quite ferocious battles for me. great gameplay!

Very beautiful and consistently inventive.

This is not a map any more... it's a masterpiece. Almost impossible to imagine how carefully the author must have designed this insanely huge complex of caves, ruins and rivers. I especially liked how well the decay of the whole area was realized, with gates half-way sunken into lava, staircases made impassable by rubble, broken wooden bridges which require jumping over lava lakes and much more. The whole atmosphere is a creepy mix of Doom and Quake, hellish with these burning woods outside while you have a lot of huge caves flooded with lava inside. One visual highlight follows the other, and you won't get enough until you reach the end. There, however, it gets brutally hard: Once you reach the massive ammo cache, you are in for one hell of a fight - I am not sure if it's possible to prevail even on Easy while having to stay on this small ledge while hordes of mobs jump down on you. Anyway, for the visuals alone, this is a trip you have to experience!

I'm a bit surprised I only wrote five words about this the first time I played it. This is among the very top rank of maps, for its atmosphere, progression, varied combats and sheer beauty. The sequence of heart-stoppingly terrifying jumps across the ricketty wooden lava bridges will live long in my memory. If I have one criticism, it's that the opening outdoor section, then the subterranean section and finally the main part of the game really feel like three separate levels, as there is no way to return from any of them to one of the earlier sections. A bit of a shame, but really nothing to worry about. Part 3 alone (the ruined castle) would be well worth five stars. Truly great work.

BTW., NightFright, the way I beat that final combat (on Hard) was by grenade-jumping up into the alcove as soon as I could, and picking off the bad-guys below me. It's still tricky, but definitely doable provided you get up there quickly enough.

Just played on Nightmare.... And... Wow! THIS is how you do a large map! When I saw the monster count I was afraid it was another drag as many large maps. How I was wrong.

Almost no dead moments and lots of memorable battles united with incredible decaying architectures. Monster are often intelligently places so they give their best even with the stupidly limited AI they have (a part of Ogres that seldom cannot reach you with granates)... And the final battle is indeed a blast. One of the best I remember! 6/5

Suggestions if you have problems, before entering the double locked door go back the silver key place, take the yellow armor and recharge your life to 250. You will need it. Secondly, don't use all you nails in the beginning, ensure you have about 100 nails for the last monster wave.

Love the idea of going around one large ruined structure but the beginning feels like filler to me. Fun secrets, pretty challenging gameplay and lots of scrambling up broken down objects!

The finale is punishing to the point of unfair due to the small location the player is allowed to run around...if you miss one critical secret before entering you are going to have one hell of a time!

I think the beginning outdoor/cave areas could have been better used. Really, any monsters in that initial valley would have been great.

I also did not like some of the jumping puzzles. I'm not against them on principle as some overly touchy FPS players are, but I thought a couple of them were pretty annoying, including at least one that had to be done twice. The mechanic definitely fit the eldritch medieval ruin theme, though.

Finally, please don't throw flying monsters in my face when I'm riding a lift and can't dodge their projectiles. :)

Otherwise great map. The combats in the main area were suitably chaotic, forcing the player to make full use of all available space. Visually it is exactly as detailed and atmospheric as I was hoping for from the creator of my favorite 2016 release so far. Go ORL!

I'd disagree with most of the comments. For me this level was very boring. Player doesn't get to run around a lot, there are lots of small areas where the fight is pretty tight (I myself don't like that). And as mentioned before there's lots of jumping (which I personally hate). Plus I can't stand moments when you're riding something and monsters attack you and you fall right into lava, like, hell, what am I supposed to do, when I can't even avoid the monsters' ammo?

Everyone is talking about how awesome this map looks. I won't really disagree with that. But man, did the encounters suck on Nightmare. I got starved out of ammo like hell and theres a part with 2 shamblers incoming and I had literally no ammo. So i just jumped down in the water, atleast enough ammo to kill one of those. Then you can go further, grab the nails and dash the fuck out, so you can kill the other one. Also I wanna agree with Repus. I was low af on health at the lift and theres no room to dodge them really on that tiny thing.

Point is, encounters are quite unbalanced. Sure, one could lower the difficulty, but it doesnt fix the ammo problem per se.

There are two things I think are great about this map. First off is the theme and visual styling; the red terracotta look combined with the stylised flames and chaotic mix of water and lava give it a really distinctive character that I've not seen anywhere else. In fact despite its very obviously gamey nature the map has a far more effective sense of believability and "place" than many more realistically constructed ones.

The second thing that I like is the interior design of the main ruin itself. While obviously limited in scope, there's a definite sense of dynamism there which is something very difficult to capture; a combination of architecture, options for and consideration of player navigation, enemy usage... first surfacing in the main chamber you're faced with what seems like a remarkable amount going on for the space that you're dealing with, but as opposed to being restricted or getting pushed into a corner there's a lot of scope for approaching it naturally.

The gameplay in the rest of the map is pretty unexceptional and feels like padding at times, which is a great shame considering how strong it is at other points.

I found no parts of the gameplay to be "padding" in this one. I personally love maps that reward good jumping skills, and this is one of the best. The design is intricate and beautiful, in a decaying sort of way. I did find the final battle a bit more challenging than I expected. Hint: Remember the lava room with the regenerating items? If you time it right, you can get back to the final room with over 200 percent health and 150 armor.

Very creative. I like the ruined bits of the map, they reminded me of the start of Arcane Dimensions' Firetop Mountain. I did not really look hard but I found no secret, although I assume shooting all goat heads near the ceiling must trigger something somewhere; either I missed one of them, or I missed what happened (if anything does).

What I assume --- and hope! --- to be the final battle is too insane. Is ORL one of Tronyn's aliases? Being stuck on a ledge, periodically backstabbed by a knight and assaulted by jumping monsters including a Shambler is no fun, even after following Solomoriah's advice. I'm giving up for now, might come back to it later.

The author should be shot "only joking" to say this is hard, is a million% understatement,rate it 5, but played it on nightmare, id have more chance of getting a rocket to the moon, and moon walk. Only quible i have, is all the bloody jumping around you have to do, i felt like a frog, played like one also. :)

Very good ! To me platforms and exploration is an integral part of Quake so I'm always glad when creators use it in maps, that's some extra time to catch your breath and enjoy the environments. The fights are brutal and close quarters I loved it.