nice only? This totally deserves excellent imo.

Yeah this REALLY should be excellent. Agree wholeheartedly w/ Tronyn.

Yes this is totally excellent! Awesome architecture. I like all the secrets too.

This was absolutely excellent.
Why is this listed with only four stars?

Maybe the mod had a Hunk_Alloc error.

This is hands down THE best Quake1 map ever made!
The layout, monster distribution and atmosphere are second to none (even the really, really, really good ones)!
A small library where fiends run down the isles being a particularly awesome one.
The room in the screenshot (at the very start of the map) was insanely challenging; Ogres in high towers raining bouncy bombs while knights swarm out of their dark hiding spots- when you finally get to the high ground you're mobbed by scrags! You have plenty of cover, but you are only a 'little' safe- the way it should be!
The boss fight was brilliant too!
FULL stars, this rocks.

(cont)
Not to mention, a rare treat is that the weapon allocation is nice and generous. You get decent guns reasonably early (especially in selecting nightmare mode- wink), which come in REALLY handy as the opposition is pretty rough.
(not to mention the mapper understands by now that we've likely played Quake and Armagon enough to handle a more progressive pace)

Not rated yet as I haven't completed it (died just after the gold key door)... Awesome up until that point though.

it's amazing what can be done with 'scraps.' i thought this was a great romp through another world.

Not my favorite Quake castle/fortress, but still a treat. I'm sure I found a couple of secrets in unintended ways with trick jumping—are you supposed to be able to jump to the "roof" of the first large structure from a place nearer the end of the map?

A massive step up from the author's previous hrim_sp2. Rooms are varied and feel distinctive, while the overall level design and architecture is solid and rarely feels clunky or contrived. Monster encounters are equally various with much of the Quoth bestiary made use of. The author clearly put thought into how the fights play out and how to mess with the player (that Shambler on the ledge caught me off guard in particular). Fun ending. Overall, wasn't really challenging but it kept me engaged.

The only significant downside is the overuse of silent teleporting monsters, sometimes directly in the player's line of sight. It might work well enough, but it's kinda ugly to look at.

Can't believe I never reviewed this one, having played it so many times! Among the very top rank for visuals, it just misses out on the full five stars for me, due to a slight sense of grind to parts of the play, especially due to the preponderance of high-powered knights. Still a fine, fine achievement, though.

After his sp2, Hrimfaxi continues his exploration of the knave theme, this time with the return of a tronynesque sense of scale that was in his sp1. The architecture, similarly to sp2, is decidedly different from the usual knave map and more in line with typical medieval fantasy (again a Tronyn touch), which is odd considering it's partly based on Kell scraps. I don't recognize his trademark style here.

Combat is solid, a bit on the tough side, especially on hard where you don't get the RL until the very end - as opposed to nightmare where you get it in the start map. Weird. The final arena is very challenging if you miss the much welcome last secret, with a vermis followed by two gugs at once and little to no cover to protect you from their devastating attacks.

All in all a very good and mostly fun map. A couple nitpicks are the very late RL mentioned above and especially the button to access the LG. It's in a secret with zero signposting whatsoever, itself tucked within another secret. That's a bit much! Just don't put the LG in your map at all if you want this badly for the player not to have it... I wasted a lot of time wandering around, pointlessly trying to spot any sort of clue, only to end up watching a playthrough on YouTube.