While Doom: The Dark Ages is far from a bad game, I would say that, in the realm of Doom, it is likely the oddest and most jarring entry in the entire franchise. Again, it is a good game that plays remarkably well, though I often get bored of its combat far more than in previous entries.
My biggest issue is that it is obsessed with making sense of Doom storylines and forging connections that sort of weaken the franchise as a whole (again, storywise). There is no air of mystery here. A lot of the appeal of previous Doom games was connecting the little dots that might or might not hint at ties to prior entries; instead, we're just given explanations for side characters and plot points that really could have been summed up in passive notes. Doomguy is no longer a weak human carried along by rage and luck; he is now a godlike being whom everyone just trusts to be awesome or to kill things without question. And, yes, he does so without question.
The fact that this game's events are completely inconsequential sort of sucks as well. Everything here has already happened prior to Doom Eternal, so you already know the ending is going to be what it is. Even so, it wastes the cahnce to answers the questions that players actually wanted answered, like how he ended up in the floating castle at the start of Eternal, or visualizing his famed rampage through Hell that landed him in the sarcophagus in the first game. Instead, we get this pseudo-Warhammer 40K world filled with a bunch of people who act like they're from that setting, with Doomguy placed on top. Instead of Chaos, we have Hell, which, I guess, is basically still just Chaos anyway. There is no emotional investment in the conflict because you're just Doomguy being launched at the problems of other characters he has no connection to, all while just listening to them. Yes, for a bit he's being controlled, but he ends up doing what he's told anyhow, acting basically as a living gun for the actual main characters. In DOOM (2016), Samuel Hayden was trying to guide him, but Doomguy really didn't care; he only ever "listened" when it meant destroying demons or finding a way to get at them. I didn't need a game about characters who were already pretty much explained in the lore from Eternal, nor did I need what amounts to a nod to all of that combined with a genuinely massive effort to milk every possible idea from a few entries in the previous game.
As for the gameplay itself, it's fine, and no, it isn't Doom 2016 or Eternal. Those games played differently from one another, and this one is just as different from Eternal as 2016 was. Everything is insanely polished, and I can't really complain from a technical standpoint. However, it did get boring as hell as the game went on, mainly because the way weapons are handled doesn't give you as much control over situations as you'd like. It felt like the developers wanted you to use everything all the time at every moment, and you do. Once you chew through the ammo of one weapon, you're forced to switch between everything else. There isn't enough focus; instead, it's a chaotic variety that actively works against the development of a personal playstyle. Which, yeah, sucks.
The upgrade system feels like a way to pad out the runtime, and because of how the weapons are handled, you'll barely care where your gold is spent. Maps are also WAY TOO BIG for the dumbest reason possible: secrets. The majority of these areas are designed around the same handful of gimmicks, requiring you to just walk around to collect a few trinkets that grant lore, skins, and gold for upgrades. They really break the flow of the game if you're trying to collect everything, and it doesn't feel good to replay these huge maps and levels just because you missed some tiny detail.
Encounters also just feel the same, over and over again. I was powerful from the start, and I was powerful by the time I got bored. There was no player growth or actual challenge because every enemy follows the exact same patterns from beginning to end, repeated hundreds of times. It is so forgiving and easy to learn that it just doesn't feel like you're playing a Doom game.
