become more prevalent and levels get a little bigger, but not by much. A seasoned veteran can get through the first 20 maps or so in roughly 2 hours or so. One thing about the WAD that should be addressed is that while the early levels do tend to be on the simpler side, the combat scenarios still are very interesting on the grounds that the Super Shotgun is nowhere to be found until Map 15, and even then you'll only get it on your way to the secret maps. This does change the way you'll approach encounters, giving weapons like the chaingun, shotgun and plasma rifle their chance to shine.

Episode 3 sends you to Hell and this is the episode where everything breaks loose and where the map set will actively cull the weak. No more mercy is to be had. Before Episode 3, you met a single Cyberdemon in the whole map set and he appeared in Map 20. Starting from Map 22, there'll be at least a Cyberdemon in every level and fighting multiple of them at the same time goes from a surprise to being the norm. If a level's monster count is low at any point from now on, expect all of them to be revenants, arch-viles, barons and Cyberdemons. Armors go from being scattered everywhere to being hidden away from you and impossible to get. It becomes truly important to understand the merits of monster in-fighting and how your weapons work and the best scenarios to use them. Otherwise, you'll never survive Map 26, which is a tiny, yet ruthless map where 666 enemies will immediately jump you at the start of the map and where the intensity never lets go until they're all dead. But as chaotic things seem to be, everything seems in control.

The only reason this mappack gets 4 stars is its ending stretch, which doesn't gel right with the rest of the WAD to me. Map 28, Run From It, made the 100 most memorable Doom levels list for a reason. It's a neat concept for a level, where you must finish the level fast enough as otherwise you'll die. But the execution just doesn't work. The level itself is really boring and just involves strafe running through mostly empty hallways, trying to race "It" to the end before it kills you. The final stretch with the arachnotron blocking the exit is infuritating as this is where you need all your attention, but your screen just becomes red pudding as "It" is in the process of killing you. Map 29 suddenly expands the scope of the WAD and offers its take on Doom 2's Downtown (it's even got that arrow on the ground telling you where to go!), and while I appreciate the attempt at something drastically different, both maps share similar problems in being unintuitive to navigate and feeling really empty.

Map 30, Fire and Ice, is slaughter gameplay with a heavy Revenant seasoning. Think of Go 2 It but about 3 times the size with 3 times the monster count. Half of this monster count is revenants (a whopping 375 revenants, no matter the skill level you play at!) so many of the encounters in the map revolve in going through a hallway or flicking a switch, which results in giant Revenant closets opening and deafening you with their unison screeching. These encounters are just boring and mindless to me, as you just spam rockets and BFG shots on them with little thought. With some luck, you can make them infight with something else, but it's not always possible. This level also doesn't implement difficulty settings in a way where lesser players will have fun with the level, playing on HNTR or ITYTD will remove about half of the arch-viles and cyberdemons. But ironically, these removed cyberdemons could have been useful to you in the level for infighting purposes so it doesn't feel like an even trade. The only plus of this map is that the Icon of Sin is nowhere to be found. Then again, these fights are harder than 5 Icons of Sin would be.

Scythe looks really good for a vanilla Doom 2 WAD. The early tech base levels aren't the most interesting to look at, but Episode 2 brings some well needed graphical variety and Episode 3's visuals look appropriately hellish and foreboding. It really feels like you are trapped in a giant pit of despair for all of these levels. There are occasional quirks with the level design where it's possible to trap yourself by sequence breaking; in Map 11 I was able to bypass getting the blue key by strafe running into a window leading to the building the blue key opens up. But if you do so, you are forever trapped because you can't climb out of that window nor can you open the doors leading out from the other side. But these mishaps are few and far between. Also sprucing up the gameplay are some levels that will end with your death, which will force a pistol start on a few levels of the WAD no matter what. 

4.5 stars, rounded down because I didn't like the ending much at all. But the rest of the journey is great.

I had for months beaten the first 29 maps with about as much trouble I expected, but map 30 took me a few months to beat on ultra violence.  Now that I am done I can say Scythe is good. Play Scythe.

Fun with some great levels and awesome layouts. When it's good it's really good. The rest of the time the problems are: starts off really boring, has a few strange difficulty spikes, and two meme levels.   

Part of the second and third episode are quite a lot of fun and very competently made! Unfortunately, the first 15 maps or so are really bland and easy.

Great fun until map 28 when it becomes the worst thing ever. Fuck you erik

Only one bad map out of the whole MegaWAD, other than that Scythe is absolutely perfect. Quick and fun, yet challenging maps to speed through. Easy 5/5.

Excellent. Especially in the later maps. I actually enjoyed run from it which is odd considering other’s views on it.

This wad is amazing. I had fun playing it and it had cool designed maps. In the Maps 21 - 30 is where the true challenge begins. Map 26 and Map 30 are completely hard. Map 28 is the most insane, you need to be a speedrunner to complete it or else you will be caught by It. My favourite map from this wad is Map 29 Hell on Earth. It reminds of Map 13 Downtown from Doom 2 and Map 29 Odyssey of Noises from Plutonia which I really liked both of them

It's fun. The maps look pretty good.

Good

It's one of my favorite old school megawad I've ever played, it starts off easy until the last maps are hard as balls, I enjoyed almost all the levels except Map28, this map really sucked, If you want a challange, go to Map26 and the final map for a ball busting slaughter action..

I still haven't completed it yet but it's really fun and inspiring in my opinion. Also most levels are very short but very well done. The fact that they are short makes this megawad smooth to play. If you don't have much time to play, you can complete 2 or 3 levels per day in just a handful of minutes which is neat. The last levels last longer and offer a really fun challenge to test your skills. Difficulty is fairly balanced, sometimes it escalates too quickly but you get used to it immediately. I recommend it to anyone who likes classic Doom 2.

I strongly recommend it. It's a fantastic well done megawad. It has good maps and it houses the few slaughter maps I love. It's also fantastic for coop. It also has very good music (well, stock music with custom music)

I can't stop playing it and I can't recommend it enough. 10/10