The pacing of Chamber Of Echoes (mc_rj2_ish2) is refreshingly different, plunging you pretty immediately into some intense but fair combats, then subjecting you to bombardment from above. The works really well, and I liked being kept on my toes. The only downside is that, when I eventually made my way up to the higher levels, they felt rather underpopulated as I’d already killed all the then-visible monsters from below. One of the better maps in this pack; and it’s a good pack.
ef69df6b88e9038bf04e47c57434a68c9165ea60603ad25f1be8da166a2971a2
overall_rating
4.5
2
Shadowmoor Citadel (mc_rj2_ish1) is extraordinarily hard, I might even say comically hard — right from the start. Over and over again I would barely scrape through some difficult combat, health and ammo low, glad to reach and easier section — only to find that it was not easier at all. If anything, the difficulty ramps up throughout, and the final section after falling through the floor behind the gold-key door is just insane.
And yet, and yet … somehow the difficulty remains interesting. On one level it’s unfair, but each scenario does offer a way to achieve survival, if only you can figure it out. So in the end, the map is as much a puzzle as a game, and when I finally did finish it, it was with an enormous sense of achievement.
(I got all 109 kills on hard but only 3 of 8 secrets. If I’d found the lightning gun, that would definitely have helped!)
After the ferocious difficulty of Shadowmoor Citadel, Waypoint to Gallowmere (mc_rj2_kdmg) is honestly a pleasant, relaxing stroll in the park — a nice way to come down. Short, simple, pretty easy, but … is it OK to say nice? I got all 39 kills and both (very easy) secrets.
… and that brings us to the end of this map pack. 19 proper maps (plus the start map) every one of them at least OK, some of them much better than that. I’m not crazy about “retro” as a them — I think we’ve made great strides in the last nearly thirty years and we should enjoy them — and no one of these maps is good enough to rate all five stars. But the combination of so many good and very good maps just tips the pack as a whole into five-star territory for me. Highly recommended.