Writing this off the heels of finishing the main campaign, not including DLC. I have mixed feelings for Doom: The Dark Ages because overall, I enjoyed myself. I played the game on Nightmare throughout it's 22 mission count which felt meaty to go through. Overall the game is great, but the main campaign suffers from the "death of a thousand cuts" problem where the majority of the experience on offer is good, but many small nicks over my 21.8 hour run of the main game makes this a 'softer reccomend' than over Doom 2016 or Eternal.
Positives:
- The game does a great job to make you feel powerful with how badly you are kicking the ♥♥♥♥ out of things. High impact sound design with animations make this game feel very visceral and raw. Or the way how the flesh and vicera peels away from the demons as you shoot them. Really big highlights for me.
- World design and map vista's are legitimatly breath taking. Id's artists (or sadly whats left of them) really cooked with the visual design of the levels.
- Guns feel very powerful and satisfying to use
- Cutscenes add a lot of big specticle that is cool watch
- The Dark Ages Demons are a good visual change up from 2016 & Eternal.
- Difficulty Accessibility is very streamlined so you can fine tune the best way for the game to play for you
Negatives:
-Parrying (at least imo) gets old really fast. I know it's the whole point of this games "Stand and Fight" mantra, but after about half way through my playtime, I realized it was becoming very repetetive. Since all enemies shoot the same kind of projectile to parry, the mechanic becomes a much more OVER - reactionary one than I beleive intended. In the late-game. enemy encounters often devolve into a predictable loop of waiting for green prompts, blocking, and counter-attacking rather than keeping fast, fluid movement.
- No glory kills. To me, the executions blend together with the kicks and counter attacks you end up doing while parrying. The only advantage I have seen from them is that you can look around while the animation is happening to look for your next target, rather than being in a fixed animation like a glory kill.
- While the weapons are cool to use, there are too many to make each weapon class needed or neccassary to use. I found myself sticking to 3 weapon classes MAX because either the other guns didn't fit my playstyle OR their upgrades didn't seem worth investing into.
-Level exploration is also repetetive. Using the same methods for bashing through walls with the sheild to access a "hidden area" that was just off to the left doesn't make me feel like I am actually discovering how to get to that secret.
- Story is bloody incomprehensible. The story is supposed to be about the wars between the Sentinels and the Demons over Argent Den'ure, but the name of the world the Demon slayer is helping to save is not mentioned until the final cutscene. The Story is just a vechile for the levels to move in between with little context for what or why the Demon slayer is doing it for is not explained. I had to watch a Youtube video to be caught up which did a better job explaining the story than the game did.
- The first time you pilot the Atlan Mech and the Dragon are the only time those spcticle levels feel unique or fun because they are bassicaly mech & aerial fights BUT with parrys.
- The final boss and villian is a piss ant. Needing to fight him 4 times across 6 phases and 2 levels is just stupid. By that time the game had lost my patience.
- First and only Id game where I got softlocked twice in a row on the same level. I also experience a handful of audio bugs and 2 continual loading screens.
Overall, DTDA is a good game and I softly reccomend it, but get it on a sale. I hope the DLC fixes or does things differently that the main game does not. That being said, I do think it is the weakest of the modern Doom trilogy, but that isn't an insult or a bad thing for this game. That's like saying DS2 is the weakest of the Dark Souls games but it still got GOTY in 2014. I do think this game will grow on me over time as I play it. I was just burnt out by the time I was finished, which was not the way I felt after finishing Doom 2016 or Eternal. That being said, despite all my negatives, I think the core visceral combat was the thing that kept brining me back. The sounds of crushing bones under my feet as I fall upon the demons and shoot them as I drift across the level at moc 5 is a great time indeed. Even if it is my 3rd favourite in this modern Doom trilogy.
