The DWmegawad Club plays: Eviternity II

6 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

give me its official name.

Necromenace. 👍

Map25 “Boreas” by Dragonfly

Boss fight!

Boreas starts with a slow descent into the heart of this corrupted ice fortress. Dragonfly doesn’t waste time; we get a brief skirmish with some imps before being taken to the main event, an isolated oval platform with two switches on the raised sides and the equivalent of a megasphere plus some medkits for health. Upon triggering both switches the steel box in the center lowers to reveal… The Heresiarch! He’s a bulky fellow that takes some time to kill and attacks by shooting ghosts at you (is… this a Daikatana reference?) Getting hit directly by his Casper projector hurts quite a bit and the ectoplasmic enemies drain your health if they touch you. They don’t linger around for long, but they love to swallow your rockets, so treat them similarly to lost souls in that regard.

After downing him a small army shows up. Nothing fancy, but you’ll likely take damage from hitscanners doing hitscanner things. But wait! Just as we’re finishing up another heresiarch appears and displays his real power… necromancy. All these enemies are repeatedly resurrected in his presence and it does not take a lick of his concentration, he’s still spewing out phantoms. It’s not backbreakingly hard but the attrition will kill you, go after him aggressively. The RL, which was risky with him alone, is now probably just a bad choice so stick with the SSG. And don’t let your guard down after its over, a vile and some pinkies approach from the exit area and will gank you if unprepared.

Um… actually, you know what, ignore me. Despite playing twice I straight up didn’t notice I had a plasma… just… use that I’m sure it works better.

Anyway, as far as boss maps go, I liked this one quite a bit. The enemy is rather unique, and the battle flow was done excellently. Facing the heresiarch alone (with only minor difficulty), then facing what appears to just be a common teleport arena, and finally having a rematch where our new foe shows what he can REALLY do is great gameplay-based storytelling. And the whole time it felt like I was playing Doom and not fighting a gimmick boss. Kudos.

MAP25: Boreas by Dragonfly

A fairly short map that serves as a boss fight episode closure map and as an introduction to another new enemy.

The new enemy in question is the Necromenace. He has recolored skin of Hexen's Heresiarch and sits at 2800 health (just 200 shy from a SMM) and has splash damage immunity, meaning RL is probably not the best weapon to use against him. But there's another reason why I won't advise RL and it's that he fires ghosts (which seem have limited lifespan) that have low health, but can nonetheless cause you to face rocket.

You will first fight a Necromenace alone in a small/medium size arena and you might think to yourself, he isn't that threatening. His ghost attacks only do tickle damage and his fast projectile does about as much damage as a baron fireball I think.

But once you kill him, a gang of varied enemies will teleport. Nothing too threatening. But after around a minute, another Necromenace will teleport and now you will really get to see the true potential of this enemy. His ghosts can revive enemies. Killing him quickly is extremely vital to not get overwhelmed.

It's why I don't recommend to use plasma at all until the 2nd Necromenace arrives. I would recommend to kill the 1st Necromenace with just the SSG.

Once you manage to kill the 2nd Necromenace, your path to the exit will open. And an archvile will teleport alongside demons. If you spared some rockets, you can finish them off without a problem and go to the exit.

The map isn't the strongest map of Eviternity 2 by any means, but it's serves its purpose well and it's short length works well after Temeraire being a pretty big map.

As for thoughts on Episode 5, on my first playthrough, I considered it the overall weakest episode of Eviternity 2 by a small margin (through still very good). But now on my 2nd walkthrough and also doing some maps in single segments, I think this might be my 2nd favorite episode in the wad now (after episode 3). The maps are really cool (pun may be intended :p) and the incidental combat is the strongest of all the other episodes I feel.

Phew.. apologies for falling behind. Work and school have been extremely busy this week. Anyway:

Ultra violence 100% kills/secrets, Pistol start, Using saves
Played on DSDA Doom v0.27.5 -complevel 21

Map 19: Spellbound - 16:04

A step back in difficulty from the previous two maps, Spellbound is a.. spellbinding.. jaunt through a village and it's natural outskirts. The buildings and running and gunning through the town are a pretty unique feel for a doom wad, and both the town and the natural scenery are well-complemented by each other thanks to both OTEX 2 and their thoughtful placement. There isn't too much to say about this one combat-wise, but I like the trap near the end with the two arch-viles followed by a swarm of imps and barons. The annihilator in the secret megasphere room is definitely this maps deadliest encounter though. He got me multiple times, admittedly. Having the plasma gun makes a few fights too easy though, the blue key fight for example would have been more fun if I was forced to do it with an SSG. Having said that, I can in a way appreciate the step back in intensity in favor of visuals, especially anticipating a couple tough maps in episode 5. 
Difficulty: 5/15

Map 20: Dominion - 19:33

The capstone map of episode 4 is once again a fair bit tamer than the last episodes finale. The Duke of hell gets introduced here, he's a bit tougher than a hell knight but weaker than a baron. I like him; it's fun to weave in between his projectiles and cut him down with super shotgun or bfg. Funnily enough "Duke of Hell" was also my placeholder name for him before I found that was actually what he's called. The action for most of the map is not very eventful aside from a rush of like 12-14 revenants. That was pretty cool. The final battle more than sticks the landing, though. A rush of nightmare demons and sniping hell dukes followed by an avalanche of bullsh*t when you get the BFG. Very cathartic fight and makes up for most of the map being pretty boring on the action side of things. But again, theres plenty of exploration and secret hunting to be had here if that's your thing. Episode four is definitely a bit easier than episode three on the whole, and while part of me was a bit disappointed at that fact I think the greater emphasis on visuals and exploration are done well enough to not leave too sour a taste.
Difficulty: 5/15

Map 21: Numb - 13:48

The start of episode 5 brings back the snow/icy visuals of episode 3 of Eviternity 1, but this time with more tech base than grand wood and stone architecture. Episode 5 so far is very much like the weather near me right now.. :). About Numb though, I'm not too sure about it. It's got some fun gameplay and I really dig the chilled out midi, but the ice physics annoy me and the episodic pacing kinda bores me too. The fight with the annihilator particularly is really dangerous and annoying because of the ice. You're rewarded with a bunch of zombiemen getting gibbed with the rocket launcher afterwards though so I can't complain too much. I do really enjoy the revenant super shotgun battle at the end of the first of either path as well. The ending though is pretty grating with like 4 astral cacos, an annihilator, and several nightmare demons in a pretty cramped area. Overall it's a fairly transitional map but a good visual tone-setter and a fine starting map. 
Difficulty: 5/15

GZDoom/UV/Contiuous/Saves

Write-ups from memory

MAP25:  Boreas - Dragonfly

I saw the kill count and immediately assumed we were in for a short one. Wouldn't be the first MAP25 in an Eviternity WAD to be short! Unlike the previous WAD's MAP25, this one is a straight-up boss fight! After dealing with a wave of imps, we go outside to face another new enemy, the necromenace. This Heresiarch reskin didn't seem too bad at first. His main plasma attack is pretty easy to dodge, and the ghosts he shoots out didn't really seem to do much damage even though they followed me around and made using rockets not the ideal method to take him out. No big deal, he was dead quickly. Then a wave of normal enemies came in, so I started dealing with them, and by the time I got a lot of them dead, ANOTHER necromenance showed up. Did not expect that. Also did not expect those ghosts he fires to resurrect dead enemies. Great, a tankier archie, just what we needed! Guess I should have figured given the "necro" in its name. Upon seeing this I decided to stop playing nice and pulled out the perforator to end this quickly. And to kill the archie that shows up at the exit too. Necromenaces don't get deployed very often in the rest of the WAD, but they are high priority when surrounded by other enemies. Overall, a short and sweet map to end the ep on. Good showcase of the new monster. Onto the final ep!

I don't think I'll be voting for anything for next month, as I didn't have time to replay this for this month, and I do want to focus on FFVII Remake so I can play the new one when it comes out at the end of the month (of course after I finish making the map for Embryo that's due on the 15th, but I plan on hopefully getting that done this weekend).

5 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

His ghosts can revive enemies. Killing him quickly is extremely vital to not get overwhelmed.

Ah, that's the method through which everything was getting resurrected. I remember seeing something like this in a recent wad I played (Crusader maybe?) so I'm surprised I didn't notice that.

Granted I also didn't notice I had a plasma rifle in my inventory so clearly there were some issues that day.

MAP26: Myriad by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul and Dragonfly

I didn't know what to expect from an episode named "Celestial". I know it means "heavenly", but we've already visited Heaven in the first chapter. Turns out, it's a voidscape under a starry sky. I guess it makes some sense, as in "celestial bodies". Myriad starts among rocks and teal liquid, it's an unnerving part, no small part thanks to its creepy soundtrack. As if this place is just wrong and you were never supposed to be here.

Pressing a switch in the caves opens a wall to reveal a giant arena, meticulously crafted and awe-inspiring. There are guns and ammo placed on invisible pillars, so you'd expect a slaughter (considering 1200+ monsters), but not yet. First you need to clear six distinct challenge rooms, where you have to face some more unorthodox tasks.

So I started with one labelled "Conceal". You have a corridor with archviles on both sides and covers travelling forward. The goal is to manage their line of sight until you reach the end. Also, there are corporals at the end of the corridor, I've killed them just to have one less thing to worry. "Destroy" came second, it's a series of floating islands, where the route is blocked by cyberdemons. Thank God I've finally learnt how to two-shot them, as you are given a BFG and just enough ammo. "Endure" was an interesting one, your health gets reduced to 1% (thanks to a combination of explosions and death exit) and you have to deal with three waves of imps and zombies, the last one adds crushers and a chaingunner that blocks the exit.

"Evade" was probably the easiest one - a huge room, monsters everywhere and you, standing on top of a column. The goal here is to not die before the exit teleporter lowers, but if you just run in circles, you should barely get hit. It's the only part of the map I've completed on my first attempt. Then came "Silence". I'd call this one a stealth mission. This section is filled with a new enemy type, a nightmare cacodemon. Essentially, a quicker, tougher and stronger version of astral caco. You don't want to wake them up. After a few tries, I understood what to do. If you stand inside sectors that have a skybox as a floor, they won't hear your shots. I thought I had this figured out - repeat this two times and a lift raises, shoot another switch (this time without a skybox to muffle your sounds) and run through the open doors. It's not done yet, that was just a tutorial. The next part drops you into a huge cavern with roaming spectres and later nightmare demons, who do a great job blocking your way. The task is the same, search the place for switches and figure out a way to shoot them without waking up the black cacodemons. This wasn't that hard, but the ending, where a nightmare caco jumps at you, pushing you towards the teleporter, was totally unexpected. "Silence" was a tense challenge and probably my favourite of all six. The last part is "Passage", a grid with a pulsating light that shows you the way (think Last Call, but it teleports you to the start, instead of telefragging). I've noticed a path behind the start, it granted me the first secret of the map. Put a pin on this, I'll return to secrets later. Anyway, this would have been a breeze, if it wasn't for a cyberdemon that appears at the opposite end. Unless you have a photographic memory (I don't), you'll need to stop after several tiles and wait for the guiding light. This makes you a sitting duck, waiting for enemy rockets. Luckily, it was more scare than threat and I cleared this one out.

So, six challenges done, don't worry about the monsters you've left behind, they all got killed. Now you can press a switch that unlocks the exit and deal with 500 enemies that appear in the arena. Most will kill one another, just make laps around the place, clear obstacles with your BFG and eliminate the stragglers - in my case, nightmare cacodemons. Now, since there are 7 secrets, 6 challenge rooms and I've already found one in "Passage", I figured the others are in other rooms and they unlock the final one. So I went searching and indeed, found them - each one lowers a torch that should open a giant door near the arena. Except for some reason one torch wasn't triggered and I had no idea if the map broke or I missed something. So I consulted the editor and it turns out, I was indeed missing something. It was the one in "Passage", the first one I've found. There was a shootable switch by the platform that was marked as a secret. I just stepped on the platform, triggered the secret and thought that was all I needed to do. After shooting the switch, the last torch lowered and well, it was not something I expected. The teleporter took me to a ship, docked by a green island. A quick search lead me to the perforator, the first one outside the secret levels. I appreciate hordes of imps that appear here, it was a perfect wind-down after a long map.

Myriad is another awesome map, a giant and creative adventure that's hard to forget. It's probably up there with Equanimity when it comes to more unusual challenges and the arena fight was an exciting setpiece.

I will not be posting here next month since i'm gonna be unavailable for most of it, but i still have my chance to vote so:

+++ 10x10/Sigil2

Giving diet sunder a vote again for the people interested in it I've seen, sigil 2 is obvious, to see what the consensus are in the romero episode that came out almost at the same time as this month's wad, because I'm very mixed on what its quality is and It would be interesting at least to read some opinions here.

MAP25 - “Boreas” by Dragonfly (Pistol start, saveless, 100%K/I/S)

This map is so weird. It starts with an imp setpiece that funny enough, reminds me of something I did in my first attempts of mapping, it only lacked to have extra 500 enemies, and it would been the same. Then you fight a boss monster named necromancer, I think, which is basically a super buffed pain elemental skinned as a raven software enemy, with a cyberdemon 3 wave attack, and the souls he spawns can resurrect dead monsters off the distance. In a megawad where the most far it went with custom enemies was just "cacodemon with mancubus attack pattern" and "2 varieties of hell nobles but with an extra pinch of chili powder", this sounds ridiculously stacked.

After you beat him, other 60 enemies spawn in the arena, and then another necromancer appears, this time with a big pile of corpses to resurrect over and over again.

I have to be honest, I don't like when the treat is more the enemies that he resurrects, giving you very little space to move in a relatively small arena, than the boss itself, is a trope from character action games that undermines what he can actually do. A cool demonstration for showing what he can do in regular combat, I suppose, but as a part of a boss level seems a bit lame.

After that just be careful or a surprise archvile with his personal army of pinkies would murder you, if not you are joever with the level. Probably my least favorite of these episode enders, it offers the least over the previous 4, even the episode 2 one had a more interesting introduction of its custom monster, not trying to overstay it's welcome with the same just that you just have to deal with more stuff at the same time, letting the astral mancs as just turrets communicated that they are a treat as individuals as well as turrets very efficiently, it wasn't reiterative like in this case that is just repeating the same but with respawning enemies. Best episode of the wad, but with the worst ender.

5/10

MAP26 - “Myriad” by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul, Dragonfly
Deaths: 18

Welcome to the new hardest map of the megawad, so far. This map starts out very spooky and atmospheric. It actually strikes me as being very Ribbicks influenced, with the focus on a single color in a strange unnatural world. The first part of the map is really just there to creep you out, which it does very effectively, helped by the midi. You eventually find yourself in a giant arena, and at this point you KNOW shit is about to go down, even if you didn't sneak a peek at the monster count.

Around the perimeter of the arena are six challenge areas you can get to via teleporters. The first one I ventured into was the Silence challenge. I figured that you didn't want to make noise... but I had no idea how to flip the switch without making noise. The fact that the void floors absorb sound isn't obvious at all. My first attempt ended because I bumped into the new Nightmare Cacodemon. That sure scared me. The second time I shot the switch in frustration... and it was fine? It took me another death to realize what had happened after I shot the next switch and got obliterated. After that I did Passage, which is honestly pretty easy. I didn't die in this one, since you just have to follow a path and avoid some rockets. Evade was also pretty easy, since you just have to circle strafe while keeping an eye on incoming missiles in case you need to alter your course slightly.  Destroy should have been easier than it was. I died 5 times, but I know how to two shot a cyberdemon. I only failed at that twice. Once I actually ate a rocket, and another due to me just missing my shots and running out of ammo. The other three times was from me eating a rocket while trying to jump between the platforms, because I was impatient. I liked these four challenges, but the other two I didn't like. Conceal was kind of annoying, though I know it's inspired by a similar thing in Sunlust (which I've never actually played). The first two sections weren't too hard, although I died once before I realized the gimmick. But the last section was nearly impossible not to eventually have them see you. I still only died three times here, and like I said the first one was before I understood the challenge. The last one, Endure, I kind of hate. You're given 1% health and have to navigate a tiny room with imps and zombieman. The imps aren't a huge problem, but for some reason those zombiemen had it out for me. I died 4 times to random pot shots I couldn't avoid, and once to an imp because I was trying to slip past. I just didn't have fun with this one.

Each one of the challenges seems to grant you some sort of boon for completing them. There's also a secret in each one, and if you find all six, then a seventh secret will open up letting you grab the perforator. Sadly I didn't figure this out until I finished the big battle. The big battle itself can be started at any time. The challenges are all optional, but not doing conceal will mean you'll get zapped by the arch-viles when the battle starts. The big battle itself is straight crazy. SOOOOO many projectiles. It actually made GZDoom chug momentarily on my top of the line gaming machine. I only died 3 times here though, since I pretty much just ran around in circles while the mob destroyed itself. It was certainly a sight to behold though. You don't have to wait until everything is dead to exit either, you just have to survive long enough to be able to exit.

I do want to say that the nightmare cacodemon is the first custom monster I just don't like. But it's because of the sound (taken from Hexen's Korax boss battle) that is extremely loud and annoying. The actual sprite and attacks are fine, but I DO NOT like that sound. I didn't like it in Hexen either.

This map is very visually impressive and has a great atmosphere, but I can't say I liked this one much. I can't tell if it's due to the annoyingly loud nightmare cacodemons, or the challenges, or what. I like the final battle itself quite a bit, so it's not that. It's not bad, but far from my favorite. The music was perfect for this map, but it's more about setting a mood than something you can just listen to. It's very effective at that.

Map 25 - “Boreas” by @Dragonfly

My winning strat on UV pistol start for no-Save win was:

This is a tough level to describe...

After much deliberation, I think I'll call this level a Bossfight Against a Squad of Annoying Scoundrels.

The setup is very well executed from technical perspective:

- Imp horde for a warmup.

- A small excursion around the boss arena.

- Phase 1: fight against a lone Necromenace.

- Phase 2: with Necromenace dead, a bunch of monsters appear all over the arena.

- Phase 3: the second Necromenace joins the fray, and starts its Necro-Menacing antics: its summoned ghost showcase their ability to resurrect enemies.

- Phase 4: with second Necromenace dead, an exit bridge appears, but one archvile and a herd of pinkies (and their NM cousins) charge forth from exit room.

This is a well crafted, multi-phase bossfight. On a continuous playthrough, it is not too hard to win the fight first try, thanks to all the plasma and defensive items from map 24 (nevermind a potential secret BFG from map 24, or even a Perforator from map 35). On a pistol start, the fight will most likely require multiple tries, because each new phase introduces vicious complications to the battle, and resources are considerably limited. Still, retrying is quick, the MIDI is energetic, so trying again is fun. For the most part...

The devil is in the details: so many potential loses come from seemingly craven demon tactics!

- There is a chance of falling from arena and dying this way.

- The summoned ghosts are such facerocket bait, that even Lost Souls shudder in disgust.

- Optimal weapon seems to be Plasma Rifle, but depleting its ammo too early makes phase 3 really tough.

- Ghosts in Phase 3 resurrect Chaingunners, Shotgunners and Revenants behind the player back. Necromenace itself can unxepctedly deal a notable chunk of damage, thanks to its extremely fast energy shots. Sudden appearance of High-DPS minions makes damage even more unpredictable. Very painful proposition, due to limited healing...

- Archvile + Minimal Cover + Very few HP left after phase 3 = high chance of death in the very start of phase 4. If the player enters phase 4 heavily wounded - than the Vile is perfectly positioned to either finish the player right on the spot, or to overwhelm the player with another wave of resurrected monsters.

Dying to any of the above things has a chance to feel cheap.

Do you see, how many of those "potentially cheap" deaths are there? There is a very good chance that the player will feel sour about at least one of their loses. As a result, the level can leave a mixed impression, and the Necromenace can feel like a relatively weak, but very craven, cowardly and annoying Boss-type monster.

If this is OK (Demons may indeed be craven, after all!) - then the level is perfectly well executed.

My personal conclusion:

- Personally, I think that map 10 setup, with the cyber swapped for a Necromenace or two (second one roaming around), would be a much better demonstration of the new monster's abilities.

- Still, from a technical standpoint, map 25 is a very well-crafted bossfight. 10/10

- However, many particular elements of this fight leave a sour taste in my mouth.

- If the level feeling a bit divisive and nefarious is not a problem for Eviternity II team - then everything is executed perfectly.

- But if the intention was to make an epic-feeling boss fight to conclude an epic-feeling Episode 5 - then there may be some room for adjustment.

MAP26: Myriad. Played on DSDA v0.27.4, UV, PS. 1255/1255 K, 7/7 S, 11/1 I. Comp. time 48:40

I think I'm starting to feel megawad exhaustion -- I fired up Myriad, but loading times being what they are, I was expecting a big map, probably too much for me to take... and then I reached the portals I deduced that okay, some tedious puzzles ahead. No no no.

Took a five minute break, decided to try it anyway.

Two things are for sure: Myriad looks fantastic, and it is a memorable map, much like Temeraire is memorable. The kill count is slightly deceiving: half of the enemies are killed in the Evade section of the map, which I managed to cheese after trying it legit a few times: activate the gauntlet, drop down and sit on the edge of a teleporter pad. Enemies can't fire at you, and before long you start to hear the sweet sound of imps and hell knights yell their farewell.

I wonder if Evade was also the hardest of the tests - the rest weren't difficult as such, although Conceal I had to try severall times before I understood how to trick the archviles enough (and still they managed to hit me few times before succumbing to crushers).

The Silence section was also slightly confusing, because I wasn't able to shoot all the switches on sky floors in the first section; the one door would have to opened by alerting all the astral cacos*. But I guess that was the intended way after all? 

Speaking of astrals... I guess you can press the exit switch without doing any of the gauntlets, but I'm not sure if you'll be able to survive what ensues. On Boreas I though Heres--- Necromenace was going to be final new enemy introduced, but no; we're faced with some sort of nightmare cacodemons here, and when the hosts of hell flooded the arena, it destroyed my frame rate. It's a miracle I was able to survive that fight (with perhaps one midfight save) with less than 10 frames a second for a while. (That's a bad sign, because I suspect the levels aren't gonna get more simplistic and less hectic, I wonder if I'm gonna land in hardware trouble soon).

So... I wouldn't call Myriad my favourite map of the bunch, it's kind of special like Catalyst is special, but it sure is a memorable one. And unlike Catalyst, this one I could see myself replaying... maybe especially since I cheesed the Evade section, it shouldn't have been too hard to do it legit.

*) All this time I really thought they were astrals, I honestly didn't realize until the next day, watching Vytaan playthrough, they were ominously green, different sort of cacos we're gonna fight at the end of the map.

Chapter VI: Celestial 

MAP26 - Myriad - Tristan Clark, GuardSoul & Dragonfly (89%K/81%I/14%S):

What a welcome to a new episode, certainly not a warm one. Oof, this map speaks by itself. Massive in architecture, beautiful in looks, and especially HARD in difficulty. This adventure has it all, and specially, a lot of suspense. The new episode throws you at some kind of space-like environment, just like if you were in another planet, without atmosphere. You will need to slowly get inside the main structure of the level: A 6-way nexus. A magnificent test of patience, endurance and ability will be put into the test as you try to progress through each of the 6 challenges the nexus will put to you. The exit is right there, so technically, you can escape this level without doing any tasks, but let me tell you, LEAVE IT FOR THE END. The stupidly high amount of enemies that will appear, will be a lot for you, and consider this, you won't have any guns to fight. How to acquire each gun, you might ask. Well, for that you will need to get through each challenge. I think you can traverse through the amount of challenges you want, but if you want to be fully equipped, I'd suggest you to go for it. And that's what I did.

Each challenge was something that I don't think average players will get through, not even in easier difficulties. This was one of the hardest levels I've played in my life, if not the hardest, for sure.

There is a challenge of 2-shoting cyberdemons to earn a nice BFG. Another one where you will need to be silent, because you will awake a brand-new type of Cacodemon enemy, a green-astral-caco thingy that I don't know how it's called (It also appears at the end fight), but it's as dangerous as it is presented, AND EVIL.
There is also an endurance challenge where you will need to survive killing imps and troopers with ONLY 1% health. Another one where you will have to avoid every single type of bullet from a fuck-ton of enemies. And my favourite, a "maze" type of map, similar to the TNT's MAP30 start, but without the insta-deaths (There is a cyber so you will still need to dodge or go fast). Another test involves archviles at the sides and some walls that slowly advance to the exit, so you will have to move behind those walls to hide from them, while you avoid some commando bullets from far away. Let the walls reach the exit, and you will escape. The last challenge is another endurance where you have to avoid enemy shots from everywhere. There are about 500 or so enemies shooting you from everywhere, and you will feel like playing Okuplok trying to avoid every single fireball thrown at you. Ridiculous!, but quite fun.

Each time you visit a challenge, when you beat it, the teleporter will change colors to yellow, indicating you've passed the test. Now you can fight one last time in this arena, heading through the exit.

Oh lord, what a fight. The map turns itself into the Doom 64 Title screen, but added the new beastiary of Eviternity II. Pure madness, the rest of the 600 monsters are here in one of the most massive swarms I've encountered in a non-slaughter megawad.

I've got overwhelmed by this, so, as soon as I saw an exit, I took it.

Order of preference:
 

Long map = Long review.

MAP26 - Myriad - Tristan Clark, GuardSoul & Dragonfly (Pistol start, used saves, 91% kills, 81% items, 0% secrets)

Oh boy, if the tenebrous music and a peek of the kill count didn't make you flinch, just play the level and you'll see how many evils wait for you.

After passing the introductory section and display the huge slaughterlike hub-arena, go to five challenges so you unlock guns and can plausibly, complete the map. many of them curiously explore other kinds of challenges at least tried once in other megawads, like the 1hitko room, the reprisal of that wall setpiece in sunlust map29, or the light pathway one. Only giving them their own spin in this case.

If I have to point my favorites, probably the bullet hell one would be a favorite of mine, just a circle strafing marathon where you need to precisely get in the edges of the center to avoid the damaging floor and a possible stream of yellow astral manc spread, and the cyberdemon 2 tap course, mostly because I'm getting accustomed to 2 tapping cybers, and this is nice practice for that. The trickiest is probably the "silence" challenge, specially that cavern with specters and nightmare demons, that can corner you relatively easily. That baron switch to lower a lift off-screen wasn't very friendly either.

After gathering all your guns, final showdown starts, and a category 5 hurricane is going to be unleashed. To compensate the ridiculous amounts of monsters spawning at once, the area is circular and you can circle strafe almost all of it, just let me tell you, don't engage pacifist style with it, and reserve the bfg just for absolutely crucial instances, like ones involving getting more megaspheres. Then you need to cleanup the new varieties of the astral caco afterwards, that you probably seen in the silence challenge, which I think have the same properties of the astral manc's purple projectiles into theirs and have more hp, idk. After that, do a small platforming section and its joever.

Another stop for me if i was strickly playing this saveless like map 15 was, since is very trial and error to playtrough, and some rely in somewhat inconsistent approaches, like the cyber 2 tap room that inherently is risky. I can appreciate at least the challenges being free to choose so at least if you grind this saveless, you can form a decent route from experience, but still this is probably the toughest the megawad went, I wonder how many more unholy massacres awaits.

8/10

GZDoom/UV/Contiuous/Saves

Write-ups from memory

MAP26:  Myriad - Tristan Clark, Guardsoul & Dragonfly

The final episode takes place on the astral plane. This theme is my favorite visually of the WAD. I've always been a sucker for voidscapes, and this fits the bill pretty well! Stuff like Swim With The Whales, late Sunlust, that one Dimensions map that all the good players like are good examples. This map starts you out with no combat, just exploring some rocky ravine with damaging liquid. Once you get into the main structure, you lower a wall and get one of the most impressive visual reveals of the entire WAD. This gigantic arena looks amazing! Love the detailing, light patterns, textures, etc. It's really cool. Now, you could just go up to the switch that says exit and start the gigantic slaughter fight that this arena is obviously going to have. Or you can check out the 6 portals surrounding the arena. Each one completed will give you an advantage in the final fight, from lowering the megaspheres, to getting rid of the damaging floor, to the BFG. I did Conceal first then worked my way clockwise, but Idr the exact order that is so I'm just going to explain the paths in whatever order I think of them in. Conceal has you go down a hallway trying to avoid archie blasts by using a wavewall. Think Sunlust MAP29's most famous set piece, tho this reminds me more of a similar fight in Time Tripper. There's some corporals shooting at you, and a cyb behind you. If it didn't rocket me the first time I played this path, I would have said it was a very pointless cyb, as I think doors close behind you as you progress, so there's a good chance you wouldn't even know it was there! Destroy has you practice your 2-shot BFG on a bunch of cybs; easy stuff. Evade is a bullet hell section that gets pretty hard to avoid damage. Plus, there's some damaging floor here too. Silence is the most interesting part, as it introduces the final non-boss enemy in the WAD: the nightmare caco. It's a cross between an astral caco and a nightmare demon. It always moves as fast as the astral's charge, and it fires 2 purple bolts and 1 yellow. The purple ones act the same as the astral manc's so it will home in one you once. You need to be quiet to avoid waking them up as you have no ammo here. I have seen many people get confused about how to progress at first. The skybox floor being soundblocking isn't 100% clear. But as someone who has played maps with that gimmick before, I got it instantly. Once again, shout out to 1K Lines 2 MAP32. Endure gives you a megasphere immediately, but then explodes you down to 1% as you deal with zombies, imps, lost souls, and a chaingunner in a very uneven room. I've seen a few complaints about RNG here from the hitscan, but I think as long as you take your time and peek around pillars to shoot, you should be good. It's also another good pistol showcase! Finally, Passage has you follow a path the lights up occasionally to get to the end while dealing with a cyb shooting at you. Now after doing the 6 trials, you can finally start the final fight, or you can go for the secret area. All 6 trials have a secret switch in them. Hitting them all will open the star door back at the beginning of the arena, and take you to what I've been told is a Runescape reference. This contains the only non-secret map perforator in the WAD. And a wave of imps. But with that done, now it's time for the slaughter. Hit the switch and just watch chaos unfold, complete with the new nightmare cacos. It's insane, but doable, especially with the perks given from the trials. Overall, this is a really cool map! Love the concept of the trials and think they're all pretty fun. I'm not sure why this is the first map of the ep, as I think it's better placed at MAP29, especially since I don't think the rest of the ep really lives up to this one in terms of difficulty and uniqueness. It's easily my fav in the episode, and one of my favs overall! Really good stuff.

MAP26 - “Myriad” by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul, Dragonfly

Given we have Tristan at the helm, it is no surprise to see that this map is full of gimmicks. However despite the large monster count, the mandatory progression is quite simply one fight, what is cool is that the player has the option to partake in short challenges that will make said fight easier.

Destroy - A two shot cyberdemon challenge essentially, however you do get a little ammo leeway and you have to jump to the cyber platform, which of course risks you being hit in mid air with very little chance of avoiding it.

Conceal - A neat idea but I found the final section a little on the annoying side because you can easily end up with the archviles standing in positions where concealment is basically impossible, however given you can get through the first two relatively safely and there is health at the end, then I guess this wasn't too bad.

Passage - A tribute to last call? No death penalty for a mistake and the passage lighting up the way it does is pretty cool. However the cyber seemed to lack the cutting edge threat as there are to many spots where he cannot hit you.

Silence - This was a fairly lengthy but coll set piece where you needed to stand on a sky flat to shoot without waking anything, there is one switch where this isn't possible and here you have to run like heck to avoid the nightmare cacodemons. There are a few roaming monsters in the lower section that can hassle you and one switch is for a lift, so be on the look out.

Endure - Heh, this has been done before as well, this time Map26 from Skulltiverse, essentially a short version of that where you are reduced to 1% health and need to navigate zombiemen, imps and could of lost souls and finally a chaingunner at the end. This was obviously less frustrating than said example, it is supposed to be a short set piece after all.

Evade - This one is pretty easy, just saunter around the perimeter of the island you are on, basically make sure that you keep to a steady pace and you shouldn't take damage, the damaging floor is a bit of a wildcard because obviously bad timing can whittle your health down quickly.

So the main event takes place in a large arena that frankly wouldn't look out of place in the likes of Elementalism or Age of Hell, the detail is jaw-dropping. However like others I got some tremendous frame rate issues when the party really got going. Now honestly if you complete all of the side quests then the fight isn't too difficult. However the another new monster is introduced here and I am on the fence a little, they are very aggressive and carry some nasty attacks, this also means that the player can struggle to be aggressive when the scales tip in your favour, as such getting the final kills was a little slow.

After the fight you just need to traverse the rocky terrain to gain access to the next map. Overall this one is a real straight out of the left field map, it is tough but funily enough if you play this right then the map isn't too brutal. I actually like that this is the opener, it feels like some kind of dimensional hub that you would find before delving deeper into this unknown realm. The map has some real jaw dropping visuals, though the combat and challenges are a little more out there, so I can see some not enjoying elements of this one. Despite the fact that this map has flaws, it brings a lot to the table and enhances the variety and depth of the megawad a a whole. 

I was also having huge fps issues in the big fight of map 26. I suspect that's because this fight has 12 astral mancs and when those launch their yellow attacks, the amount of individual projectiles to handle for the engine just becomes too large. I didn't have significant performance issues in any other eviternity 2 maps including the largest ones, but in this particular fight my fps drops to single digit numbers in dsda-doom (funnily enough the fight was still pretty easy even with this slideshow gameplay, because everything just dies to infighting).

To my surprise, Helion actually handled this fight very well. I don't know what it optimises exactly (it's also obviously not demo compatible), but I was getting ~100 fps in map 26 fight on this source port. So if map 26 is unplayable for you, but you really want to check it out properly I can recommend switching to Helion for that one and come back to your source port of choice in map 27 as no fps issues are expected in the following maps.

MAP27: Empyreal by DMPhobos and Dragonfly

Right from the start, you enter an arena that has you fight nightmare cacodemons, astral mancubi and archviles, with more monsters appearing at some point. I feel like everything boils down to how well the monsters infight, gray mancubi are really good at drawing attention. Once it's done, the place turn into a three-way hub. Two keys on the sides, exit up front. I won't complain about Dragonfly's formula here, as it works well as a more conventional map after Myriad.

I chose the western route first, this involved scaling a grid of hexagonal pillars while dealing with weaker monsters that guard this place (I think dukes are the strongest ones here). The corridor that leads to the key has two annihilators in the back, so try not to catch a rocket. I prefer the eastern path, there's a maze of sort that can get cramped with cacodemons and a lock-in fight with dukes and nightmare demons. Beating this gives you the blue key, so you can enter the final fight.

It's a small arena that starts with corporal snipers, hell knights, dukes and cacodemons and it's only the first wave. More and more monsters get released, including an astral mancubus, and when the central ring lowers, an archvile an necromenece join the battle. At that point I had only a plasma rifle and got completely destroyed. I figured out I'll leave this one for now, as I've only found a single secret (a supercharge by the hexagons) and hoped there was a BFG somewhere. Right after the hexagons, there was a trail of torches. I managed to jump over a waist-high railing, only to learn I could just lower the wall with a shootable switch. Anyway, the BFG was here, but it triggered a nasty trap with pain elementals and several annihilators. I left it bruised, but at least holding a super weapon.

Now the final fight went much smoother, I mean, I did die a couple of times, but a BFG can quickly eliminate the necromenece before he causes too much trouble. He only appeared twice so far and I already see him as the most dreaded addition to Eviternity II. You can leave after this fight, or go for one more, involving dukes, nightmare demons and annihilators on a hurtfloor. It was a fun encounter, but I'm not sure why is it here, right before the exit. Is this an additional fight for challenge-seekers? A chance to resupply for continous players? Or an aborted secret exit?

Empyreal is an entertaining map, a bit of a break after MAP26 that was much needed. I also have to praise Jimmy's rocking midi and the visual side. Ancient ruins hurdling through space is a great aesthetic choice.

Regarding MAP26 and its performence, Woof! and my dated computer seem to be handling this one fine. The only map I've had visible framerate drops was MAP32, but it was still playable.

MAP27 - “Emypreal” by DMPhobos, Dragonfly
Deaths: 16

The opening fight here is energetic and not too difficult, but it sets the stage for this map. You need two keys to access the final battle, and each is down a differerent path. Each path loops around and comes back to the start, giving you the key in the process. After dying to the opening fight once, I didn't actually have much trouble until the final battle. I did die once to the three dukes trap where you drop down into a room. But the second time wasn't too difficult. Everything was shaping up for this map to be the easiest non-boss non-secret map since MAP22.

But then I got to the final battle. Oh boy, I'm not sure where to start with this one. You drop down, and soon stuff starts teleporting in. You get a megaarmor before you drop down, and another one down in the pit if you hit a switch. Two more switches unlock two soulspheres. I do this right off the bat because I need the space and the health. Eventually, the center drops down and a necromancer and arch-vile warp in. And then the problems start. But first the good. If you have the BFG, this battle is fun and requires some strategic thinking. You can't just spam BFG all day, since there's too much, and you probably don't have time for that anyway. But with some fancy footwork many enemies will be fighting corporals, and you can BFG the astral mancubus down the instant his room opens up. Then you can BFG spam everything down, including the necromancer and his arch-vile side kick. The bad is that the BFG that makes this fight fun is in a secret. The ugly part is this fight may be impossible on UV without it. I'm sure some Doom God with a bit of luck could manage it, but anyone else is screwed. Once the necromancer and arch-vile appear, you simply don't have the dps to kill things faster than they will be resurrected. That means you have to focus on them, but there's so many enemies around (many more than if you have the BFG), that you can't spend much time actually getting DPS on target. You have to take out the arch-vile first lest you be zapped. I managed that many times, but would usually die soon after due to the number of enemies that had been resurrected and the risks I would have to take to kill the AV. If I was more conservative, I would live longer, but then I could forget about winning the fight since I would simply run out of ammo. Once I have the vile down, I could concentrate on the necromancer. I think I got him down to 20%-25% health once, but most of the time I didn't last long enough to get much DPS on him. At that point I'd be running out of health items, running out of plasma, and the monsters would keep getting in the way. You simply can't stand toe to toe with him, and he has enough hitpoints you're going to have to flee to avoid getting hit. It's just seemlingly impossible. As it is I died 10 times before going secret hunting. I was pretty dismayed at that point. I died one more time to it later due to the secret fight and not saving.

My observation is this: The final battle of this map is way too hard compared to everything before this point without the BFG. It's a really fun fight with it. At the very least the lack of a BFG makes the fight so unfun that it ruined my opinion of the map. Even if I were to beat it, I'd have to chalk it up to sheer luck. The BFG itself is protected with a pretty gnarly (but fun!) fight on its own, so my recommendation is to make that area a non-secret and allow the player to go get the BFG before the final fight. One fewer secret isn't going to ruin this map, but not having the BFG might. You can say it's a skill issue and to turn down the difficulty, but honestly the rest of this wad up to this point was really fun on UV, and in many cases I would have been bored to tears on HMP.

(A note here that I wrote a day after I wrote the rest: I watched brendondle's youtube playthrough, and he suggested letting the necromenace infight itself to death. That's probably the only winning strategy with the plasma rifle, but I'm definitely not good enough to pull that off. It would also cause the fight to be miserable.)

The secrets themselves are pretty well done. The BFG secret is well hidden, but most people are going to drop over the wall instead of finding the switch. I pretty well found the switch by accident while just shooting random textures because I was frustrated and was procrastinating trying the final fight again.

I also liked the highly energetic music. It fit well with this map. It's one of my favorites of the wad.

The concept of Necromenace started pretty simple, Dragonfly gave me the idea about "a projectile that resurrects corpses it collides with.". I looked at the document about MBF21's new code pointers, and A_HealChase got my attention. It's basically a customizable A_VileChase, reviving a dead monster near the actor. I thought "summoning minions that resurrect dead monsters" concept would be interesting to implement. So I quoted Heresiarch sprites and Wraith sprites from Hexen for the new monster and its minions, and coded the minion's behavior as "resurrect a dead monster through sacrifice". Each minion has 120 hit points, and it frequently emits tiny blast damage. Not only it decays a minion's health, but also it can give a small amount of damage to the player.

I let the new monster to summon a couple of minions, along with a powerful & straightforward projectile attack pattern. And then I added new sound effects, quoted from Hexen and Wolfenstein 2009. Its original name "Necromancer" was slightly adjusted as "Necromenace", and received 1200 HP as a high-tier monster. But shortly after it was promoted to a boss-tier monster, with buffed 2800 HP, immunity to splash damage, and full-volume alert/death sounds. As I mentioned, their sprites were added as placeholders, waiting for the new fancy sprites to replace them. But it never happened somehow.

The concept of Nightmare Cacodemon also started pretty simple. We were having a discussion about "bring back the pre-nerf version of Astral Cacodemon", which had more firepower than the current Astral Cacodemon. And then we just decide to create a nightmare version of Astral Cacodemon, rather than adjusting the existing one, since Xaser suggested us to use DEHEXTRA to gain extra frames and actor slots. We thought the new monster would be an excellent addition to UV+ playthrough for extra challenge; only available to either -solo-net or multiplayer mode. Tristan provided the sprites of teal-version of Astral Cacodemon, and it was such an appearnace to behold. A nightmare fuel indeed.

It actually took a while to put this new monster to the megawad, since the full sprite set wasn't ready until September 2021. Through that time, we migrated to MBF21 and I re-wrote the entire dehacked code with decohack, rather than using WhackEd4. I was also having an experiment with MBF21's brand-new A_SeekTracer to design a new type of projectile. This proto-type design below never reached the quality of a finished product, but it still exists inside the megawad as a cut content.

With this new gimmick, I thought it would work really well with our new nightmare fuel. Instead of following the target indefinitely, I thought that just letting them "bounce" for once would be enough. I also gave them a slight vertical pitch, in order to make them strike the player from above like a cobra. After the first concept monster was created, Xaser suggested to put a visual effect, when the projectile is bounced from mid-air. So I quoted more sprites from Hexen, and also quoted the sound effects of Korax for the nightmare version of Astral Cacodemon.

These purple bouncing projectiles were also implemented to Astral Mancubus, 6 days after the Nightmare Cacodemon was added to the megawad. The new cacodemons were decided to stay with the rest of the monsters, rather than just UV+ exclusive. I made the central projectile more powerful later, to make them even more intimidating. I also thought that the concept of "bouncing" projectile was successful, and I was looking forward to use this gimmick for the one last custom monster.

MAP27: Empyreal. Played on DSDA v0.27.4, UV, PS. 312/312 K, 4/4 S, 10/10 I. Comp. time 43:40

I was afraid the difficulty factor was on an upward trail, but Empyreal doesn't up the ante on that front. Not that it's easy - the beginning took me a couple of tries. The hunts for blue and red keys were mostly on the easy side, and then we get the fight against a horde in quite a cramped space. That one I had to try a few times indeed. I wish I had found the BFG secret in advance, but alas that was one of the two secrets I had to go find after reaching the exit (although, curiously, is the secret fight on cyan hexagons accessible only after that yellow key onslaught?)

It must be a skill issue that I found YSK fight so chaotic. I just couldn't focus on the Necromenace, because there was always something attacking me, and I would lose my health so fast.

A solid map. Great rocking track, loooove it!

3 hours ago, antares031 said:

We thought the new monster would be an excellent addition to UV+ playthrough for extra challenge; only available to either -solo-net or multiplayer mode.

Honestly, this sounds like a cool idea! I don't think I've seen anything like that before. Hopefully some other WAD in the future will add a -solo-net/multiplayer exclusive enemy; that would be really cool.

MAP26: Myriad by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul and Dragonfly

What a start to the last episode. Right of the bat after you do some minor switch hunting in the starting area, you end up jumping down into a big wide arena area. There are all of your weapons, ammo and megaspheres raised on pillars that you can't access. If you take a look, you will find that there are 6 paths with names written on them and also a switch that actives the fight. If you press the switch, you will start the big fight. However, without health and weapons, your chances of surviving the fight are bleak.

The way to make the fight easy is to do all the side challenges which will either open up the weapons/health items or reduce certain enemies. You don't have to do all of the challenges, but it is recommended to do so.

The 6 challenges are as follows:

• Conceal: You have to make it to the end of the straight path. There is an archvile on each side window, with the cover slowly moving forward. And there are also some corporals firing at you from the end side.
• Destroy: Fight a few cyberdemons using BFG by 2-shotting them (you get 100 cells to fight each cyberdemon, so you can get away with some 3-shotting) while crossing one platform to another.
• Endure: Your health is restricted to 1% and you have to carefuly deal with some zombiemen and imps to survive.
• Evade: You are stuck on a platform area of sort and you have to evade enemy projectiles from all 4 directions for a set period of time. Apparently can be cheesed by jumping down to the damaging floor and standing at the edge of the teleport where neither the enemies can hit you, nor can the floor damage you. Though I never tried that.
• Silence: This challenge reminded me of Map32 of 1000 Lines 2. Here you will notice a new variant of cacodemons with teal color. These are the Nightmare Cacodemons. Each has 700 health, fast speed and fire 3 projectiles which have the 2 stage behavior of the Astral Mancubus' purple attack. Don't try to fight them here. Instead, you need to go through without waking them up. If you stand on the floor which has sky texture, your shots won't make noise when you shoot switches.
• Passage: Reminds me of Map30 of TNT. You have to make your way through platforms in the order indicated by the way they blink, while a cyberdemon at the opposite end will be firing rockets at you. Failure to follow the correct order teleports you to the start of the sequence. Definitely the easiest challenge.

Note that each of these areas have a secret switch hidden and if you find all six of them, you unlock a door near that starting area of the which opens a teleport that takes you to a ship and an island. There you will get a perforator (the only one that isn't in a secret map) and you get to slaughter horde of helpless imps. The perforator is definitely helpful in the final fight, especially against the new nightmare cacodemons who will make an appearance in the final fight.

As for the final fight itself, once you have done all of the challenges + have the perforator, it becomes pretty manageable, despite the ton of enemies. Most will kill themselves via infighting. Still you do need to watch out for the astral mancubi, annihilators and nightmare cacodemons.

My personal strategy for single-segmenting the map was to do the challenges in this order: Endure -> Destroy -> Evade -> Silence -> Conceal -> Passage.

I do Endure first because at 1% health, it is easy to die by getting unlucky with a zombieman getting a shot at you. Destroy is 2nd as 2-shotting cyberdemons can go wrong. Evade can be somewhat tricky too if you don't cheeze. The rest 3 should be easy if you know what you are doing. Conceal can be challenging on its own, but with the BFG obtained from Destroy, you can take down the window archviles and make this easy.

This is a really fun opener and also fun to single segment.

MAP27 - Empyreal - DMPhobos & Dragonfly (88%K/60%I/25%S):

Beautiful map, your usual Eviternity 2 gameplay at this point, with added difficulty. Really digging the green usage here and the looks of the map. Again, I'm feeling yet again like playing a PSX game.

Feels like levels are not getting any shorter, but anything past the previous map is just a breather at this point. The map plays really hard, but it's your usual two-way choice kind of thing. With a Red/blue key hunt, and a final fight where foes guard the yellow key. Talking a bit about the last fight, damn, it was hard, the space to maneuver was obnoxiously short. Thanks I'm a continuous player and I carry a BFG for my troubles. The worst of this fight is that the Necromenace from the past chapter appears again guarding the key, next to an arch-vile. Damn, all this killing just for nothing? The easiness that this monster has to revive dead enemies is absurd, and there was no need for it to be paired with an arch-vile. Nice finisher for this level though. Good map.

Order of preference:
 

MAP27 - “Emypreal” by DMPhobos, Dragonfly (Pistol start, used saves, 99% Kills, whatever% items and secrets)

Music and aesthetics right of the box, god tier, gameplay and progression, a bit lacking and less violent compared to thaw.

If I have an impression from this map from start to end, is more likely "barks more than it bites". First ambush seems hard with the 2 archviles and astral manc snipers, followed by some revs, but the viles can infight so easily with the mancs, and mancs are so consistent at damaging the vile will almost require to not shoot a single shot. The rest of the map is some small, closed space ambushes that makes their way to the red and blue keys, these aren't the big deal either since you have plenty of plasma in this map.

Final ambush after gathering the 2 keys is definitely the most interesting, surfing around the hordes while trying to not get blasted away by all the concentration of flyers that appears, although the final wave with the archvile and necromenace is kind of pure grind, especially since you can't use the rocket launcher or the wisp of the necromenace will make you face rocket. Idk if there's a bfg anywhere, I'm ass at secret hunting, but plasma only is not even difficult, is tedious.

As a summary, map feels like its so streamlined to the point its bland, the ambushes and how easy is to deal with them is a display of that, considering how good and full of personality map23 was, with a completely different style of gameplay and progression, I wonder how it end up like this.

7/10

MAP27 - “Emypreal” by DMPhobos, Dragonfly

A bit more to the point than the other two maps by DMPhobos, there are quite a few fights that actually require the player to use patience, in instance where you are handed a pretty awful scenario but simply dodging projectiles, ducking from archviles and waiting for the next move to present itself is the best option. The start is nasty and due care is need to keep out of sights of the two archviles, once the walls lower you can skip onto the next area, by the time I returned the only two monsters left were the archies that were weakened heavily. 

Both keys require a series of fights to reach your objective, the one that beings in the small maze was the better of the two (The climbing set piece on the other one is kind of cool, but also little irritating and I guess the author/playtesters agreed because this one seemed to let players off too easily). The final fight i the hardest in the map and when presented with the start of the fight you will commit a potentially check-mating mistake, with the exception of the corporals on the ledges, don't engage with everything else because it is likely that anything you put down will be instantly resurrecting upon the arrival of the Necromenace, once he arrives I found the best thing to do was to draw everything to one side, grab the key and escape to allow a better vantage point to kill said Necromenace, once dead the rest is pretty easy to dispatch and you are free to leave the map....

But hang on, there is a switch that is easy to miss, hit that and you get an optional fight that doesn't really seem to serve a purpose, it is also easier than the final fight so it isn't really an optional brutal challenge, I could simply put down everything with rockets. The only guess is that the fight was calibrated so much in the players favour that you would likely leave with 200% health, a green armour and lot of ammo. This was a bit odd.

Overall this was solid and fun, though in a wad like this that gets you a middling position in the map rankings.

Catch up for episode 5:

Map 21 - “Numb” by @Dragonfly

Reading write ups by other club members helped me notice something: Map 21 really sells the idea of COLD. There are quite many snowy episodes in Doom pWADs. But Eviternity II Episode 5 really feels the coldest among them. Snowy castles from Eviternity 1 felt grim and foreboding, but also somewhat cozy and warm. The Snowy techbase from Numb feels as cold as the scenery around it.
Gameplay is also impressed me: I really like how Numb employs new monsters. Finale (Annihilators + Nightmare Demons + Astral Cacos) is one of my favorite small-scale fights of Eviternity 2. Ice cave battles with Super-mancubi and Annihilators are also awesome.

Together with Thaw, Numb may be my favorite map from Episode 5.

Map 22 - “Inclement” by @Bauul, Dragonfly

First things first: I really, really love the invulnerability brawl – it successfully combines no-risk monster stomping and some actually dangerous combat. The Invuln timings and monster compostion were calculated perfectly!

Overall, Inclement is filled to the brim with constant action. The start really blurs the line between Incidental battles and Pre-set combat setpieces: the whole starting half of the map feels like one huge arena. Later parts of the map are less crazy, but they are crazy non the less: Eviternity II expanded bestiary, and Archviles roaming through already cleared areas make for memorable finale.

Secret Map 35 - “Parallel” by Dragonfly

Like map 34 or map 31, this secret level is relatively “normal”, rather than “crazy special”. But this not a problem to me. (In fact, map 34 is one of my favorite secret maps ever, despite its “normality”. But this is a story for another catch up)

All in all, I quite like Parallel.

My favorite parts and ideas:

- The trick of parallel realities is very well explained, and allows for some interesting routes. Essentially, some parts of the map are Room-over-Room, but presented with cool thematic twist.

- Multi-color Hellish Scenery in OTEX is awesome! I liked Eviternity 1 Hellscapes quite a bit, but they were very focused on Black+Red (Black+Magneta in some cases) color combinations. I really like how Parallel's hellish parts add orange to its scenery.

- Any map with non-secret Perforator gets a "thumbs up" from me. I like this gun with all my heart, and thus I am a fan of any map, which incorporates Perforator into normal weapon progression, because the fights are made with Perforator being part of the main arsenal, rather than a bonus tool.

- It also helps that Parallel reminds me of Ancient Aliens map 32. I like the whole reverse "Doom secret level theme" concept!

All in all, I enjoyed playing Parallel. It is not as crazy as Charge, Catalyst or Anagnorisis. But not every secret level should be absolutely insane! Less crazy secret levels are as old as Doom 1-2 themselves - and Parallel is an awesome secret map of such type.

Map 23 - “Thaw” by @DMPhobos

Thaw is an awesome map. It has:

- Sub-theme of "wandering", which resonates very well with Eviternity 1 Snow Episode.

- A huge techbase, with layers upon layers of minor and not-so-minor monster set ups. This is like Eviternity 1 Dehydration, but without the soul-crushing despair, which makes Dehydration so infamous .

- Melting Ice Walls. In fact, some of the most prominent arenas/secrets are hidden behind melting ice. This is a really creative approach to Ice Techbase theme.

By the way, thanks to interconnectedness, large scale, well-crafted monster set ups around every corner, and those cool Ice-Melting arenas, this map reminds me heavily of Back To Saturn X. It is always cool to see another great pWAD Legacy expanded beyond its titular series.

Episode 6, Map 26

“Myriad” by Tristan Clark, Guardsoul, Dragonfly

Nostalgia time: during my first playthrough, Eviternity 1 had two ground-shattering highlights: fighting the cacoswarm setpiece in Crynology (The BFG-YK fight) and seeing the sheer grandeur of Transcendence. Map 26 of Eviternity 2 combines highlights of Transcendence and Crynology into a single whole. @Tristan, @Dragonfly, @Guardsoul, you are absolute madlads!

Myriad has some parts that I am not fond of. For example, I don’t like most of the challenges that much... Endure is slow-paced and a bit RNG, Conceal is finicky, Destroy is about 2-shotting cyberdemons (I am really bad at this), Passage is all about walking and looking...

However, Myriad is super-impressive nonetheless. Because of its sheer scale and sheer audacity.

750 monsters in one fight? Yes 750 monsters in one fight! (This is how many demons appear in the arena with only Endure challenge completed)

Making such a fight is a Herculean task even for slaughter genre.

But making such a fight approachable for more general audience – this is actually insane!

Together with Temeraire, Myriad is a very strong contender for 100 more most memorable maps of all time...

BTW, I did mange to 100% complete this monster single-segment. I am very bad at 2-shotting cybers, but with 400 plasma in the pocket, Destroy can be completed even without BFG! The things is, the challenges become accessible again when the Big Fight enters its final stage,. Thus, I decided to complete  5 of 6 challenges, and to leave Destroy for later.

Some dev commentary about 27 from my perspective

Cronologically, this was my second contribution to eviternity 2 and it's a collaboration. The start of this collab basically sums up to Dragonfly asking if anyone was open for a collaboration to stay motivated to map during a time where not much was being worked on. Two maps were made as a result, Map22 which was a collab with Bauul, and this map. Both maps were started the same day.

At the start we didn't had concrete plans on how the map would play or how progression would work. Dragonfly made the start with the fight you see on the final map to set the tone for the rest of the map, and once i picked up the map my first instinct was for reusing this area for a further fight, so in order to make the player revisit it, i added both keys on the corners of the circles (this idea ended up being unused, but it's the reason why the keys lower the way the do) which ended up helping figuring out how progression would work. From then on we both worked on the map by working on an area and then passing it on back and forth

A month or so after the map started, i bailed out from the map and from everything doom related due to dealing with some hard blows in my personal life. This lasted for a few months and after some time passed i picked up the map again to try to get back into doom and mapping again, but it was a slow process and my contributions started to take longer to make. Still development was back on track, and we started to pass the map back and forth for a few more rounds, until both areas at the sides were complete and the exit was ready to be placed.

I decided to do one last final arena. My first idea was to have various types of cacos emerging from the ground, but this worked poorly in dsda doom due to infinite heights, so i scaled that idea back and reworked the area into the arena you see on the final map, which involves timed waves of monsters teleporting in with some supplies available at the expense of reducing cover. Once the map was done Dragonfly did some small changes to the fight and then added a teleport to return outside of the final arena... Which was weird since there was already a way to get back outside of the arena. Instead of deleting the teleport, we decided to add one last secret fight after the final fight. A happy little accident

As for the gameplay of this map, it is a more setpiece focused map. While progression is non linear, each path is very straightforward and there's less focus on exploration in terms of progression. This was not always the intention and i don't think we both realized this until both key areas were completed, but in hindsight having a map like this come after 26 which is more experimental in terms of gameplay and progression seems to be a good call since it works well in grounding the player back into a more regular type of map and also as a breather after a long experience.

Don't have much comments about the midi other than it is a killer track by Jimmy, it's not a bespoken midi, but it fits the map really well and it's an amazing track overall. For a long time while testing we used to idmus to map29 music also which fitted the map visuals really well, but a few weeks after the map was complete Jimmy's midi was picked for the map.

Finally about the necromenace at the end... It is a post release change (I think it was added on RC3?). I cannot say much about it since it was added by Dragonfly, but after seeing the intial reactions for how most players tackle this map it seemed to me that this map needed an extra bite at the end (specially for players who found the secret BFG or were playing continous with a perforator) and a necromenace works well there (at that stage the player has plenty of room to move around). The fight is very doable with plasma only, and we added extra supplies to take it into account, also it's UV only. I like it

In the end it's a very good map, i think my contributions are a bit minor, since the more memorable areas on this map were made by dragonfly, but you can still tell i worked on some areas, most notably the end arena. I don't have much dev material to share, but just for fun here's more or less my main contributions to the map. It's not accurate, since Dragonfly added a lot of things to the areas i worked on, but guess it's fun to see

MAP28: Afterimage by Velvetic

Afterimage is a rather tough map, made up of discrete encounters. They might not be big themselves, but Velvetic uses Eviternity's cast at their fullest potential. Nightmare demons do a great job blocking, dukes throws a lot more projectiles than their regular brothers, astral cacodemons are a bitch to take out due to their erratic movement and corporals constantly chip at your health. Good news is, there's a lot of cells to spare, so don't be afraid to pull out the plasma rifle. Or better yet, go for the secret BFG - it's easy to get and can be obtained pretty early on. It especially helped with the finale, when you return to the hub with yellow and blue keys. The monsters here are reinforced by a single necromenece that guards the exit. I still find rushing him with a BFG to be the most effective tactic.

I'm not writing much here, as Afterimage is a decent map, but also I feel it's one I won't remember much about.

Ultra violence 100% kills/secrets, Pistol start, Using saves
Played on DSDA Doom v0.27.5 -complevel 21

Map 22: Inclement - 19:46
Another tightly wound icy techbase with a blazing hot start, Inclement is a fitting description for both the map's visuals/combat and the weather outside my place right now :). After the opening few minutes the energy drops quite a bit, but the invuln fight/DPS check is a fun time and the platforming section at the back of the base is a cool setpiece and fun to rush through. The yellow key reprisal is also pretty intense but not my favorite due to the abundance of astral cacodemons (I hate those things) paired with the rest of the mobs. The ice physics too are kept to a relative minimum which I greatly appreciate, but I wish it wasn't there at all frankly. Admittedly I resorted to looking in a doom editor for two of the four switches that open the secret map portal. Even with iddt once everything else was dead and cleared out I couldn't track them down. I like this map a lot overall, it has some great action and the secrets are well hidden and undoubtedly satisfying to find for many, but it is a little overshadowed by the next few maps and as a result it inevitably (for me) isn't as memorable as it could have been.
Difficulty 5/15

Map 35: Parallel - 13:08
Episode 5's secret map is a pretty relaxing and concise map, and done really well for my money. Visually Parallel's "light" dimension borrows from episode 4 pretty heavily, and the "dark" side is appropriately hellish and foreboding. Combat wise this is the easiest map in a while due to a few high-tier weapons available early and a relatively low enemy count, but Parallel's lack of challenge does not diminish how enjoyable it is. To me this one would be much less fun if it's difficulty measured in the same weight class as some of the upcoming maps in this set. Parallel's space design and unintrusive yet creative gimmick is the real draw here. The yellow skull room in particular reminds me visually of the first Eviternity's heaven episode and is a real treat to look at. The archviles within can actually blend in with the surrounding architecture somewhat and deal a zap to an unwary player, totally not speaking from experience of course ;D. The only map I've played like this one is TNT Revilution's map 32, which I know was mentioned a couple times earlier in this thread. The two maps play very differently but employ a similar concept, and I think I prefer this one. All in all: good map, had fun.  
Difficulty: 4/15

Map 23: Thaw - 25:29
Easily the longest and best map in the episode so far. Thaw is a tense and explosive map and a vast improvement on map 7's gameplay. Like that map, Map 23 consists of mostly incidental combat with a few arenas except taking place in icy caverns and a large techbase. Once again the ice physics are irritating but there aren't very many of these ice sectors thankfully. There are three keys to acquire, all fiercely defended. The blue key wing is particularly tricky, with a cramped fight in a branch of the techbase followed by a flood of former corporals and archviles. I also recommend tracking down the secret megasphere before taking on the center of the base where the red key is guarded, which also houses some nasty traps. Over my three playthroughs of this map I've also come to love the MIDI, and I think it's one of the better pairings of map and music in the whole set. I can definitely hear the resemblance to the Jazz Jackrabbit track that was used as a base for it now that I know as such. Anyway, once you have all three keys (particularly the red key) you can hit the lever that opens the exit. Take care of one last trap, and take the elevator to map 24 to cap off a really fun map. Nicely done.     
Difficulty: 7/15