The DWmegawad Club plays: Eviternity II

[DJVCardMaster]

MAP30 - Cosmology - Dragonfly & Antares031:

Biblically accurate Icon of Sin fight going around here. At last, the final map of Eviternity II is, as expected, a brand new boss fight. I do agree with Celestin, and possibly most of us, by saying that the Eviternity's final boss was a bit weak, and felt like rushed. Here is where Antares appears and decides to create a stronged enemy, a seraph that will shoot you every single kind of projectile found in the game files, switching its attack pattern. I must say that, making boss fights that have an Arch-vile attack pattern, is way too cliché at this point, but I don't mind this fight.

The real deal is the environment itself, which will constantly change by lowering the ground and filling it with lava, so the player can get stuck while running away from The Origin's attacks. The arena is well shaped for this monster to be in, and it will require you to be constantly moving. Using my perforator left me without too much problems, at least for The Origin, which will die and reincarnate 3 times. Each time you defeat it, a big swarm of nightmare cacos will start appearing. This is were real difficulty comes in place, as dodging a bunch of those cacos is, at least for me, a real pain, due to how erratic their attack patterns are. Still to this day, I do not understand how to dodge nightmares, so let's say I've beaten this with a bit of luck and circle strafing.

Yes, this fight is far more superior than the Eviternity I's final boss, feels that it is well staged and less rushed. The Origin is a really nice visual concept of a boss fight, and considering all the "Biblically accurate angels" meme and stuff, it felt strange that nobody came with that idea yet for a boss fight. I had some fun with it. Still, a final boss is a final boss, and not even this DECORATE/Dehacked setpiece reaches to overwhelm me more than average maps like Kenosis do. Creating a brand new monster may be the hardest thing, because you will need to code, create sprites, or even come up with an idea for it, so no complains in that regard, I think Antares & co. did a great job with the entire new beastiary in the whole megawad.

A nice finale to a great megawad.

Order of preference:
 

Spoiler

 

MAP36 (Excellent)

MAP24

MAP14
MAP26
MAP18 (Great)

MAP32
MAP11 
MAP09 
MAP29
MAP19
MAP34 
MAP17 (Good)
MAP27
MAP23

MAP07
MAP16

MAP05
MAP22
MAP20
MAP12
MAP13
MAP03 (OK)
MAP08
MAP15
MAP35
MAP28
MAP06

MAP02
MAP04
MAP10 (Average)
MAP30
MAP21
MAP31 
MAP25 (Meh)
MAP33

 

Again, another wad that leaves me soulless after finishing it, what do I do with my life now?

Edited January 30 by DJVCardMaster

[Celestin]

MAP37: Credits by Dragonfly

 

A credits map, displaying each map, their authors and composers that created the midis.

 

Spoiler

I've noticed you can press certain images, if you press Oblation, Engulfed, Dominion and Numb, weapons lower and a horde of baby astral cacodemons spawns in the centre of the map. Killing them all rewards you with a message from Dragonfly and ends the journey that was Eviternity II.

 

Conclusions

 

Well, this was one hell of a ride. Eviternity II is the work of the Doom community at its peak. Few megawads present this level of quality, with even the weaker maps feeling like a lot of care and attention was put into them. It's just I don't always enjoy their gameplay style. Like its predecessor, the wad uses a variety of visual themes, so boredom won't be an issue. At least with how the map looks, as hub-based map design is used here a lot and when several levels of this type are placed one after another, it can get a bit repetitive. Like I've said earlier, it's more of an issue with the level order, rather than maps itself.

 

One other thing Eviternity II should be recognised for is the use of the latest editing features. I was amazed seeing the particle effects (like rain or falling leaves) in action, it brings an additional flair to the maps. The new monsters, however, are a mixed bag in my opinion. They mostly follow the Eviternity 1 route of adding tougher, faster and stronger variants of existing enemies. It's not that they don't do their job, but out of them veilimp was the only one I enjoyed fighting. Still, the extended bestiary add a lot of variety to combat. Then there is the perforator. I could use it only a handful of times, but when I did it was so much fun to rip through crowds. I understand the decision to limit it almost exclusively to secret stages and it's my fault for pistol-starting each map, but I just wish I could get my hands on it a bit more often. I feel like Eviternity II was designed for continuous play, but I'd say pistol-starting is still viable. As for the difficulty of the wad, I'd say it comparable to the first Eviternity, so if you've had experience with modern maps, UV should be a fair challenge.

 

Now, as for the episodes themselves, Withered was a great introduction to the megawad. It remixes the theme from Eviternity's ending chapter, brings back its exclusive monsters, before introducing the new ones. If you manage to find a secret exit, you can also play around with the perforator, MAP31 was so much fun thanks to building a level around this very weapon. Sanctuary was probably the most varied chapter when it comes to visuals, switching between abandoned ruins to temples in their prime. It also features Charge as a secret map, which is easily the greatest adventure I've experienced in a while. Episode 3, Petrified, was easily my favourite part of the whole wad. I dig the combination of concrete and nature, Equanimity was an impressive sandbox to play with and Rubicon provided a great challenge Eviternity II was so far lacking. When it comes to Bastion, it felt a bit forgettable. This is the point where Dragonfly's mapping formula became noticible, which together with a very consistent artstyle meant few things stood out. An exception was the ending of Liberation's map, the dimention-hopping was a creative idea. Hyperborean felt very uneven. It starts with a third Dragonfly map in a row and the secret stage's gimmick felt underused. However, Temeraire is a magnificent work of mapping and the rest of the chapter provided enjoyable difficulty. As for Celestial, it started very strong with a creative Myriad, but then throws three similiar maps that I have trouble differentiating. That being said, it returns to the form with ukiro's masterpiece and the finale turned Eviternity's boss into a fun encounter.

 

One question remains: is this wad better than the original Eviternity? I think it is. Eviternity II has some obvious standouts, with maps like Temeraire and Charge being among the best Doom levels I've ever played. The overall mapping quality is very high, I don't think there's a single map where the quality dips below "solid". Yes, this includes MAP33, which I see as an acquired taste that just isn't mine. It's an outstanding evolution of a blockbuster megawad concept, one that takes you on a journey through varied places, presents memorable setpieces and remains accessible to an average Doom player. I think my only complaint is the size. 36 maps, many of which tend to run past 30 minutes of playtime, is a lot, so you'll be here for a while. Not that it wasn't a time well spent, just be aware it's a rather involved project to see front to end.

 

TOP 5 maps:

MAP32: Charge by Tristan Clark and Guardsoul
MAP24: Temeraire by antares031
MAP14: Equanimity by Aurelius
MAP15: Rubicon by Scotty
MAP26: Myriad by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul and Dragonfly

[Cutman 999]

MAP30 - “Cosmology” by Dragonfly (Pistol start, saveless, 100% Kills, Not sure% Items, 100% secrets

 

Let's finish business, instead of another taxing omega slaughtermap like kenosis is, eviternity 2 just makes you fight another boss monster. Usually, I think bosses like the icon of sin or just simple ultra buffed enemies... Suck, mostly because of how limited dehacked was (and yes, I'm not counting decorate, a thing only exclusive to gzdoom mods) making the bosses repetitive or downright boring. 

 

I think this map actually made a good job with its final boss, the only bad part of this map is the astral caco ambushes are complete filler, other than that, the origin, a biblically accurate angle with many attack patterns similar to the astral mancubus and a shitload of hp, is an actual interesting boss to face, with multiple faces that increases in complexity and adds a flavorful amount of new attacks, like making most of the floor 10 damage lava, or even summon a bfg ball to smack the player with.

 

And best thing of all, unlike eviternity map30 or most of the bad character action game bosses, the difficulty doesn't come from dealing with random enemies while the boss withers you apart, you actually have to pay attention to its greatly animated telegraphs and color cues to beat him.

 

Great stuff, a good way to close the megawad, and godtier ending text.

 

8/10

 

MAP37 - “Credits” by Dragonfly

 

A hub of all the episodes where you can see the map authors in front of the beautiful screencaps present in the intermission screen and can hear the music stepping in a line in front of the map title. If there is a weird ultra secret ending from this, make me know.

 

N/A/10

 

Final Thoughts

 

As expected, this megawad is really, really good, is not only good as expected, but surpasses expectations on how it manages dehextra and mbf21, making for technical feats that even in 2024, can make a doomer's jaw drop to the underground. Definitely this level of technical superiority carries around the whole megawad, and it's the true showcase of the wide potential of mbf21 as a whole.

 

As for maps, they're like I said in some post, consistent, and polished. Some may feel a bit out of place in the megawad like map 15 and even the masterwork that is map24, other may have some small aspects that I don't enjoy, but that's mostly because they are the maps that you would recognize the author styles the most, and in a megawad constructed as cohesively as this, is not a bad thing, at least shows this has some soul.

 

Best maps in the set are definitely map 14, 22, 23, 24, 11, 12 and 17, at least from my perspective, since these are the kind of maps, I actually like the most, especially map22. 

 

The thing is, if this surpasses other top tier megawads like ancient aliens or the btsx episodes, is debatable. It surely surpasses some of the first eviternity in some aspects, although I prefer some maps there because they still compare well to this megawad, and personally I like this better than the btsx episodes, but still skillsaw's work I consider it peak dooming from the perspective of managing the best polish, on top of very substantiative gameplay.

 

It was a pleasure wasting some free time into tackling and finishing this megawad, let's see what new standards this fantastic product sets on the future.

Edited January 31 by Cutman 999

[RHhe82]

27 minutes ago, Celestin said:

A credits map, displaying each map, their authors and composers that created the midis.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Oooooh! And I "completed" credits map by giving DSDA-Doom console 'level.exit' command, thinking that was all there was to it!

 

Does the map (or something) give any hints regarding the steps given inside spoiler tags, or is a trial-and-error affair?

[ukiro]

6 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

hints

 

Spoiler

see vytaan's map30 video through to the end

 

[Celestin]

3 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

Does the map (or something) give any hints regarding the steps given inside spoiler tags, or is a trial-and-error affair?

Spoiler

I don't think so. I've noticed there was one item and some walls make a pressed button sound when used, but I had to look up the solution.

 

[Ravendesk]

Hi, I haven't been participating in DWMC, but I have been playing through Eviternity 2 in January as well, so I figured I would post a few words about the maps I particularly liked. I liked many other maps as well, but these ones I just want to write a bit about.

 

Map 14: Equanimity by Aurelius

 

The map is structured as an open sandbox layout that glues together multiple setpiece arenas and puzzles, and it's really satisfying to navigate that layout: wherever you go to explore, you are getting rewarded with something (be it a weapon or a powerup or a fun fight) and there is pretty much no wrong route here, the map pushes you to move and explore very gently. Despite layout being very open it still manages to always have some verticality present, both as natural geometry and artificial structures you can jump from and to (with so many optional non-secret goodies!), this makes just running around the map so much fun.

 

The combat setpieces themselves are unique and memorable, I especially liked that one fight where walls opens on the sides and imps flood in and you have a choice to hold your ground or to move - and both approaches are viable. The best thing is, however, is that each arena fight is very different, and that helps them to serve as landmarks as well and helps to not get lost in the layout. And the puzzles are not just creative but also very polished and they never feel jank, which is often a problem with complex voodoo contraptions. Don't think I saw a sliding puzzle before in doom? I assume it probably was done in some obscure wad (since pretty much everything was), but the way it's done here is super nice and smooth. Also what I really like about all the puzzles in this map is that it's always immediately clear what you are supposed to do, you don't need to guess what map author meant, you just need to engage with the puzzle itself. This is not easy to do in a doom map and I really appreciate the effort that went into making these puzzles clean and well telegraphed.

 

Just a few words about the visuals - combination of light and dark greys contrasted against greens works super well and stands out even against other episode 3 maps, and I already like e3 the most visually. Amazing aesthetics.

 

Everything together - gameplay, music, visuals - makes this map an incredible and very memorable experience, and it keeps offering something new on replays. This is my favourite map in evit2 and it also joins the list of my all-time favourite maps (that already had a few maps by Aurelius there).

 

Map 15: Rubicon by Scotty

 

The most "different" map in the whole evit2 even if we count all the secret maps. I think the main reason might be the fact that it's very detached and hostile unlike all the other maps that are pretty "friendly" (except maybe 36), but even beyond evit2 this map feels very unique. The areas connect to each other in weird ways, I was almost getting some zzzv vibes, or maybe fcff vibes, I actually think a jazz soundtrack might have fit the map well (I like current track, too, though). And it all gets even better with secrets, RL and 100 rockets is a pretty unusual secret reward by itself, but the best part is actually getting there by climbing the ledges and navigating the architecture, I absolutely love that, fun exploration and great verticality. And a very bold choice to have around half (I think?) of the map monster count in secret fights, I also totally love that. The whole experience with secrets in this map is just crazy.

 

And of course the fights themselves are very cleverly designed and super fun. Also since this map introduces vile imp, I guess I would use it's spot to praise it a bit, I think it's a very well designed enemy, two attack types complement each other really nicely and you are encouraged to both stay close to them and to dodge while staying close. Low hp ensures it's a guaranteed kill with an ssg, and the result is a very neat glass cannon enemy that allows some interesting and unique combat setpieces.

 

Map 33: Catalyst by Bauul

 

I'm a big fan of racing/autoscroller maps, and it's so cool to see this niche genre being showcased in an "AAA" release. The execution and presentation are also great, very neat idea to use lasers to highlight death floors and I also really like that explosions follow you - this is both narratively/visually fitting and adds to a presentation of a map and also adds to a gameplay in a sense that you can afford slowing down more if you have sped up previously and this helps to do harder sections more consistently. Thanks Bauul and hats off to you.

 

Map 28: Afterimage by Velvetic

 

This map wins the "most atmospheric" award for me personally, there is just something about combination of music (which might be my fav midi in the wad even though there are other strong contenders) with somewhat arabic vibes from the architecture and a very vertical design that just strikes a chord with me (unsure yet if major or augmented) so I can't help but love the map. There is a very strong feeling of place in Afterimage and it is do nice to walk on these balconies and rocks and just vibe with the music. Also appreciate that so many paths lead to a good view on the whole map, that's really neat.

 

As a small side note, while I'm often a bit sceptical towards bfg secrets as they can trivialise otherwise very interesting fights, but in this map the final fight actually doesn't become easier with bfg due to all the fast flyers that bfg ball just misses (thanks horizontal autoaim), so you have to figure out how to hit them with tracers reliably, which can be tricky. If anything, the fight might be easier (in a way that it requires less effort/skill) to deal with using just plasma and cleaning up the rest with rockets (and saving one bfg shot for the necromenace used as an exit door). It's a small thing, but I thought it's interesting.

 

Map 36: Kenosis by ukiro

 

Crazy map, the fights and progression in all the areas are really well done and are very creative. Like map 15, this map feels quite different from the rest of evit2 due to its hostile nature, and it is at its perfect spot in the final episode secret slot. The whole map is an experience. I totally loved the final section, too, and I think ukiro managed to make both the best perforator-based fight and the best necromenace-based fight in a single arena. The combination of viles, zombiemen and necromenaces is really clever and perforator is a perfect weapon to deal with it, easily the most satisfying usage of it, this fight is so interesting and fun. Also the way this fight starts is an incredible cinematic setpiece (and a strong rival to map 24 final cinematic setpiece, which is also amazing ofc). 

 

It's really a shame we only get a single magnum opus once in five years from ukiro, I would love to play more maps by him even if those are smaller scale, because his creativity is really impressive.

 

Btw cute easter egg.

 

========

 

Anyway, congrats to all evit2 team on a great release, playing through it was really fun.

Edited January 30 by Ravendesk

[TJG1289]

GZDoom/UV/Contiuous/Saves

Write-ups from memory

 

MAP30:  Cosmology - Dragonfly and antares031

 

It's time for the final boss! Like Eviternity 1, we get a brand new boss monster to deal with. Now, it seems like a lot of people didn't really care for Ev 1's final boss. I honestly didn't mind it at all. I think dealing with the monsters in the arena was more annoying. This boss is more focused than that one, as you only have to deal with other monsters in-between phases, and just have a one-on-one fight while the boss is active. The boss, named The Origin, looks like a cross between an astral caco, an angel, and the final boss of Kirby 64 (seriously). The animation of this monster is fantastic! It has so many frames as it opens its wings, I was shocked. Now, I'll fully admit that I don't think I really experienced this boss the way the authors intended. Mainly since I had a pre-nerf GZDoom perforator. I perforated the crap out of it in the first phase, pretty much ending that phase instantly. I decided to not do that for the second phase, just to see how long it would take with conventional weapons. It took much longer, so for the third phase I perforated the crap out of it again, ending the fight almost instantly, and missing a lot of the attacks during that phase. So in retrospect, I kinda wished I didn't perforate it. Hooray for replaying maps! First off, this thing has a lot of different attacks. You can usually tell what it's going to do via color, but for the most part just moving will avoid anything it throws at you. Though I think the blue projectiles will home in on you. It also does an archvile blast, that it follow with 2 green projectiles that act like the purple astral manc ones, meaning, you should run backwards to avoid that while still being in cover. It's a really clever attack and a good counter! After dealing with the first phase, a wall lowers with a metric crap-ton of astral cacos, with a tower also unleashing a horde of them as well. If you have the perforator and don't want to make the boss trivial, I would save it for the cacos. Hit the switch behind the wall to start phase 2, which also changes the sky box to that rainy one from Eviternity 1 MAP29's MAP01 section, IIRC. Now The Origin is faster and its attacks are more powerful. Each attack has been buffed with more speed and projectiles. It also added a new attack that will lower sections of the floor into damaging lava, so when you see that start to happen, just focus on not falling in and not on firing at the boss. Once this phase is done, another wall lowers, this time with nightmare cacos. Same with another towerfull of them. Since these things are so fast, I would recommend using the SSG or chaingun/perforator on them since it's easy to miss them with rockets or plasma. For the 3rd and final phase, the skybox once again changes to a green static, and The Origin is pissed. It's super fast now, it can teleport like a veilimp, and its attacks are even more buffed. It's added a few, including a plasma blast with a wide spread that's hard to avoid if you don't find cover. It also will fire a BFG ball at you, which is just what you want to see during a third phase of a long boss fight. It will also summon Afriest Turrets from Struggle to rain holy hell on you throughout the entire arena. Antares loves those turrets it seems, or at least the sprite! With enough ammo, this thing will go down eventually. There's a fair amount of health, armor, rockets, and cells around the arena, plus each lowered wall gives a mega sphere and all ammo types, so as long as you don't get caught in a barrage of projectiles, there should be enough health to last the 3 phases. 

 

Overall, this is probably the best non-UDMF boss fight I've played! The increasing intensity of the phases makes this a good challenge. Antares designed the boss very well, and definitely learned from the weaknesses of not only the original Eviternity's final boss, but the final boss of Struggle which was not a fun fight. The Origin isn't a spammy monster much, at least initially, so it's much more fun to fight. The arena itself is incredibly cool looking, and almost feels like a cross between both episode 6s of the two Eviternity, plus a little bit of the end of Struggle. And Tristan's OST for this song is incredibly epic and fitting for a final showdown! This WAD stuck the landing very well!

 

MAP37: Credits - Dragonfly

 

After all of that, why not relax and reminisce about the WAD we just finished? This credit map is a hub with an area for each episode. Head into a teleporter to find a room with 6 pictures for the episode you're in. Approach a picture, and that map's MIDI will start playing. It's a cool touch! It's a very lovely credit map. It doesn't seem like there's anything else here, but if you're playing with a status bar or whatever that shows the kill/item/secret count, you'll notice there's an item...

 

Spoiler

I saw something was up when I played this map initially. I used IDDT to see if there was an actual exit somewhere and saw a curious sight in an area you can't get to. I initially thought this weirdness was a contraption used in changing the MIDIs, but it turned out that wasn't it. It's actually part of a hidden Easter Egg. Now, 4 pictures can be activated that will make a switch sound. You have to hit these 4 pictures in the correct order, or the Easter Egg won't activate. There wasn't any clue to this in the WAD, so in order to figure it out you would need to either brute force it and just try different combinations, or personally know a few of the Eviternity 2 crew's personal lives, you stalker. Use the pictures for Maps 8, 4, 20, and 21 in that order. Doing so will lower the pillars in the Episode 5 room, revealing all the weapons minus the BFG (perforator is here tho!), ammo, and a megasphere (there's the lone item). Head back to the center hub to find a full pre-school of baby asrtal cacos! They may be cute and tiny, but they still fire projectiles at you, so they're still a threat. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Spoiler

If you hit Map 22 after this, something else will happen. You won't hear anything when you do this, but if you return to the center hub, you'll notice that with all of the baby astral cacos, is a lone baby nightmare caco! And, it's friendly! It won't attack you. It will attack the baby astrals by shooting perforator blasts at it. I think this makes the baby nightmare the most powerful enemy in the game, lol. So what is the purpose of the Easter Egg? Yytaan's hidden video will spell it out, but here's another spoiler for it here

Spoiler

The combination(s) are the birthdays of ukiro's and Baaul's kids. Born on the same day, 1 year apart. That, along with the Evil Eye Easter Egg in MAP36, make these the cutest Easter Eggs in Doom that I've seen. D'AWWWWWWWWWW

 

Killing all of the baby astrals will end the map, and you'll get a thank you message from Dragonfly!

Overall, a very nice little credit map! 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

 

I think it is safe to say this WAD is fantastic. It took OTEX and the original's extended bestiary, and expanded on them to create an excellent sequel. There's not a single bad map in here, which is impressive. While this was a Dragonfly-lead project, there were many other mappers and musicians involved, and they all brought their A-games to this. The new additions to the Eviternity crew brought some fresh ideas to the sequel, while the veterans just refined what they did before. MBF21 allowed the mappers to add in new elements to these map, which just added to the creativity and refinement shown throughout. Every map is a visual stunner, and every MIDI fits its map extremely well. In the Doomworld Community Top WADs of All Time thread, I have the original as my #2 WAD of all time (tied with Going Down in points given, but it was definitely #2). I think this is easily better than the original Eviternity in almost every aspect. Now the question for me is, does this beat Ancient Aliens, my longtime #1 WAD? Is this now my favorite WAD of all time? It's hard to say, since this is so new and fresh, I haven't had as much time with it compare to the almost 8 years with AA. And the AA aesthetic and color palate are still my favorite visual style in PWADs. This could change at any time, but right now, I will say that Eviternity 2 is my new favorite WAD of all time. It's the most high-quality WAD I've played. It's highly refined and polished. It's more polished than a good amount of actual games you shell out money for. You can tell this was a project that took 5 years to make. A lot of love went into making it, and it shows. The maps are fun and gorgeous. It's a fantastic showcase for MBF21 and what it can do. It also has my favorite OST since AA. AA still might have this one beat in that department, but the OST here is a very, very close second. It has what are for sure my favorite MIDIs by both Tristan and Jimmy on it. Everything about this WAD is top-notch, and the crew should absolutely be proud of what they made. You know how the Quake remasters got new campaigns for them? I know the Doom Unity ports get updated with custom WADs periodically, but this WAD feels like those Quake campaigns to me. It's something that just shows how far this game has come in 30 years, and how we are nowhere near running out of ideas for it. It's old, yet modern at the same time. That may be the Doom scene in general now, but this is the WAD that exemplifies that the most. 

 

Top 5 maps:
MAP32, my new favorite map

MAP24

MAP14

MAP34

MAP11

[cannonball]

MAP36 - “Kenosis” by ukiro

 

Well we all knew what was coming, a massive map where the combat is contained within separate structures arranged around a heptagram. The fights within map map vary from being rather slow and some awesome encounters. Unfortunately I went for the SSG island first, now imagine having to slow roll the astralcacos/nightmare demons and revenants, this wasn't overly fun and I was fearing the worst at this point, things didn't get better in the next room where you get the rocket launcher, a point blank archvile and 3 more on lifts that again require slow killing or leaving and hopeing you don't get zapped, finally you can lower the lifts once to climb to a switch and then a second time to access the outside area with the rocket launcher, now finally I can have some fun....

The next area I went to was the chaingun frenzy, luckily I had carry-over rockets from the previous fight, so the archviles wer not an issue, after this you can go unusually nuts with the chaingun, pretty easy and quite fun to play around with. This also gives you the yellow key, following this ws the first highlight, the plasma gun area with the rotating crusher circle that starts off with a cyberdemon and some mancubi before revealing some Dukes of Hell where you need to duck in and out of the central room, great stuff. The next fight for me was the red key room, not much to say, the fight is a little on the silly side but the most difficult bit was the archviles and revenants in the corners that were awkward to kill. After grabbing the red key you face a awkward and tense standoff around the perimeter with some veiled imps that can easily catch you off guard, especially as rockets are you only source of ammo aside from a few shells dotted in the cubby holes. The final room is a line of sight hell mixed with a platform you need to steadily rise to gain access the the plasma gun and exit with the blue key, this one isn't too bad but it would be nicer if the cyberdemon killing floor was more obvious as I killed the first before the final jump. 

So now we can enter the sanctuary, There are three initial fights, one of which is harder than the others in my opinion, the section with the large set of stairs was the hardest as you need to be quick to beat the wall of revenants on each pass whilst slowly whittling everything down, the fight on the opposite side is easy and beatable in one attempt. The last section in the flesh pit was another highlight, a maze with a central column of archviles that restrict your movement, the initial hell knights are easy but things get tougher as you hit the switches, luckily each switch has a megasphere to help you out. I don't know whether this was intentional but some of the archviles did escape and had to be dispatched (It was like two or three with severely depleted health). 

Now the final fight is open, I simply rushed past the annihilators and proceeded on the the perforator fight, now that was something else, the build up and reveal is a piece of artistic horror and I was surprised how well balanced this fight was, I was fearing that the archviles would be too numerous and as such could result in a quick death but actually things played out very well, downing the final necromenace reveals one last wave of archviles, a pair of masterminds and a cyberdemon by the exit jump.

 

This was an exhausting map, now I believe the map is more open ended that I first envisaged and as such probably brought some of the more painful moments on myself.  That said some fights here were better than others with some real spectacular moments, I will say that I wasn't overly wowed by the visuals (I think this was more personal taste, I think it is more the grey sky here than anything else), the map has some very large periods of traversing the quiet outdoor area. I do wonder whether the map could have been squashed a little bit whilst keeping the various wings intact. At least getting 100% kills shouldn't be too much of a bother this time as the fights are self contained and as such missing something is quite difficult.

 

I don't think this will rank in my favourite maps, but this wad is worth more for having this, just like Ukiro's map in Eviternity. A solid challenge and I think there are elements for everyone in this one.

 

MAP30 - “Cosmology” by Dragonfly

 

I have never been a big fan of one or one boss fights in Doom, purely because Doom relies quite a bit on facing multiple threats. However I will say that the boss itself isn't too bad, though the third wave can get very hairy given the boss can move around like the Veiled imp. There is quite a bit of variety in the attacks, which means you need to be aware and able to counter in the right manner to avoid being hit. I think the first wave is a little too easy and the final wave can quickly ruin you, even when on full alert.

I will however say that the bits between the boss fights isn't that great. In fact it is a little tedious to slowly grind ground astral cacodemons and then the nightmare variety after part 2. They don't pose much of a threat if you are on the move so this felt like prolonging the fight without any payoff. 

 

In the end this was certainly better than the final map of Eviternity, and the boss itself is pretty well done and the arena looks great. However I don't think this can stop this from being close to the bottom of the pile, though I will say this is nowhere near the D/F grade range.

 

MAP37 - “Credits” by Dragonfly

 

A nice place to relax after the last couple of maps, though you are stuck here unless you can find some hidden switches to reveal a cute but deadly fight and the final text/end screens.

Spoiler

So pressing on the screens for Maps 08, 04, 20 and 21 in that order will unlock this secret fight, given the digits I assume this potentially refers to a date (8th April 2021?)

 

Full overall review tomorrow....

Edited January 30 by cannonball

[Ralgor]

MAP30 - “Cosmology” by Dragonfly
Deaths: 0

 

Wow. I figured we'd get a boss battle, but this is the best doom boss battle I've ever played. Better than Eviternity 1's boss, that's for sure. Although to be fair, this isn't a high bar to clear. I managed to kill it the first time, and it was super fun. I spent a lot of time at the beginning of each phase just trying to figure out his patterns before going on the attack. Everything was well telegraphed, although not everything was easily dodged. There was plenty of health and ammo around. In fact, there might have been just a bit too much. It felt very forgiving. I'm not sure that's a bad thing though, since Doom bosses are best a bit too easy than too hard.

 

The between phase battles weren't that interesting though. There's so much room you can just circle strafe for a long time and eventually kill them all. I wouldn't remove it since this might be the only time I've had to deal with nightmare cacos that didn't grate on me, possibly due to them being far enough away that the sound didn't bother me.

 

End of Episode Thoughts

 

I have to admit this is my least favorite episode, but I still enjoyed it a lot. The whole episode had an oppressive feel, and most of the levels were dark. It finally had the difficulty I've been looking for as well! It's having to compete with the splendor of the other episodes. I suspect part of it may be megawad fatigue too. It hit me really bad around the time I played MAP29, but it was there beforehand.

 

MAP37 - “Credits” by Dragonfly
Deaths: 0

 

I normally wouldn't comment on a credits map, but this one is so very well done. Each episode gets its own little slice, and a teleporter takes you to a room with a display for each map. I mainly wanted to point out how when you walk up to one of the map displays, it changes the music! We have here a jukebox map. I love it.

 

I used to have a joke in my original write-up about having died five times here. That was before I found out that there is in fact a secret fight on this map. It was pretty enjoyable, but I figured I should be honest about my deaths in that case.

 

Final Thoughts

 

Wow, what a ride! This may be my new favorite megawad. I haven't played some of the other greats, so it's easier for me to say that. (I REALLY need to get around to playing Ancient Aliens and Sunlust!) But I'll be surprised if this wad doesn't hold up to those. I really liked Eviternity 1, and when I played it I was blown away by everything. I wasn't expecting to also be blown away by the sequel, since I've played plenty more wads since then, but here we are.

 

I want to thank ukiro for these amazing textures. I don't make maps (yet), but I love seeing such high quality textures in maps, and knowing these will be available to inspire and spawn whole new megawads after this is exciting! The trees are just gorgeous too. I do wish we had other colors of the wall torches though. Maybe next time.

 

The music is also great. There are many songs in here where I ended up firing up dsda-doom just to listen to them while I did other things. I won't say every one of them was my favorite, but there wasn't a bad track in the whole wad. I'm hoping I get to hear some of them again in future projects, if that's actually allowed.

 

I also love how this wad has introduced me to some new (to me!) mappers whose work I'm going to have to check out. Baaul, DMPhobos, and Aurelius are on the top of that list. I knew about antares' work before this, but Struggle is another megawad that I haven't gotten around to yet. So many maps to play, so little time!

 

And finally I love the technical achievements of this megawad the most I think. The rain and snow effects are top-notch, and something that I've only seen done well in GZDoom before now. I thought they must be GZDoom-only when I started playing. Then you have the ending sequences of Temeraire and Kenosis that are jaw-dropping. There's so much that showcases MBF21 and DSDHacked. I hope it inspires others to develop for this standard.

 

Dragonfly's map are definitely similar in design. It became really obvious toward the end, but the thing is I like his maps. All of them were good to great. I think it's one of my favorite designs anyway, so that helped Eviternity II become my favorite wad.

 

My biggest problem is that I feel like one month wasn't quite long enough for me to properly enjoy this wad. It has 36 levels, and some of them are pretty big. Trying to compress that into 30 days with limited free time is hard. But that's a problem with the megawad club format, not Eviternity II. It will probably be another few to several months before I play another wad with the club. We'll see what comes up!

 

Favorite Maps
1. MAP14 - “Equanimity” by Aurelius
2. MAP24 - “Temeraire” by antares031
3. MAP23 - “Thaw” by DMPhobos
4. MAP07 - “Sovereign” by DMPhobos
5. MAP32 - “Charge” by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul

 

Most Memorable Maps
1. MAP24 - “Temeraire” by antares031
2. MAP26 - “Myriad” by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul, Dragonfly
3. MAP36 - “Kenosis” by ukiro
4. MAP14 - “Equanimity” by Aurelius
5. MAP32 - “Charge” by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul

 

Hardest Maps
1. MAP36 - “Kenosis” by ukiro
2. MAP26 - “Myriad” by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul, Dragonfly
3. MAP24 - “Temeraire” by antares031
4. MAP27 - “Emypreal” by DMPhobos, Dragonfly
5. MAP15 - “Rubicon” by Scotty

 

[Veeda Vidlak]

Map36 “Kenosis” by Ukiro

 

Oh where to begin.

 

Kenosis is the colossal penultimate challenge of Eviternity II, its outer area alone one of the most incredible feats of mapmaking I can think of. The compare/contrast with Anagnorisis is interesting because while its clearly reminiscent of it, there's quite a bit of design difference. Anagnorisis was a monstrous, interconnected compound dominated by incidental combat, overwhelming the player with its size and complexity. Kenosis is based around arena combat and sets the player around a ginormous heptagram to complete a circuit leading to a cross-shaped cathedral in the center. Progression is straightforward and there are no secrets (I am ok with this, it cuts like an hour off of secret and enemy hunting I had to do in Anagnorisis).

 

Well let's get moving and... Wow this place looks impressive. It’s also hitting my framerate a bit so hopefully that doesn’t show up at an inopportune moment (it didn’t). The opening archvile dance gives a good idea of what we’re in for, their cubbyholes are constantly opening and closing in a circular pattern and we need to hit some switches and bail before we get attritioned out. It’s very much a warmup so you’re in for a rough time if this place is causing problems.

 

I went to the westernmost point first and was given an SSG to battle hordes of astralcacos, nightmare demons, revenants, and elevated annihilators. Fun! Also easy, just circle the outer area and nothing ever hits you. Next, I head south into a small fortification to get the RL and find myself surrounded by hundreds of lost souls (with an invul). I’m feeling an in joke here, although the joke is clearly on me because this epic skull slaughter knocked a mighty eight enemies off the monster count. Only 2662 to go! And then some number fewer because a bunch of veilimps harassed me on the way out. Pretty dangerous actually, they managed to hand me an L the first time (Side note: don’t come here first, the SSG was important).

 

Let’s try going east, this large brick blood dungeon thing looks neighborly. I guess it is from a certain point of view, we get to play hide and seek with archies to a crowd of adoring corporals. Good thing I have the rocket launcher and not just the wimpy chaingun given here. I’ll hit these switches and… gah! What is with all the lost souls in this level!? Look at this madlad inflating a monster count of 2777. At least I lowered it by more than single digits this time.

 

So I head north and… vile purrs, great. Oh never mind, they’re caged in little pillars that move up and down, that’s not a problem. Maybe it would be if I was less well armed but the pain elementals, imps, and caged archviles pose no threat with my current arsenal. Neither do the revenants and mancs in the next step. The final wave with the astralcacos is harder, but there’s plenty of space. Just don’t fall in the little crevasse and everything will be fine.

 

Next, I’ll head due west to the northwestern section, which is a neat little platforming puzzle with a problematic cyber and a number of astralmancs and astralarachnos. You need to raise cybie’s podium and slip past him to advance (distracting him with the lightshow bros can help). It’s clever but I wish I didn’t have to reset the platform to climb back up when doing the last section. Don’t fall I guess? There’s plenty of megaspheres in case you take a rocket… and don’t try to kill the cyber, he respawns so it’s a waste of ammo.

 

And for the final section we’ve got a little circular arena to the southeast featuring a cyberdemon and a crusher that goes around like a wheel. I like this one, the pace is just right not to be a pain and you get a plasma to hose him down in a reasonable amount of time. The dukes afterwards are a threat so duck into one of their closets quickly to avoid shenanigans. And now with the heptagram done, lets go see what’s in this impressive looking cross-shaped cathedral in the middle.

 

What a beauty. Except this mar on the mosaic in front, that looks amiss. Anyway, we’ve got more arenas at the cross points so let's go kill more demons. The two edges are pretty similar though I definitely found the east one scarier. It’s a lot more hectic and hard hitting with all the astralcacos compared to the slower paced one to the west. Then we have the fleshy pit to the south that reminds me of an encounter in Slaughterfest2012 of all things. It was for a blue key and had a row of archviles in the center that would immolate me unless I stayed glued to the wall they were standing on. Might have been map24. This one is much easier, I just killed them all with the rocket launcher before hitting any of the switches. Made the rest of the fight stress free.

 

By the way the inverted cross sequence transforming the cathedral into a corpse filled death pit is metal as fuck.

 

And yes, now we get the big finale, which is yet another highlight moment of the wad. Hitting the now accessible upper switch gives a perforator and a gnarly transformation sequence in which the cross on the far side inverts, the windows blow out into swirly bloody portals, and nearly 2000 zombiemen corpses get spewed onto the floor. What is this for? Why the final battle against a bunch of viles and necromenaces of course! I love this fight, the perforator is perfect for this encounter, carving through revived cannon fodder and one-shotting viles from a quarter mile away. Focus on archviles first and necromenaces (necromenaci?) second, big time custom boss or not the vile will always be the bigger threat.

 

And that's Kenosis, a magnificent beast of a magnum opus. Wait... is this his magnum opus? Or is, ya know, Anagnorisis Ukiro's magnum opus (yes he made both). Can someone have two magnum opuses? Whatever, this map is everything I wanted to see for a sendoff to Evi II's secret levels. Grandiose and jaw-dropping in scale and aptitude. As for difficulty? Well, not too bad actually. None of the arenas are unfair and you're given plenty of resources to overcome mistakes (would you believe me if I said all but one of my deaths was to falling off the rocks between sections like an idiot?) I think the rocket launcher skull parade followed by veilimp ambush is the hardest encounter, though what order you approach them in makes a big difference.

 

Awesome, one more to go which I will have tomorrow before the month is out.

[ReaperAA]

MAP29: Maelstrom by Dragonfly

The name sends flashbacks to me about a certain Sunlust map with the same name. Thankfully, as Eviternity 2 is not a challenge wad, this map is nowhere near as hard as the other Maelstrom.

 

I think Celestin made a good point about Map27, 28 and 29 feeling kind of same-ish. I think it is because of their visuals, their overall difficulty and their style of progression. Though I do think Map29 somewhat differentiates itself from the other two by having an optional objective of doing fights to open the secret exit. In Map29, you need 3 keys to to exit the map, each key has a fight associated with it. One has you fighting 2 cyberdemons, the other has you fighting a horde of cacos (regular, astral and even nightmare) + some pinkies. The third has you traverse dark narrow passage with spectres and Dukes and then ultimately fight horde of revenants, hell knights and cacos when you get to the top.

 

Getting to the secret secret does not require any key at all. Instead, you need to complete 2 fights, each involving a necromance and some hell nobles. The west side fight is not too hard since there are only a few hell knights and a few dukes firing acting as turrets while you fight the necromenace. The north-east side fight however can be a bit tricky, as there are a good deal of hell knights and imps assisting the necromenace and you can easily get blocked because real-state is precious. Still with good footing and and using plasma to gun down the necro, you should be able to do this in at most a few attempts.

 

A fairly solid map, but it doesn't really give that "penultimate map" feel. And that's because...

 

MAP36: Kenosis by ukiro

...This map is here to serve the real penultimate map role. Given that this map is made by ukiro, and the name Kenosis has rhyming suffix with Anagnorisis, I was kind of expecting a sequel of sorts to that map. Well I was both right and wrong about the assumption. While the scale and detailing is similar, the actual gameplay is much different. Anagnorisis is like 90+% incidental combat, whereas Kenosis is 100% setpiece based.

 

The atmosphere of the map gave me heavy Mordor vibes where we have to travel through molten rocky paths to get to different buildings, each holding a fight for use and we get rewarded with either a weapon or a key.

 

There are essentially 10 fights in the map. Now I won't go into details regarding each fight, but I will say that I especially liked the blue key fight where we get to raise/lower the cyberdemon platform to do some infighting for us. I also like the 1024 lost souls area fight, the archviles overseeing the maze fight and the final fight, where we get to see the spectacle of roughly 2000 dead zombiemen bodies getting launched from the windows of the cathedral before the Necromenaces and archviles arrive to start resurrecting them and we get the perforator for this.

 

On other hand, I didn't care much about the SSG fight (kind of grindy) and the archviles in cages fight area. But thankfully most of the fights are at the very least somewhat enjoyable.

 

Overall, its a pretty solid map and I definitely prefer it over Anagnorisis, but its long length means that it will be a long while before I decide to revisit this map.

 

MAP30: Cosmology by antares031 and Dragonfly

While I didn't hate the boss fight in the original Eviternity, I did find the last part of that fight somewhat irritating. This boss fight however I loved from start to end. Hell this might be favorite boss fight in any Doom wad I have ever played (this even includes UDMF/GZDoom exclusive stuff). Firstly, the boss' spritework and the soundtrack of this map, combined with the visuals is just something to behold. Like the boss in first eviternity, this boss "The Origin" is multistaged.

 

It has 3 stages and each stage has 8500/8000/7500 health respectively (for a combined total of 24000 health). Each successive stage has the boss using more vicious attacks. The 1st stage has him using a variety of attacks, many involving the similar type of projectiles that are used by the astral mancubi's purple attack and those used by nightmare cacos. Since he has splash damage immunity, I don't use rocket launcher here. Plasma is good, but I like to reserve it for 2nd and 3rd stages. I can handle the 1st stage with just SSG without taking much damage, so I do that.

 

Once you deal with the 1st stage, he will teleport away and a horde of astral cacodemons will start flooding in. Try not to get infinite height'ed by them and circle strafe them and you should be fine. Then press the next button to start the next stage.

 

The 2nd stage involves him getting more aggressive with his speed, his attacks and he also starts manipulating the environment (parts of the arena lower to reveal damaging floor at different intervals) like he is Korax or something lol. Once you deal with the 2nd stage, he will teleport away and a horde of nighhtmare cacodemons will arrive to try to ruin your day. Again, try not to get infinite height'ed by them and and this time, be more careful with circle strafing. Once you kill them, press the next button to start the final stage.

 

In the last stage, he will start teleporting like veilimps and he will also use more attacks like a BFG attack and also occasionally use the turrets around the pillars to start firing at you, making it pretty hard to avoid taking damage, so I hope you saved those healing items and are fast enough to take him. Once he dies, he gives off a big explosion and you see some souls circling around him and moving up, letting you know that this is finally over. It is finally done, you have beaten Eviternity 2. This is easily my favorite map30 of any Doom wad now.

 

I will write my final review of Eviternity 2 tomorrow.

[DJVCardMaster]

MAP37 - Credits - Dragonfly:

Nice credits map, it has an easter egg, I won't tell you how to get it, but congrats on the release and congrats to both Bauul and Ukiro in particular, now you two have a bigger responsibility in hands!

 

Spoiler

If you find the way to trigger the secret fight, after doing so, you'll be awarded an entire arsenal without a BFG, and a megasphere. Right after you exit the room where guns are provided to you, a swarm of baby astrals will come up to you. Doable fight, but serves a lot more as an easter egg rather than a serious gameplay thing.
You can also trigger the appearance of a baby nightmare caco that is invincible and can help you kill those baby astrals with its own perforator attack, sweet!

After killing the entire swarm, the end level effect will trigger, and you will see the final READ_M screen. Nice setpiece to cure your empty aftertaste after finishing something.

Eviternity II - Dragonfly et al.:

The sequel to one of the better wads of the decade surpasses it by every single aspect. Length, gameplay, visuals, music, beastiary, and overall care for every single detail that Eviternity I has. There is one aspect that Eviternity I has over the second one: its difficulty, not implying though, this is bad nor good. But I've felt that, the first installment was clearly harder than the second one, or at least it takes less time to kick in with its difficulty. 

Eviternity II comes with 6 new episodes, and now, thanks to UMAPINFO, it comes with a secret level in each episode, making the adventure bigger and more interesting, adding more replay value to it. There isn't a single bad map that I could despise, and several of them where great. Something that is difficult to find even in good megawads. The amount of detail most maps have is top notch and feels every single one of them took quite some time to finish, just if like we where talking about a "production game" rather than a mod. Not only a new set of episodes, but also a new set of textures made by Ukiro, which, is a really important part of the Eviternity project as a whole, as the coat of paint this mapset has, is given by awesome texture work, giving the mapset the personality it has. 

The new beastiary gives Eviternity II even more life, as it manages to create  a new set of possible encounters and squirmishes against enemies, moving outside from the basic setpieces you could create with regular Doom II monsters, which is a nice breath of fresh air. Although I would say, most monsters are "repaints" of the original ones, with different, more complex attacks than their regular counter-parts, at the end they serve their purpose well. The first Eviternity had some of them, but Eviternity II opened the gates for even more painful enemies to deal with, apart of changing a bit of the behaviour some of the existent ones had in the previous entry. My favourite new mob is the Duke of Hell, because I'm a fan of green stuff. Their attack is well balanced, tries to differ a bit from regular hell nobles, and it's not a pain in the ass to deal with the instagibbing annihilators that can totally screw your run without you even noticing them. They also have a pain chance that prevents them from doing their final attack. Cool enemies, and luckly, not over used.

I'm not a good music reviewer myself, I did not think that it standed out as much, but it is fine by me. I think it was a tad better than in the first Eviternity (specially because the entire song list is new in comparison), but I feel like remembering Eviternity I's tracks a little bit more than II's. Don't get me wrong tho', final boss' music was fantastic, but hey, I think that's a little bit more of personal taste. Still I'll recognize there is an amazing work from the usual musicians of the Doom community, as always, giving more life to Doom projects such as this.

The entire mapset was a great to play, and I would totally replay it some other time, personally the best mapset ever, just because of the work it was put into it, overall superior than Eviternity I and all of the Skillsaw wads separately, which are some of the best aswell. The experience can be played as if we were talking about a new game, a +10-hour experience you will not regret. So far, Doom community did not exceed, nor reach, this level of quality in a 32-MAP (37-MAP in this case) wad.

Best maps:

MAP36 - One of the most astonishing work in a single level ever found in a megawad. Great showcase of the hellish/aetherial textures by Ukiro himself, amazing linedef work overall.
MAP24 - Fantastic just because of the setpieces at the end, without it, it would serve as a great regular map, but it bought me because of the warfare against the cyberdemons, because of that and also because I'm a fan of Antares' work.
MAP14 - Beautiful playground, the best regular map out there, great fights, great ways to open the secret exit for you, and fantastic visuals, in their terms, it is the best looking map, for sure. It feels entirely like a map by itself, separated from the rest of the work.

Least favourite maps:

MAP31 - I did not find this map amusing, just a showcase of the new weapon that can instagib monsters, it was longer than it should, being so early in the mapset, it bored me a bit.
MAP25 - A simple boss fight, again, it's difficult for a boss map to spark something on me. Cool showcase of the new boss monster though.
MAP33 - Totally something that you should play at least once, but I leave replays for speedrunners and people that want those "gaming medals" hanging at their necks, talking about those single-segment players.

Score: 93/100 (Excellent)

Thanks to Dragonfly, Ukiro and every mapper/musician that has contributed to this amazing project. Amazing work, and keep it coming, let's see if someone can surpass this even more in the future. 

[Horus]

A heads up that I don't think any wad has anywhere near the required 4 votes for a thread to be created for next month's DWMC

 

+++Nostalgia

+++Operation Biowar & Equinox

+++Garrulismo

[Dragonfly]

1 hour ago, DJVCardMaster said:

Skillsaw wads

 

Why is everyone throwing skillsaw in the comparison pile? This association / review standard makes no sense... 😅

[ukiro]

Thanks everyone for playing!

I want to put this into writing somewhere, and this thread feels as good as any: I don't think you need to compare Eviternity II to other megawads, or even to its predecessor. Not saying you can't, of course, but they are different things and playing one doesn't exclude another. A comparison across all of megawad-dom would make more sense in a contect with more constraints: What's the best wad for a Doom newcomer? What's the top recommendation for someone looking for novel takes on Doom's game loop? What is best suited for someone that can only play an hour or two per week? etc etc.

 

As much as I appreciate the flattering comments here, I also want to say that I very sincerely hope that Eviternity II doesn't poison the well for megawads or cause other mappers to feel like their efforts are inadequate. Doom is a million different things, and they don't need to compete with oneanother. I personally want to make something a lot more modest and scrappy next time, because holy hell was this stressful. I don't think I want to give up 1.5 months of salary just to work on a wad anytime soon again.

[ReaperAA]

2 hours ago, Horus said:

A heads up that I don't think any wad has anywhere near the required 4 votes for a thread to be created for next month's DWMC

 

+++Nostalgia

+++Operation Biowar & Equinox

+++Garrulismo

 

In that case, i'll add:

+++Sigil 2, 10x10, Heartland

 

Or (this is an oddball option since it's ZDoom/GZDoom)

 

++Shadow of the WoolBall, Rise of the WoolBall (Shadow's maps are short so 2 maps per day can be covered) 

[SiFi270]

+++Operation Biowar & Equinox

[cannonball]

Overall thoughts;

 

It is fair to say that a sequel to Eviternity was on most peoples wishlists, a wad that many considered to be the greatest wad of all time. I must confess that I was never in that crowd, sure it was good but I think I gelled with some other wads more than the original. However I will say here now that I consider Eviternity 2 to be one of the greatest megwads ever made and a fantastic advert for both the expanded OTEX texture pack (Public release pending) and MBF21. At its core the level and combat design is rock solid with maps ranging from good all the way through to potentially legendary status. The themes are varied and never outstay their welcome and the poetic lore that flows through this wad seems so natural. 

In terms of the episodes;

1st - I think the downfall of Heaven was an excellent setting to start this one, especially after the novel setting in the last episode of Eviternity. I loved Tristan's reprise of Elysium, the sombre aftermath of your previous campaign. It was the perfect tone setter and the following maps flows smoothly and offered engaging combat whilst keeping the difficulty on the easy side. The final map was the highlight of this episode.

2nd - This episode I considered to be the weakest, but only just, there were some very good maps in here and a mix of mapping styles (Bri and An_Mutt with more of a dungeon crawler aspect compared to the more open offerings of the other mappers), I will say that this episode housed the best secret map of the set, so a touch of redemption here.

3rd - The Brutalist episode is the one that could easily end up being bland, but I consider it to be the strongest of the lot, there are two outstanding maps and the rest fill in the gaps perfectly, as I said during this playthrough, but I don't know whether it was deliberate to start the episode in the lush colourful outdoor environment and end it in a bleak, poisonned concrete wasteland, but that adds a lot to the sense of journey in this one.

4th - Whilst this episode didn't have any blockbuster maps, this episode felt the most consistently good, this also housed in my opinion  Dragonfly's best map. I think the autumn/historical setting was a great counter to the concrete jungle of the previous episode.

5th - This one started a little low-key (I was expecting the maps to kick on a little bit), but there was a great pay off in both Maps23 and 24 and the boss map was ironically the best in the set (ironic in the sense that the layout was the simplest of the entire set).

6th - A bit of a strange one and I have to question whether the pacing and difficulty was right for this episode, that said the four maps up to the final boss were all of high quality and never outstayed their welcome.

 

Overall, this is a must play for anyone who loves Doom, and a great present to celebrate the 30th birthday of a fantastic game. I think the difficulty plateaus a little too much and the last episode could have been a little tougher overall. The final boss was considerably better than the boss of the first megawad.

 

Overall Score - 4.5/5

 

Favourite maps - Map11 (the best technically), Map14 (A wonderful map to just wander around in), Map24 (One of the greatest cinematic moments ever). Essentially there were all A+ maps.

Honorable mentions - Map01, 05, 15, 18, 19, 20, 23, 29 and 32, like above all of these are grade A maps, which should reflect how positive I feel about this.

 

I am on holiday for a chunk of next month so consider me out of next months campaign.

[DJVCardMaster]

7 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

 

Why is everyone throwing skillsaw in the comparison pile? This association / review standard makes no sense... 😅

Not a direct comparison, but a "comparison" in quality, even though I'm not the biggest fan of AA or Valiant, those are for me, personally one of the best mapsets for today standards. 
 

[Cutman 999]

Just now, DJVCardMaster said:

Not a direct comparison, but a "comparison" in quality
 

That's exactly what people are refering to, is not even said in bad faith.

[Veeda Vidlak]

Map30 “Cosmology” by Dragonfly and Antares031

 

We have reached the end at last and like the first time we have an angelic monstrosity to take down. I actually wasn’t aware the Archangelus was a contentious custom boss until very recently, I’ve always thought the ending was fine.

 

Upon hitting the switch our adversary, The Origin, unfolds its wings and I already have to say the spritework is much improved. This first phase is straightforward, dodge projectiles and hide when the vile flames show up (he curls his wings). It fires some homing shots when you do so don’t hold still. Otherwise just be aware that some of his other projectiles home in as well. After this we get a rather gratuitous intermission against a big mass of astralcacos. Without the BFG this felt like work, it takes a while to grind them out and they’re no threat whatsoever.

 

Second verse same as the first, it’s noticeably more aggressive but otherwise the same tactics work. One notable difference is that The Origin can lower parts of the arena into lava, which traps you there for a bit if you aren’t careful. You get a couple seconds of advance warning so no excuses! After this phase we get another intermission with nightmare cacodemons which unlike the first wave present some danger. I would recommend not engaging these spastic mofos until they’re all centered, just focus on where they’re coming in above you at first.

 

The final phase is the most interesting, The Origin now frequently teleports (usually behind you) and avoiding damage is incredibly hard. It adds a BFG blast to its arsenal and can summon statue shooters like in Struggle. You want to end this phase quickly so the attacks I like the most are the ones in which it holds still for a bit. Once it’s down the level, and Eviternity II, is over. Take a stroll through the lovely credits map to celebrate.

 

Final thoughts:

 

Eviternity was a landmark megawad, even getting some mainstream coverage if I recall correctly. It did everything right, aesthetics, difficulty curve, good use of episode themes, memorable design, strong gameplay that never got too out of hand, a ballin soundtrack, and a “that level” super secret map in Anagnorisis. It’s about as tough an act to follow as a doom megawad gets.

 

Eviternity II succeeds in at least matching the original’s quality. Its maps are universally beautiful, fine-tuned, superbly designed, and lacking in random issues. Gameplay never pointlessly brutalizes the player and is lacking in unfair moments. The megawad contains several memorable moments, showcasing MBF21’s strengths. It can also clearly be identified as Eviternity, which I consider a mildly underrated aspect of a good sequel.

 

The expanded bestiary is worth mentioning, Eviternity’s custom monsters were a core aspect of its identity and the same is even more true here. The annihilator’s nerf and the captain’s demotion to corporal weakened these fearsome monsters considerably. The annihilator remained dangerous but the corporals I never found compelling at any point in the megawad, I was calling them pellet gunners for like half the thread. The new astral arachnotrons and mancubi, however, were very dangerous… high dps monstrosities that dominate infighting and laugh at your megaspheres. They give this version of Eviternity a unique vibe with their vibrant projectile spam, a vibe enhanced by the recolored astralcaco fireballs (and nightmare caco ones). The lightshow bullet hells of the Celestial episode were a sight to behold and I’ll probably think of this wad if I see anything similar in the future. There's also the duke of hell but I don't have much to say about him, he's a solid brute that fulfills a role similar to Valiant's pyro knight.

 

Then we have the two monsters I find most interesting, the veilimp and the necromenace. The veilimp is a grade A custom enemy. It’s unpredictable, alarming, fast, and… weak. Much of this monster’s power is in its psychological effect and that is fantastic design. Then on the other end of the rank spectrum we have a boss tier spellcaster that has a ton of potential simply due to its special mechanics. The mass revival means its threat level is dependent on the support around it, which provides boundless design space for encounters.

 

All of this adds up to a levelset I very much enjoyed playing. There were times I was hoping for meatier fights but I was never bored and could not believe some of the sequences getting pulled off here. Eviternity II is a great sequel to a great wad and makes me believe this old ass game still has a community that is alive and well. Cheers to the Eviternity team, you’re all pretty good at this whole doom mapping thing.

 

 

Favorite Levels:

 

Map32: The first holy shit moment of the wad, Charge remains one of my favorite maps and Velocity is my favorite midi. This was the point I was sold on Eviternity II.

 

Map14: I am firmly convinced Aurelius’s presence elevates any wad he’s in and Equanimity does not suggest otherwise.

 

Map15: My favorite map in terms of gameplay, Rubicon's setpieces are well balanced and are a good example of challenging but not rage-inducing encounters.

 

Map24: The ending sequence is a contender for favorite doom moment of all time. The rest of the level is pretty damn good too.

 

Map26: This map is just all kinds of great. Looks and plays like a jaw-dropper.

 

Map36: Let Ukiro know that his herculean efforts do not go unappreciated. When I want to show my friends what this game is capable of Kenosis is getting added to the very small level list I pick from.

[antares031]

On 1/9/2024 at 8:59 PM, antares031 said:

 

There is no denying. In retrospect, Struggle MAP30 was atrocious. Maybe the concept itself wasn't that bad, but the execution was really terrible. It's no wonder many people picked that level as the worst level ever designed in Doom.

 

After I learned lessons from the two final bosses from Struggle and Eviternity, I tried to deliver something different this time. MBF21 was a really powerful & useful tool to create something more than just an Icon of Sin. So I hope to see you guys in MAP30 at the end of this month.

 

To me, Doom is undoubtedly the best video game ever created. But this doesn't mean that Doom is the only video game I play. There are many video games with different styles and different genres, and some of them are even way better than Doom in some aspects. One of video games I really enjoyed is "Hollow Knight" by Team Cherry. It's my all-time #3 favorite, and the best indie game I've ever played. There are so many features that makes HK so interesting and so memorable, but one thing that HK inspired me with Doom modding is the design of boss battles. If you played MAP24 and found every secret area, you may noticed that one of secret areas provided an opportunity to eliminate a group of veilimps and an arch-vile, waiting to bring more chaos to the blue skull key fight. This part was inspired by HK's Watcher Knights boss fight; If you find a secret near the boss arena, you can knock out one of six Watcher Knights before the actual fight begins, making the boss fight slightly easier than usual.

 

Among the 47 bosses, Nightmare King Grimm is my favorite boss fight in Hollow Knight. NKG is extremely-fast and deadly, teleporting around the entire arena with various attack patterns, and it's really difficult to beat him during the blind playthrough. But once you learn how to deal with his attack patterns, the boss is surprisingly easy to defeat next time, while it's still really fun to fight against him. His attack patterns are fast, but they're quite fair. Each pattern gives you a brief moment to recongnize his next movement, so you can dodge his patterns with proper movement. The boss fight is so fun and engaging that I even made my personal challenge by removing the protagonist's appearance, and it's still possible to defeat the boss without getting hit.

 

While I was making the final boss of Struggle, I spent almost every available code pointer frames with various custom monsters (remember, you can only apply code pointers to designated frames in vanilla dehacked) when I reached MAP30. Not just code pointer frames, I was running out of normal frames as well. So it's inevitable to design a final boss with a cheap spammy attack pattern, which usually requires less frames, rather than a fair & sophisticated pattern. In retrospect, it would've been much better to design the final level as a giant climactic slaughtermap, like MAP30 of Scythe 2, instead of trying to make a final boss with severely limited resources. The final boss of Eviternity had way more resources to play with, but I think I made a same mistake by adding another unstoppable spammy attack pattern during the 2nd phase. Sure, it's cost-effective in dehacked's perspective; just put one projectile attack code pointer frame, and give it A_xxxReFire with another frame. But it made the final boss quite unfair, making the boss fight weak and annoying.

 

After I grabbed MBF21, I decided not to design a final boss with the same mistake. The premise of the final boss was inspired by NKG; multiple attack patterns, but not annoying to deal with. And I decided to give the final boss three phases. The first phase was designed as an introduction to let the player know about the new final boss; it has multiple attack patterns, and it shoots various projectile attacks with different gimmicks. Each fireball has a common gimmick, derived from Astral Mancubus' purple fireball; bounce one time to track the target. Red fireball has a small blast damage effect, like a mini rocket, and you can recognize it with its explosion sound effect. Green fireball is basically a buffed version with faster speed and higher damage, which is an ideal projectile to counter the player, hidden behind a solid pillar, while they're trying to hide from arch-vile's flame attack. Blue fireball is a tricky one. It bounces not just once, but three times. So in close range, strafing just once wouldn't enough to dodge those blue fireballs. The blue energy bolt attack pattern is nothing special, and it's just a buffed version of Astral Arachnotron's attack pattern. The first phase was designed in August 2023, with a simple concept level of MAP30. As a placeholder, I quoted the sprites I made for the final boss of Antaresian Legacy (not to confuse with the megawad Struggle. this was a boom-compatible mapset, and eventually cancelled).

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Soon after the first phase, the second phase was designed. For the second phase, I tried something a little bit different than a projectile attack pattern. By combining dehacked's A_LineEffect and a voodoo doll script, I could let the final boss change the geometry and effect of the arena during the fight. I thought that putting pitfalls with damaging floor for a brief moment would be a nice addition to the final boss, giving a dynamic change to the arena's geometry. To make the pattern less annoying, I gave a visual indication with two-stages-drop method, and set a pretty short duration to the pitfall. I also put sound effects for the pitfall pattern and the arch-vile attack pattern, to help the player with auditory indications. Lastly, I decided to release some astral cacodemons after the first phase, and nightmare cacodemons after the second phase, working as intermissions between the phases.

 

Spoiler

 

 

For the final phase, I decided to put some special features to surprise the players. I let the final boss teleport around the arena like a veilimp, inspired by NKG's movement pattern. After I put some buffed patterns from the previous phases, I decided to add an attack pattern with a BFG shot, since I asked myself "What about let the monster fire the BFG, instead of the player?". The pattern is actually not that lethal, if you know how BFG works. But it's good enough to surprise the player with loud and familiar BFG sound from the monster. And for the last pattern, I decided to put an unique pattern with Afriest Turrets from Struggle, as a small reference to the final boss from the past. It may look like that it's conflicting with the rule I set earlier; no cheap spammy pattern. But I tried to make it doesn't feel like spammy, by keeping the duration short enough. With the completion of the final phase, the concept level of MAP30 was finished, and ready for the actual final level of Eviternity 2.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

After this, I moved on to finish MAP24. Meanwhile, for the actual MAP30, Dragonfly constructed the boss arena, based on the designs from the concept level. There's one major change with the arena, though. Instead of advancing to the next arena for the next phase, the whole boss fight would occur in one playground. After Dragonfly applied the changing skybox, I added some visual effects to decorate the later phases, like adding waterfalls with corruption, infecting nearby walls, and a weather effect with falling sparkling static chips, also infecting pillars in the arena. I also designed every custom texture for MAP30 to polish the level visually. Some of them were designed to mark the cardinal directions with unique symbols (they're actually highly distorted korean words of North, South, East, and West), which didn't work really well. But I decided to leave it for decorations.

 

For the sprite images, just like Archangelus from Eviternity, Clay once again did an amazing job with creating the 3D model of the final boss. And then created all the necessary 2D sprites with that model. The sprites with colored-eyes are really good addition to the final boss. Like Astral Mancubus and Overlord, it gave a visual indication of the boss' attack patterns. After all the necessary sprites are finished, I decided to put one last feature to the final boss. Instead of using A_Mushroom code pointer, I used a bunch of custom projectiles with different A_SpawnObject code pointer to simulate "spiral explosion" effect. And then I quoted the explosion effect from MAP24, edited it out as a golden variant. For the background music, Tristan wrote yet another epic boss fight music, and recorded it as OGG format.

 

Just in case, but for those who inspected dehacked code or decorate code of the final boss, I picked the word "Eviternatus" as a development codename, with my own phonetic codes of A, B, C. Eviternity also used various development codenames, like "Chaos Demon", "Super Bruiser", and "Captain Chaingunner". And they still exist inside of the dehacked code.

 

It was really fun to design the final boss of Eviternity 2, with the brand-new powerful MBF21. Not just the final boss, but it was really interesting to create various MBF21 actors, like falling leaves and custom monsters. If I'm going to make the next personal project, I'll definitely use MBF21 to create more custom elements with my preferences. And maybe even a bunch of custom bosses, and a boss rush as the final level. Thanks for playing Eviternity 2, and I hope you guys enjoyed this sequel.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[ReaperAA]

On 1/31/2024 at 12:48 PM, ReaperAA said:

I will write my final review of Eviternity 2 tomorrow.

 

Slightly late am I :p

 

Ok so where do I begin. Not gonna lie, because of how it was shadow released, a part of me still can't believe that we now have two Eviternity wads.

 

As far as how it is, it is very much like the first Eviternity, but even more ambitious and experimental (stuff like Charge, Equanimity, Catalyst, Parallel, Temeraire, Myriad and the inclusion of Perforator) which makes it even more memorable. I partially agree with DJV in that I don't think the peak difficulty isn't much high than that of original Eviternity. If someone can beat all of the original Eviternity on UV, they can likely beat all of Eviternity 2 on UV as well (barring maybe Map33, because that one is an oddball). Though Eviternity 2 picks up on the difficulty more quickly in my opinion. Original was pretty easygoing for the first 10 maps and only picked things up from Episode 3 onwards.

 

I also like pretty much like all of the new enemies. But my favorites have to be veilimps. Fighting those sneaky glass cannon imps never got old. I also really liked corporals (especially when you gib a group of them to regain armor). Dukes of Hell and Necromenace are other enemies that I thought were really cool.

 

As far as my personal preference goes, Eviternity 2 is definitely a worth sequel that surpasses the original in most areas. It's easily now in my top 3 wads of all time and even might be my current favorite wad now.

 

As far as my favorite maps go, I think of these (in no particular order):

• Map32: Charge
• Map14: Equanimity
• Map24: Temeraire
• Map15: Parallel
• Map23: Thaw
• Map26: Myriad

In terms of difficulty, these are the hardest maps to single segment in my opinion:

1. Map36: Kenosis
2. Map33: Catalyst (I suck at rhythm based gameplay)
3. Map24: Temeraire
4. Map32: Charge (only because of the end fight)
5. Map26: Myriad