Water Spirit

Heaven, with a blue coat of paint.

Excellent. Great abstract visuals and hectic but very fair combat encounters. My only complaints are that map 1 progression can be a little confusing, and that it's only 3 maps long. I want more!

Seriously underappreciated WAD. If you've played the Japanese Community Project, Manbou (burabojunior) was the most prolific contributor, and without his nine maps, the JPCP wouldn't have the same reputation for fun and artistic flair. He announced Water Spirit in the text file for JPCP, and released it a year later. These are three somewhat challenging maps with high enemy counts and visuals even more stunning than his JPCP maps. Manbou is probably my favorite visual artist in Doom. My only complaint is that the PWAD as a whole is really short, consisting of only three maps that are about ten minutes of gameplay each. It leaves me wanting a lot more.

Really enjoyable, challenging maps. There are elements of slaughter gameplay here, but it's not of the all too familiar crass variety, and the environment is so atmospheric and imaginative. It's all very manageable, even on UV, if you make use of the 'occasional' save and use the layout to your advantage. The archvile extravaganza finales to the second and third levels initially seem completely over the top, but if I could get through them, then you probably can too.

By the way, I killed 856 out of 857 monsters in the last map, but couldn't find number 857 anywhere...

9 out of 10.

Beautiful slaughter WAD.

Very fun maps with nicely-honed gameplay. Lots and lots of action and never repetitive.

Play it!

Water Spirit may or may not hold up, depending on how its really viewed. burabojunior was one of the prime contributors to the JPCP, most notably the Resplendent Emerald Green, evoking excellent IG/Ribbiks attention to macroarchitecture, detail, and setpieces. slaughter to semi-slaughter at times, the big enchilada with Water Spirit comes with its open feeling. this is of course compounded by several problem enemies that should be priority targets: arch-viles, hitscanners, most sniping enemies. you're given the good weapons just before the biggest fights, and the open nature of the levels (especially MAP02) leave a lot of space to work with. thanks to that the fights are a lot cleaner than you'd be led to believe. and the levels are quite short too, making them all the more worthwhile.