Super good! I played all three classes through 30 maps each on different mapsets and had a great time. Last time I had played was during a very early version before even the second class was released.
Each character felt unique and satisfying to play, while the monsters surprised me with the new stuff they had and did (I enabled "Extra Hard" in the CBI). My busy self was too short on time to read the manuals so I played through the whole thing wondering whats up with the monsters having what looked like AT-fields inspired from evangelion apart from giving me a hint that they're tankier/harder than usual.
The thing that most impressed me though is all the tech wizardry and nuances/polish/details. The both the HUD and the interface with the various animated widgets, was really neat - havent seen any other Doom mod do all that stuff.
Particularly I enjoyed the movement system which felt so smooth and satisfying to traverse around the level and use during combat. Meanwhile the new weather system and an actual day-night cycle took me by surprise - it got really dark in outdoor sections and occasionally I noticed that monsters went to sleep at night which let me fight/kill them 1-on-1, without alerting other monsters at the expense of having any visibility, sometimes comically bumping into a chaingunner in the dark and going "oh hello there sir".
Combat wise thought I have mixed feelings.
Stuff I love: The RPG-lite systems with monster levels, the upgraded enemy behaviours, the new phantom minibosses, the new icon of sin mechanic, the punchy satisfying weapons, cool abilities and the CBI upgrades, armor inventory, the HUD readouts and the weather.
Stuff I felt odd about: Gameplay balance and lack of experienced variety in using the different weapons purpose wise.
- Some weapon offer infinite ammo and are on par with some weapons/attacks that do use ammo that utility wise I feel like I'm having a partial ammo-cheat on.
- Weapons that do use ammo have scarce ammo that I use up their fairly small-ish reserves fast enough that majority of the time I returned back to using the infinite ammo weapons.
- The upgrades are a mixed bag; some upgrades are certain an upgrade, but some feel more like a side-grade or their benefit is diminished by a trait they introduce. Like the plasma wisps for the shotgun of the 2nd class or the plasma pistol for the 1st class making the projectiles slow that the original state felt more useful in combat, especially against the more mobile enemies.
- Upgrades are also slow to come by and very expensive. I would get perhaps only a few upgrades per run and sometimes feel regret since it felt like it made my weapon subjectively worse in combat and while I can turn it off, I cant get a refund.
- Some enemies turn into quite the damage sponges, especially the minibosses that are fast/twitchy that fighting them becomes a chore and depletes all my ammo, forcing me to stick with infinite ammo attacks to gradually reduce their HP to zero to finally nab the upgrades from them.
- The inventory armor system feels a bit of a miss, I can only upgrade one armor piece for legs and chest, but thats about it. I didn't encounter any arm or other pieces and generally I feel like as a system its too close to how vanilla armor works; I pick up an armor, it reduces damage until I replace it with another one. Meanwhile a grid based intentory system in Lithium could have the potential
for picking up pieces of armor that together will add stacking effects and bonuses ala Deus Ex's inventory tetris, that I feel would be more interesting, varied and feed more into that RPG progression thing as player keeps finding new loot to slot, while discarding old components. Throw in a durability mechanic in there for old picked up armor pieces expiring after taking enough damage or after certain events like entering a new map, and the armor inventory becomes a more exciting cycling system that won't have the issue of feeling stagnated or too rigid.
Bugs wise, I did encounter repeated crashes when fighting the Icon of Sin where I died often, reloaded an autosave, until suddenly something behind the scenes happened that caused an access violation - either due to the way the mod works or due to GZDoom itself. I looked at a crash report but it didn't have anything obvious besides this:
Code: Select all
Code: C0000005 (Access Violation - tried to read address 00000501000000a8)
Address: 00007ff6751bfc50
Flags: 00000000
Aside from that only icon of sin crash, the mod ran smoothly and flawless otherwise.
I noticed if I start the level from an autosave at the very beginning instead of half-way into the fight, then I can play, finish and see the ending.
The character intros and endings were neat too mechanically, though I didn't understand most of it as I had no knowledge of the greater context or significance what it meant. Credits screen was pretty cool thought with Demo-scene esque wizardry.
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