bcs04.wad

I quite enjoyed this map. The opening shot of the castle is quite atmospheric, (see rd.'s screenshot below) even now. There has been obvious attention to detail here, as the map has very few unaligned textures / other visual bugs.

The numerous vanilla attempts at 'DoomCute' really won me over, especially the red felt pool-table, and shower complete w/ soapbar.

The map suffers a bit in the gameplay department - mainly because of its very low monster count. Difficulty is lukewarm at best, and power-ups are quite plentiful.

Navigation was a little bit difficult at first, as much of the map's main progression is hidden behind secret doors - I didn't initially read the readme where the author was kind enough to state: "Hint look for secret stuff in the billiard room." Once I started humping a couple walls, I figured it out.

Overall 4/5.

Some clean design in this map. You can really tell the authors put their hearts and best effort into this one.

This WAD is based off of an earlier WAD, "bcdeath5.wad". That version was apparently far less polished, and was created to run w/ Doom1.

3.5/5

Only in the wild west of Doom mapping that was 1995 would a creator brag about his map by itemizing the furniture. As the text file excitedly informs us, this one is outfitted with "bedrooms, bathrooms, showers, toilets, sinks, a billiard room, a pool complete with patio furniture, [and] a library." Yep, it's a My House map. 

For the time period, it looks decent and plays well. You never have to shotgun a baron. The authors pack essential legs of progression into secret passages, but it's hard to imagine them stumping a modern player for long. Key doors are marked appropriately. I'd consider this a good ease-in to mid-'90s pwad progression tropes and gameplay logic. 

Minor bug: a couple of secrets have narrow sectors that make them difficult to flag. One of these might not obviously be a secret.