Fantastic episode. Quite challenging. The dragons are HARD! I played with NehQuake.

Incredible. Amazing atmosphere. Great respect to the authors. Gave me loads of fun and adrenaline.

Phenomenal maps. Author's Unforgiven is ass-kicking. Only complaint here is there are places where you just get stuck. Eventually you must resort to noclip to see what the hell you are supposed to do. case in point. The second map with the castle / dragon / clock tower. After the gold key it says "stairs are now active" or something. The stairs don't exist. Most of the high places are completely unreachable without rocket jumps. You best conserve those rockets and health(hard to do that!). The distance even then, is so far, you need to try many rocket jumps repeatedly. Getting to those flying boots was a bitch.

Just some healthy criticism. Amazing maps, but getting to clever takes the fun out of it.

Actually in that second map there are stairs that come up, but there are quite a ways away: you have to get to the second level on the outside of the "city", and then go around the outside to find the stairs. Then you hop across the rooftops. But you are right it is hard to find these stairs, a message or something, or even just giving the player the flying boots right then, would be better. Thanks for the feedback!

Wow, what a mixed bag.

At first it seems like a very polished update/sequel to the brilliant (yet at times still somewhat quaint and rough) SOE, with some new ideas (like friendly AI and new weapons). There are also some fantastic single maps, like the beautiful (pictured) map with the bell tower and underwater pyramid, which I would probably rate a 4 or 5 if it were released on its own. There is no question that Tronyn is a masterful mapper.

But then there is the weapon reset at the start of each level, over which Tronyn himself has expressed regret and which makes this feel less like a cohesive episode and more like a series of increasingly unfairly hard maps. By the end of the walled city level, I finally got the guided missile launcher with no monsters left to kill -- and then had it taken away as soon as I exited the map.

By the time I got to the massive, sprawling void map (which, as an aside, would have been more visually interesting were it not set in a pitch black void -- just look at how much the skybox adds to the bell tower map), frustration finally won and I gave up.

Definitely worth a download if only to admire the beauty of the architecture and landscapes and to play through the excellent bell tower map, but ultimately this feels like wasted potential -- if only because one holds a master mapper like Tronyn to very high standards.

I actually have only little to add to the post above. Beautifully lit landscapes with wonderful skyboxes (besides the void map) and architecture somehow don't want to match with the removal of weapons after finishing a level and the quite considerable difficulty which reaches almost epic proportions in the final two maps. Come on, in the final map you are attacked by a horde of dragons while a load of gremlins on the floor level start resurrecting killed mobs. Not funny at all. And I was playing this on Easy - really don't want to imagine this on Hard or even Nightmare. After all, it's really worth suffering through all this due to the beauty of the levels. Just don't try to save ammo and don't look for secrets after you have cleared the map since you won't carry anything over to the next installation. Without this and the difficulty, I would have given it a 5. [Technical info: You can upgrade this with "A Roman Wilderness of Pain" if you copy over pak0.pak, pak1.pak and progs.dat from there - even though I had to merge the pak files to make it work in the end.]

This is among my all-time favorites! There's a very special atmosphere, beautiful landscapes and the music is wonderful.

Well, I am out of ideas for how to kill the dragon in City of Angels. None of the good weapons can even hit it, because it moves fast enough to get out the way of rockets and nails. So all I can hit it with is the shotguns, and they don't do nearly enough damage to get the job done before I'm toast. What am I missing?

Hi; it's been a while since I played this map but what skill are you on? iirc there's a quad somewhere around there or maybe even a mirv. Not that nsoe wasn't brutally hard. infighting may also work. if it's at the very end of the level, there's items on the roofttops you can get - you have to ascend a staircase and get boots of flight first (I'm probably going to change this so that the boots are on the ground and you just get them and fly around).

MikeTaylor -- it's been a while since I've played it too, but I seem to recall being able to hit it with rockets on skill 1/normal (in any case I definitely did not get the boots or the guided missile weapon or any of the rooftop items until after I had killed the dragon). It's probably a matter of shooting where it's going to be, rather than where it is.

Indian Summer my ass. How about Brutal Summer? This is no doubt the toughest set of maps I've ever played, beats Arcanum and Unforgiven by a long shot. I beat it on Hard and almost had to cheat near the end because there's no way... I mean there's absolutely NO FUCKING WAY someone can beat that Bane guy like any normal boss. The only way I could kill this bastard was by luring and getting him stuck on the small upper area that has a red armor, then nailgunning the shit out of him from miles away, just as the final boss from Unforgiven, except here I got wasted quite a lot more times in the process. I died so many times I can't possibly count; then I thought maybe I'm just way over my head here, but seriously, I mean WTF! This guy must have over half a million hit points, moves fast as hell and his attacks are devastating from any distance, not to mention the mob of monsters that join the fray and the dead ones he brings back to life (for Heaven's sake, the guy can even resurrect those dragons!) I'm sorry, I don't mean to nag, I know this is the work of someone who with all reason is regarded by many as a master mapper, but it seems he has a terrible habit of making overpowered, nigh-insurmountable bosses who's only weakness seem to be their poor AI.

Heh, thanks for the feedback/compliment. Actually I designed these maps (other than the first two which aren't by me) using the original Soul of Evil mod, but then while I was working on that I started working with PM who was preparing an update of his Dragons mod. This is what made Drake possible. But there were definitely times when I considered things too hard that he considered too easy. I haven't talked to him in a while but I'll ask if he can balance the Drake bosses down a bit for the final Drake mod. I think PM might consider finding exploits part of the game, but I'm definitely a more careless player than that.

So much to love about this pack ...

So much to hate about dragons.

wow. beaten that on normal (with a crapton of save/load, hehe). it's definitely better to accept this as a pack of separate maps rather than a continuous episode.

map nsoe5 should be avoided like a plague due to its, er, "boss fight". whoever playtested this (if there was such person) failed his responsibilities completely. not a big loss, imho, since nsoe5 isn't as good as the rest of the levels in terms of architecture and layout and doesn't provide any unique visuals. it probably would be better to have this map as an optional secret level for masochists.

other maps are way more fair and quite spectacular. nsoe3 is definitely a highlight with a strong reference to the old classic "shadow over insmouth". important note: transparent water doesn't seem to work in this level, so r_wateralpha should be set to "1"!

nsoe6 is almost just as good, and nsoe 4 is an epic void level which main issue is way too obvious symmetry imho. nsoe1 is short and sweet, while nsoe2 provides a good portion of fun by giving you some followers.

Awesome. my favorite, i love this pack because,

-Maps feels like i m playing a book or a movie rather than plain maps. poor people want to help for slaying bane. this feels me good. when people thinks you are awesome baneslayer you are reallly feel good. -I prefer parkour like movements rather than bunnyhopping and in these maps i can jump anywhere i want such as roof to cliff jumping. -And these maps are brighter than most other maps and you can see the big part of the sky this makes good felling. -And beautiful architecture and landscape. -Using light guns and various electric guns against to poor primitive medieval enemies. this is feels good i feel like im a space invader. -Looks like rpg game style but acts like a action fps this is so surprised me. -These maps are inspired me to great map ideas

There is a interesting feature, at this pack(or maybe at non updated version of this map) you can turn into a dragon while bunnyhopping. then you can turn back to human form by jumping on the ground. but i cant figure it out which conditions required to turning into a dragon. i cant turn into a dragon anymore. please tell if somebody knows it.

And my engines have problems about limits i tried most of engines its now ok with the quakespasm engine. which engines have high limits please tell this too.

i know my comment is kind of over-fantastic but the maps are over-fantastic either.

i want a new map pack like this i played this so much and i loved it and i want to continue.

So beautiful! I am in process of playing it. But I want to know if you can show me the music sheet of the intermission

Thank you for this episode! It was really hard but always fair. Will look for more Tronyin maps.