Reverie

When I played this megawad I thought it was made in the early 90s, but to my surprise it was released in 2011. It emulates the style of maps from that era and is reminiscent of mapsets like Plutonia and TNT: Evilution which I don't like very much, so unsurprisingly the level design and aesthetic of this megawad didn't appeal to me either. If that throwback experience is what you crave then that's what is on offer here, if not then your enjoyment will probably be interspersed between much boredom and frustration. Personally this just felt dated way beyond its actual age, and sure loves to craft its gameplay around cramped corridors, switch/key hunting puzzles, and surprise ambushes (especially the chaingun monster closets :/). I don't think this mapset is terrible and is still probably worth your time, it just really wasn't my cup of tea at all.

Interesting and enjoyable megawad, nice story with custom screen scrollers too

The mapset is a load of fun, save for Map31. It took a friend of I three hours to complete the level together - and that was consulting Doom Builder. Outside of Map31, the rest of the maps were a load of fun and would encourage others to play it.

Fun and relaxing.  I liked how longer, adventure levels were seperated by shorter ones.  It was refreshing.

Done with these settings:

- Crispy Doom 3.5

- Hurt Me Plenty, Ultra-Violence.

- Continuous for myself, and pistol starts for the DW Megawad Club.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so. 

This is a good old school-ish megawad with plenty of fun scenarios. Very Memento Mori-ish as well as keeping it original. It's also notable one inspiration was TNT, as some levels are structured resembling the most memorable maps of the iwad. A lot of well developed switch-hunting and puzzles, I never felt lost to be honest. About visuals, they are ok, some neat rooms like in map 18, some arrows to mark where to go (which I find acceptable), very neat trick with doors at the end of map 17, I liked how map 30 was a mixture of Caribbean-Last Call-Viper style, map 22 has some nice Pharaoh textures well used. In general, visuals are not outstanding, but that's fine, although in terms of secrets, visuals practically don't help, it was really hard to spot a misaligned wall or a simple different detailed portion of a pillar, stuff like that. Map 31 comes to my mind, the way to get the keys felt obscure, not uninteresting but I had to resort to a video to look for the blue key... On the other side, cool midis!

Combat is ok, there are great encounters and easy ones. One of the most common things to see is gunners in straightforward corridors, something that became very predictable throughout the wad. Many cybers and queen spiders used really good. Not a fan of those ride a lift/take this teleport - two/three revenants right in your face, but these were uncommon.

My favourite maps so far are 01, 08, 16, 20, 22, 24, 28 and 29. The others are good too, specially map 30 in which I really appreciate the IoS fight not being stressful.

So yeah, recommendable wad for people seeking non-modern stuff. I'll give this 7.5/10

Reverie is a wad that, even though I go back to it a lot, I can't bring myself to like it as much as others. it's a wad that draws a boatload of inspiration from many other classic wads, exemplifying the styles of classic authors well, and you can see what styles the author goes for in each map. not to forget the continuity nods each level exit has to the next, which is always a plus. gameplay can be all over the place depending on the map, the secrets can be quite nasty, but the whole thing feels awfully disjointed at times, like big and small map dynamics work in weird ways especially around the middle of the set. key hunting and switch hunting in the big maps is quite the time killer too. it's certainly not bad bad but it's still not something I enjoy all that much.