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MAP21: It looks very modern and polished if you think what year this map came out, way before sector-borders were a must. Nice details and I liked how the blue lights are used in the beginning. The first part on pistol start was meh, slow meaty fights with the SSG, the horde of pinkies you'd better to avoid and come back later. Though I liked a lot the encounter before the YK and the southern courtyard was fun, the cyberdemon is actually your friend there.

MAP20: The title doesn't disappoint, the place is indeed very dark and also cramped, we get back to the austere corridor fights. It's neat how the starting area keeps to change, and even the lighting in the RK/BK room will change after you come back. Visually is also good and the lighting contrasts give some nice detailing, the stair with STUCCO and SHAWN was really cool. Maybe it isn't the most impressive level with the combats but the cyberdemons and the "waves" that refill the starting areas were nice and the cool music gives and additional edge to the map. Again the ending is a bit disappointing, I guess that chessboard with the monsters stuck is designed to be annoying on a uv-max. Even the separathe deathmatch area looks interesting, it would fit well among the weird planet levels from Icarus.

MAP19: A severe case of "where are my weapons?", and this is a map that I remember well but I totally forgot that in the south-west cave there's an early secret that gives you the SSG and the RL but the avs made me give up to go there and I came back there when I got the BFG. The layout is cool, it feels like a citadel you have to conquer and it's tastefully detailed. I agree with Roofi about the verticality, it's something that really make this map to stand out in the wad since HR2 for the most operates with flat areas. The tower with the multiple 3D brigdes is impressive, even surpassing Requiem MAP13 :D Once you get the weapons and pass the slow grinding at the beginning it's a very fun level. One of my favourites things is the pain elementals squad that with a simple impassable line they are trapped inside their teleport destination and come directly at you without spreading in the area. I think tchkb said well that the map lack a proper climax, the last area is a plain and generic crate storage and the exit trap if anything is a cheap little thing, did Feragen ran out of ideas here? Despite that it's one of my favourite levels of HR2.

MAP18: I wonder if this was one of Feragen's earliest levels he made for this wad, like MAP07 it looks more dated compared to others maps he did so far. I liked the concept of being sent to different areas from a teleport hub. The first section you visit, that metal bunker, was my favourite part. I think the title is fitting, if you trim the encounters you'll still have a very fun classic map, but it wouldn't be HR after all and it's fine the way it is since it didn't drag for too long and knew when to stop.

MAP17: It's very well done visually, good texturing and detailing, I like how few times it uses some stacked textures for a 3d-esque effect (like the ledge to before the YSK). I think this map feels like an improves version of the previous one. It's still a corridor-heavy linear layout but thanks to the traps that keep you on your toes constantly it's more fun, the level feels more playful itself. You can exploit some situations like at the YSK when you can camp behind the fence and the gameplay is sort of "mechanical". The exit area is meh, I wonder if the author just wanted to show his signature, the teleport to get there already looks like a typical exit.

MAP16: I agree with Roofi that this map has a cool atmosphere and a nice adventure feel. The first part is rather boring to play though, lots of corridor fights. And in partcular when you arrive at the hellknights room with only the SSG you have to retreat and maybe get pushed down the elevator resulting in a very tedious fight. I would like to check a speedrun to see if I missed a better strategy there. After you can pass that point it gets better at least. Many decisions seem to be made with making the life more difficult only if you want to uv max the level, like the caged avs or the cyberdemons that guard the switches but if you don't care to kill everything you can ignore them.

MAP15: I remember this one because the first time I dropped HR2 here. Different time and skills heh but it's funny to come back here and find it manageable this time. I even liked the mandatory teleffraging of the spiderdemon, it's very silly. For a pistol start the "must do" is to slowly snipe that mancubus and grab the BFG so you can clear the side rooms and get cover from the avs, or even better open your way to the RL. From what I remember of the original The Path everything is "directed" better here and more fun to engage with the fights. It's also feels less blocky of The Path, even though the places are still empty squares for the most but I don't know, maybe it's the bigger scale that helps to enhance the oppressive mood. Coincidentally I wanted to hear this midi lately but I didn't remember when it was from :D As a little thing I noticed that Feragen liked to use other times those "cube" details you can find at the cross hub after the blue door. MAP31: The first secret level has a homage to HR MAP31, the idea is kinda cute. The elevator fight instead of being the main feature of the map leaves the homage only in the first part while for the rest the level does its own things. It's very generic though and the whole place is rather "anonymous". We get another cool metal music track too. MAP32: Well since every megawad puts a slaughtermap in the supersecret slot HR 2 couldn't give up to that. After looking at HR MAP32 I wonder if the original intention here was to do something similar, Mostly Harmful also has a symmetrycal layout based on a cross but I'm probably reading too much into this. Playground is a very fun map that gives you a lot of options, one of the best levels of the wad to me. I guess I took a very safe approach, probably too much and waited to clear the whole area before triggering too much of the closets. I guess that the cacos would have give a good hand with some infight. It's cool when at the end of a slaughtermap everything gets quiet and you can look at the sea of corpses.

MAP14: Cool music and setting. The theme is quite unique for the wad since HR 2 loves more its bricks. I guess that maybe some people will find the non-tiling sky not so pleasant to look at but I must say I liked a lot how the author decided to use it anyway and create this floating fortress that isn't something I would call impressive but at least to me it leaves a mark and it's one of the map I remember the most. I feel this follows the spirit of some levels of the original HR like MAP26, and for once it tries to make something with the visuals too. It's completely symmetrical which is a thing that usually I don't like, though at least the map doesn't drag and compared to many other maps that will follow this acts also as a "breather map" that is nice to have. The Cyberden area was kinda cute

MAP13: A remake of MAP25 from HR. I guess it lives up to its name and the not so big layout is really packed with monsters and provides a tricky pistol start. You have also 2 weird teleports at the beginning, they look nice tho, where the left one takes you to the avs towers but going there without getting rid of the arachnotrons first is a guaranteed scuicide. The teleport on the right leads to the opposite side of the map where you can grab the SSG and where it's best to get pick the weapon and get out immediately with the teleport and come back later. The real weapons (the RL and PR) are still at the beginning, each one guarded by a baron and 2 mancubi but once you get one of those you can start the actual clean-up. Then there are some closets that will open to keep you company: a cybies, a group of revs and some avs and you can even mix them up. The spiderdemons are more obstacles that make you waste time more than anything but you have also a BFG to dispose quickly of them.

MAP12: This is like a bad map from the textbook featuring only big, empty flat boxes. STEPTOP 3d bridges are cute and at least they add a nice touch that makes the level a bit less dull. About the gameplay first of all it's odd how you can pick 6 pack of cells but there's no plasma rifle or bfg here so you have to deal with having to shoot rockets. I guess that the big flat courtyard works for the big battles as the monsters can get more sparse and the various avs are a real pain in the ass. Reading the other comments I see that the strategy of stading on the exit ledge is the most common and taking down the monsters with only the RL is a long, slow and boring exercise. This would have benefited with being much shorter.

MAP11: I like Roofi recall of The Talosian Incident but I think that the minimalism here falls more on the bad side as the place is a generic system of corridors. Lighting work is pretty much non-existent. The highlight would be the RK where if you can sneak past the mastermind you can grab the key and release the revs to have them infight with the boss. Anyway, aren't you able the get stuck in the well if you try to get there with an av jump?

MAP10: I liked how the map can sort of subvert your expectations, giving the 3 keys in the beginning and the fake exit that take you to the main parts of the level though a look at monster count is enough to break the magic and see that after getting the YK we are not done yet. I also liked how the initial techbase is detailed and the texture combo that in addition to the brown/green the light grey (especially that flat that usually isn't used too much) gives a personal touch. The outer wings of the levels aren't particularly interesting, the left part is better. It didn't occur to me that you can telefrag the cybie, I just skipped it altogether and trying to kill it by camping at the doorway wouldn't be fun at all.

MAP09: You are trapped inside a cute little castle while you wait for the very long exit lift to lower. If you move from a cornern to another it's easy to avoid the revs missiles but some cacos and pain elementals can pass over your defense walls. I agree that the megaspheres on the pillars were a nice thing to do instead of putting them in the ground so you'll end up picking them when you don't need them. It could be more refined but the concept isn't bad, just too long. I'm doing Uv pistol starts too and I had to wait too in silence for a good minute. Looking at your video I guess that you wasted too much time with shooting only 1 rocket each time and using too much the PR against the revs. The PR is more good against the cacos and the pain elementals that breach into your safe area, otherwise the RL is the best weapon here (even to repel the flying monsters outside the walls) so you can use the splash damage as much as possible.

MAP08: Drowning in ammo, I could think that maybe that was done so you can play aggressively but if anything it gives a silly tone to the map. The challenge is made by the total lack of health and to get right the start. At midpoint you can find a megasphere and the BFG the second half of the map that is just the first part copied and with more monster but the abundance of cells allows you to spam the BFG. In the inner corridors the realistic lighting coming from the windows was nice.

MAP07: Is it the first time in the club that a Dead Simple clone gets more appreciation than the normal maps? To be fair the Dead Simple part is only in the first area and for the most the level does its own things. Plus we get a little break from the cramped, oppressive gameplay (but get ready for it in the next map :D). On UV the av with the mancubi is a good addition to spice the things up, and for the spiders you have also a cyberdemon that can help you and instead of killing the cybie it's more useful let it live and deal with the monsters that you will encounter ahead. Similar to MAP06 it's another level that looks very mid 90's, visually it's very bare and indeed, simple. Though it got some nice touches like the pillar with the torches at the lava pit and the metal gazebo.

MAP06: This is the first map that really give off some real HR vibes with everything. Visually isn't even trying, you get 3 basic nondescript rooms connected with a corridor. Some ideas in the gameplay were at least interesting. On a first play you are likely prompted to wipe the imps in the first rooms, but knowing that later 2 avs will resurrect everything there rushing to the SSG seems like the best choice. There's a pointless cyberdemon on uv, unless you want to do 100% kills and waste time and ammo. The BK is hidden inside the revs closet and the idea is that the revs will open the door from their side to reveal it, but it can easily missed causing confusion, same with the fake exit switch but I liked that.

MAP05: Wait, isn't that Icarus theme? :D Jonas Feragen here is paired with Afterglow, and you can see that compared to the previous levels this one has more sophisticated architectural and lighting details. The layout is very compact and again devoted to fights in tight places. The pistol start pushes you to risky situations, either face the wall of sergeants or try to take the RL and get a nasty surprise from the arch-viles. I would say that kind of motif was very prevalent on the first Hell Revealed too, and it will be kept in all this wad. The BK isn't mandatory to complete the level but you'll miss the SSG and a secret by doing so.

MAP04: Like another poster already said it's a map that gives a very low margin for errors, and it provides a good challenge with the very little layout. Even at the expense of being a little cheap sometimes (like the hellknights before the exit), but in fact the map is so short that even restarting for a retry isn't a big deal.

MAP03: I like a lot the music in this map, very relaxing, and has a weird contrast with the harsh traps of the level. Pistol start isn't friendly, at least until when you can safely come back from the BK and get to the outer bridge and find a good stack of box of shells. The BK part is well done combining a couple of mancubi to guard the key, hell knights sniping from the crates and you also have to be careful about the av from the above that can aim at you. I guess the surprise at the blue door can be deadly if you react in the wrong way, retreating back is the best choice so you can let the rev infight with the barons. The RK has the other most interesting setup, starting with the seemingly uselss wall of barons in the corridor only to have a couple of archviles to come later to resurrect them, though you don't have to worry so much about them since their corridor has a block monster line so unless you miss to pick the key you are safe. It's pretty neat how that lonely caco behind the bars acts as a bait to make the player shoot and alert the avs. I also liked the stash of box of rockets on the pillar that can be lowered later when you reach the key.

Oh cool HR II, I remember mostly the early levels that shows some very pleasant simple detailing and clever setups. I don't remember too much about the 2nd and 3 rd episodes. Time to revisit it then... MAP01: It doesn't pull the punches, starting immediately in the battle. It does a good job at making you to keep moving and small layout keeps everything connected, you may think to retreat or to escape to an safer area only to find more enemies there. Looks like only 1 key is required to exit. MAP02: The pistol start looks hopeless but a good secret come in hand and it's nice how for that the expectation can be subverted since in Doom the fences and midtextures are impassable almost everytime. Compared to the first level here you are set to follow a linear track, and the gameplay introduces better the cramped combats which will be very prominent from what I remember. Better get used to dance inside this tight spaces. Nice texturing and the "custom" yellow door looks neat.

If this will let you sleep at night you have to know that noone of the undesirable posters ever contributed to a single DBP. And this is reminder also other people here that apparently don't want to understand this and are still hang up on this petty drama. Not Jabba please, I can concede you this when that site was created but it's froma good while that the racists and transphobes rarely even visit the place (around when the DBPs started I would say), and the forums it's a ghost town where 90% of the activity are the DBPs. I'm all for not revising the history but let's not spread this kind of lies too.

E2M8: The sudden change to the black sky and the moody music was perfect to introduce this atmospheric masterpiece. After taking that raft in E2M7 we arrive in this island and the very eerie complex of buildings that perhaps before was a base of the UAC. Good use of the stock textures for the details (the red on the buildings, the green nukage stripes), but the real winner is the CRATOP2 sand. The only drawback of the stock textures is the lack of a black flat, Roofi did well with some tricks to manage it in some points but you can see how the CEIL5_1 sky gets cutted in straight lines. I played only few maps and mostly saw screenshots by Time of Death but the visuals reminded me a lot of what I have seen by him. After I while I was wondering if the title hinted at how we came to this place but then I got the revelation at the YK area. I didn't notice at first that the ceiling was made of water and the floating crates were very nice details to tell where you are, it was kind of trippy too. I liked how the gameplay is staged with the places that are almost abadoned at first and then some very big battle happen, most notably at the BK and later the YK. Overall more pleasant than the previous map since Roofi resorted less to the annoying mechanic of monsters spawning in your face. When Roofi posted his warning about the lost souls it was too late since I already finished the map. I thought that maybe I was supposed to just grab the rad suit and escape but I wasn't expecting so many of them (Doom Builder counts 923 of them O.O) and I retreated while the lost souls fille the rad-suit room. The cage that had the chaingun was convenient to camp, there's only 1 way to go inside. Using rockets against so many of them in whle they were trapped in the corridor was fun. Even after all the infighting they keep to make I was running out of ammo, I don't how I managed to sneak out and I tried to search for the secret PR that I was sure it was somewhere and I had 400 cells but I admit I ahd to use a little of iddt to help. I liked the extremely long bridge to get to the last area. I must say that I liked the blood area and the ship was a very nice place to have to battle against the boss, it fits so well in the narrative of the map. I would have make the last ship to resemble the sunken one at the YK to make things more trippy. And for the cyberdemon battle itself it was pretty bad, you more distracted by the lost souls to take the time to "shoot until it dies". I must say that the cyberdemon that shoots from the darkness is quite cool visually but not at all fun to kill it. Despite not ending in a good way I liked a lot this map, it was a very memorable experience on the whole. I played with gzdoom so maybe it's pointless to report this, but just in case I was able to get stuck down here:

E2M7: What a cool and dark journey in base full fo twists. I liked how this map feels so creative even while it captures so well the E2 creepy atmosphere and without resorting to do homages or taking heavy inspiration from the original. I also liked how the author isn't "afraid" to mash the textures, mixing a lot tech and hell but the result isn't a mess, or for making stuff like the flesh room at the BK. The maze with the damaging floors and the crushers was my favourite part, tough intially also because you don't know how many times you have to go there. Very nice the "switches-trap" after the RK . I enjoyed a lot to unravel the level that gives you a lot of choices on how to tackle the map and the ammo (aided with some optional areas) is always given. Like the others I agree about the monsters spawning in your face, it was cheap and overused.

E2M6: A Doom 1 slaughtermap, but actually it isn't a slaughtermap if you look the monters density per encounter... That's enough. I was thinking this was going to be harder after the rough welcome but after that only the sudden difficulty spikes at the big battles can give you troubles while the rest features long clean-ups of big rooms. You are also flooded with ammo but that's a good thing since it encourages you to rush a bit and risk bit, which made the things more fun. The hardest parts use a very nice setup combining cacodemons with pinkies or specters on the ground but this exact scheme is repeated 3 times (reactor room, BK and dynamo room). Lots of nice details visually and I appreciated the big scale. Striking colors like red and blue are used often and give a cool touch, and the green and blue at the secret soulsphere was another nice scene. For some reasons I liked a lot the brown corridors with the grates at the secrets chainsaw and the backpack, I think I will steal it :S

E2M9: Lots of non-linearity here, it wasn't very difficult but making the "wrong" choices will punish you in a hard way and some routes are obviously easier since you can get the good weapons and some secrets. I went for the YSK area at first, not knowing what was there and it was hard to get out of the YSK room on a pistol start with only the SG and CG. I eventually made it through and noticed only later the secret that removes the damaging blood. The main area with the cyberdemon gives also lots of opportunities. You can get a couple of invuln orbs to deal with the chaos you'll encounter there. I killed the cyberdemon but I regretted it when the little swarm of cacos came to the arena. Very fitting for the secret slot.