What's your favourite episode in the Ultimate Doom?

Mine is the 1st one Knee deep in the dead made by john romero himself. its a really great episode and i have no idea how many times i have played it.

however im gonna say my opinion for other episodes as well.

episode 2 the shores of hell- its alright overall my favourite map there is e2m6 halls of the damned, probably the hardest map in the entire game. i played this map on nightmare difficulty and unfortunately couldnt beat it.

episode 3 inferno - looks pretty good but it lacks a lot of monsters most of the maps are quite empty. my favourite map is probably e3m6 mt. erebus.

episode 4 thy flesh consumed - i dont really like to talk about this episode because its not that good. it feels like a black sheep of doom, at least for me.

E4>E2>E1>E3.

E4 is challenging and fun to play. The problem with The Shores of Hell is E2M3 (very flat and boring, though the room with slime, pillars and lost souls has inspired some other mappers) and the secret map. E1 will never be my favourite with such a limited monster roster and no plasma weapons. E3 has plenty of sub par maps, E3M1, E3M2, E3M8 and E3M9. 

E3>E1>E2>E4

Maybe this would have been better as a poll?

E1>E2>E3>E4

Episode 1 is my favourite because I just love the techbase type of design and I felt that way ever since I first played Doom as a kid and I still feel that way 25 years later. Episode 2 is also cool because while it still has the techbase design, they've been more mixed with the grotesque textures associated with hell-type of maps making them look like a horror version of E1 maps. I initially didn't like Episode 3 much because I wasn't a big fan of hell but they eventually grew on me. Episode 4 seems more like an after-thought since it was just added as bonus content and just like Episode 3, I didn't like it as much but it eventually grew on me but not as much as Episode 3.

E4>E2>E3>E1

Episode 4 is almost the refined version of Inferno, and the best episode due to the guys at ID having more experience after working on doom 2

I love the experimentation of episode 2, even if it looks ugly at times.

Episode 3 has some really big blunders like Limbo and hell keep, but overall, i really like the more dark and psychodelic style of this episode.

And here's a Hot take: episode 1 is overrated. Yeah, i guess it have the best combat out of the first 3 episodes, but oh my god does it feel repetitive after e1m3.

E4 fosho. After that E1 but that's purely nostalgia. Or atleast mostly. There's a reason most techbase themes feel like E1++. It's the standard. E2 and E3 aren't slouches tho. They're also the standard for corrupted techbase and Doom Hell respectively. Slaughtermaps and other challenge based concepts most resemble Doom 2 because it's the standard there. Granted it's limited to look at the past 30 years of growth in design through that lens, for the sake of this topic it feels poignant.

Yeah, it's probably E1. E2 comes close but....the design does not have the same sort of visual impact or design solidity of E1.

E2>E1>E3>E4. I like all of them though.

I enjoy every map in E2. I even like E2M3 and tolerate E2M9. Tom Hall is my favorite id Software mapper, and the maps Sandy did on his own here are his better ones.

E1 is also great all the way through, but it's not as memorable as E2 for me. E1M7 is my favorite E1 map.

E3 is good, but half the maps are seriously flawed. E3M1 and E3M2 are some of the most nostalgic maps in the game for me, as they're the only ones that I vividly remember seeing as a toddler, and they aren't horrible maps either. E3M3 is my favorite map of the episode, I like it's mix of techbase and hell themes. E3M4 is great, up to the horrendous skull switch "puzzle". E3M5's teleporter mess is annoying and the rest of the map isn't particularly interesting. E3M6 is cool but it's extremely confusing the first time you play it. E3M7 is the worst map in the game, I've only ever beaten it once. Every time I try to replay it, I give up after a few minutes. E3M8 isn't horrendous but it's probably the weakest boss map in the game. E3M9 is a fun secret map.

E4... it's fine, but nothing about it really stands out to me. I've barely replayed it.

E2 > E4 > E1 > E3

I like the aesthetic and weirdness of E2 and E4 has some good stuff going on.  E1 is good but man its played out and I agree with others its a limited roster. E3 has a couple of good maps but I never felt most of the maps flowed well.

They all excel in different areas, imo. E1 has a great sense of place and thematic consistency for such an old game, absolutely the perfect "hook" episode to have started Doom with, from the perspective of both a developer or as a player.

E2 keeps some of that tech essence, but introduces elements of corruption and abstract design by comparison to E1. It also feels a little more abandoned, a little more eerie, and is certainly a distinct notch harder. The atmosphere is where this one shines.

E3 admittedly is a bit of a letdown, but the full-on abstract design and hellish themes in some maps is still excellent. Honestly, I think I was just spoiled by playing Doom 2 and about a dozen PWADs before actually getting the full Ultimate Doom, the abstraction and bright glowing red rocks and such probably would have captured me more if it was my first time seeing such maps, but it wasn't.

As a babe, E4 felt like what I "hoped for" from E3 for those years of seeing it on the shareware episode select screen. The first two maps absolutely rocked my shit, I couldn't beat them legitimately til a couple years later. I fucking loved that. It felt like there was still more for me to grow toward / look forward to in Doom. I iddqd'd it as a kid and loved the whole damn episode, but as a more discerning adult, it's still great but it's SO frontloaded in terms of challenge and fun, which was a mistake with the gift of nearly 30 years of hindsight.

All in all, E3 is the worst of a very important and entertaining bunch, especially for their age and groundbreaking nature.

E2M9 catches too much flak. It's always been one of my favorites even if it's a gimmick map I took it to heart. To this day I play with infighting so much that I finish most maps with a surplus of ammo. I still say E4>E1>E2>E3 but E2M9 is above the rest of Doom 1 for the impact it had on the way I play.

i'm an E1 enjoyer. i don't really miss the presence of caco cos the whole episode is about running forwards while firing the chaingun. also it's the most transformative episode to play without going in any of the secrets cos it NEVER gives you the rocket launcher, really strictly about shooting low tier enemies with low tier guns and that's fun. E2 and E3 suffer because they add big boys but withhold the good ammo and the maps which'd most benefit from chainsaws (the M1s) do not have them

E4 is second fave cos it brings the challenge level up to the power of the weapons. that cave in e4m2 is just the zone of random death though, classic funny romero balancing in action

i'm a slough of despair fan and don't think it's an E3 weak point at all... i always like rooms packed full of enemies and adhering to weirdly shaped columns. the fact that it's mostly one texture doesn't bother me as much as it could. actually feeling inspired to make a tribute map

E4 > E3 >E1 >2 

22 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

They all excel in different areas, imo. E1 has a great sense of place and thematic consistency for such an old game, absolutely the perfect "hook" episode to have started Doom with, from the perspective of both a developer or as a player.

 

E2 keeps some of that tech essence, but introduces elements of corruption and abstract design by comparison to E1. It also feels a little more abandoned, a little more eerie, and is certainly a distinct notch harder. The atmosphere is where this one shines.

 

E3 admittedly is a bit of a letdown, but the full-on abstract design and hellish themes in some maps is still excellent. Honestly, I think I was just spoiled by playing Doom 2 and about a dozen PWADs before actually getting the full Ultimate Doom, the abstraction and bright glowing red rocks and such probably would have captured me more if it was my first time seeing such maps, but it wasn't.

 

As a babe, E4 felt like what I "hoped for" from E3 for those years of seeing it on the shareware episode select screen. The first two maps absolutely rocked my shit, I couldn't beat them legitimately til a couple years later. I fucking loved that. It felt like there was still more for me to grow toward / look forward to in Doom. I iddqd'd it as a kid and loved the whole damn episode, but as a more discerning adult, it's still great but it's SO frontloaded in terms of challenge and fun, which was a mistake with the gift of nearly 30 years of hindsight.

 

All in all, E3 is the worst of a very important and entertaining bunch, especially for their age and groundbreaking nature.

That feeling in Episode 4 is great in my opinion, I love the difficulty of Thy Flesh.

Knee-deep in the dead is so good, easily my favourite,. The aesthetics and pace of the maps are very good, specially for the year of release. That makes the rest of the game a bit of a let down in some ways.

It's clear to me that they wanted to present the most appealing maps in the shareware version, so people would want to order the full game. And they basically hired Sandy at the last minute to shovel maps and fill the holes. Not to say that I didn't enjoy E2 and E3, but it's obvious the quality is not the same.

E4 is really interesting, way more difficult and created with the experience of Doom 1 and Doom 2.

E3>E1>E2>E4

E1 > E2 > E3 > E4

Yes, literally it goes that linearly for me. Thy flesh consumed sucks, don't @ me. The original 3 episodes don't range to bad though, episode 3 is just really rough

E1 for sure, and that is super influential on my mapping style. I also like E2's corrupted techbase visuals although the map design itself isn't as good as E1. E3 isn't that interesting to me, and E4 is mostly just pain.

E4 was great except for that one map that I remade a couple years ago, because it was ugly and easy. I'd have to say E4>E1>E3>E2, which is weird, because overall E2 is better than 3, but E3M2 and E3M6 are two of the best maps in the series, and I'm a sucker for temple levels like E3M4 and E3M7. (Which I have also remade, though I think I only released the latter.)

E1 >>>>> E4 >>>>>>>>>>>> E2 > E3

Episodes 2 and 3 are really boring (as I think the level design really fell off like in E3M2 good lord) so when I want to play Ultimate Doom, I just either boot up Episode 1 or 4. Episode 1 is just an all time classic, and Episode 4 and a nice challenging addition in my book.

Not gonna lie, even though episode 1 is great and fantastic, after playing it so many times, it gets boring eventually. The Shores of Hell is probably one of my personal favorites. The tech-base style of episode 1 slowly mixing with the sinister undertones of hell is a very interesting concept to me, and although at some points it has kinda trashy level design. (E2M9 for example)

Episode 3 has some good levels (like E3M3, E3M6,E3M9) but overall is kinda larger and has a higher difficulty curve.

I like them all, but not all of the maps (E3M2, I love you too, Sandy), especially in Episode 4 (E4M5, E4M6), though I love it for orange sky, I don't know why, man, but I feel warm all the time when I replay E4.

E1 is so awesomely iconic and atmospheric. But yeah sometimes you want a little more challenge going back to the classics haha. Still though, could be my favorite for nostalgia sake.

After that it's either the awesomely refined E4 that's brutal early on and has grown on me a ton, or my liking to how weird E2 is in spots. I've always liked E2 more than E3 overall. But both of those have some weaker maps to me.

I guess it might not 100% fall under the Ultimate canon, but it'd be interesting to see how people would rank E5 and E6 among these now too.

E1>E4>E3>E2

Honourable mention: E1 and E2

In the past I would have said that best episode is E1 and I really like techbase style. But now realize that E1 is really limited. Few monsters, few weapons. Only last couple of E1 maps are truly interesting. The first maps are just walls, slime and barrels. I like E2 better now. E2M2 and E2M6 are some of the best and most difficult maps in original game. There are a lot of not very good maps in E3. Finding a E3M6 exit is really annoying. But E4 is even worse. A very broken episode. Two of the three most difficult maps come first. E4M4 is one of the most primitive and boring maps in the game. It is much simpler than all the previous ones, but goes in the middle of E4. Maps look worse than the latest E1 maps or most E2 maps. Super dumb E4M6.

E2>E1>E3>E4.

I like them all, but E4 I like the best, with E1 coming off close despite its restricted bestiary and weaponry.

E4 benefits from the challenge, and I enjoy the visual style. I used to dislike some of the maps here, although I have even come to like E4M4.

E1 might be too easy and too familiar, but aside from E1M9 and E1M8 maps here are consistently solid.

But I also like E2 and E3. They vary in quality; their lows are low (E2M9, E2M3, E3M7, E3M5) but highs are really good (E2M2, E2M6, E2M7, E3M2 (yes), E3M6, …). I never back down from a playthrough, because the bad levels are short or at least not overly tedious. Same can’t be said about Doom 2.

Inferno.

E2 = Sigil > E4=E1 > E3

I like replaying E2 way more than the rest, but Sigil was a lot of fun playing it standalone without playing the other four before it. I don't really care much for any of the other 3. I don't remember much from E4 beside how annoying E4M2 is without secrets (then it becomes a cakewalk with them) and E1 has nothing going on. E3 has some nice maps but I'd rather not see Limbo again.

E2 is my favorite by far. That mix of hell and tech just can't be beat - turning the corner in yet another techbase after the shareware episode only to see that giant red cross for the first time, the floors beneath you disappearing into lava...I'll never forget that. So many good aesthetic details like seeing the tower get built on the intermission screen. This is the one I go back to most often and just play standalone.

E1 is iconic but it's also a little boring and like most others here I've played it 10,000 times so the bloom is off the rose. Still feel like I gotta give it second place; it's the best possible introduction to the best possible game and almost every room of it is imprinted on my brain forever.

I understand why people like E4 but the green marble aesthetic mostly doesn't work for me and some of the maps are kind of a slog. Still good, of course.

E3 is a huge disappointment. There's a couple good levels (including the first secret level that actually feels like a secret) but mostly when I think of this episode I just think of backtracking and teleport puzzles. I expected so much more from the hell episode.

As for the Sigils, I like 'em both, but neither is a part of The Ultimate Doom.