Gave this a spin after hearing good things about it.

It's not that great in reality, though. While the architecture may be curvy and nice, the map pack has many issues, such as random fullbright pixels on textures, z-fighting near doors, missing head gibs for new monsters (thus they appear as bright blue chunks), intermission text that gets cut off and even lava that you can safely walk on (lolwut). All in all, this gives an impression of an unpolished product.

Shalrath,

Other than the crap EA and most other shite software producers chuck on the market, this is an non-commercial release, a labor of love thing. Surely it can't be judged as a professional release. I think mods should be FUN ! And this is a very nice one to play through, in my opinion.

I have some fond memories about this pack. I was really impressed back then.

When this came out, I manually removed the fullbright pixels using mpak and texmex. It looked much better in software mode then. :)

in all fairness though, it was released when practically everyone was still using GLQuake out of the box, even though it sucked.

This is the most fun I've had in Quake.

Really impressed on how complex the level design is. It's pretty easy to get lost (must've said "ok, where's the door this key unlocks/that button opened?" to myself at least once on every level"), but the level's are still fun to run around in and there are usually spawned monsters to let you know when you're in the right area to advance. The only disappointment is how few secrets there were, but the one's that are there are tough, so there's plenty of replay value—which the 'ending' encourages, lol.

Gameplay was top-notch, especially the last level with the giant circular arena you start out in, filled with monsters and with ogres raining grenades from platforms above you. Definitely one of the more unique Quake battles I've fought.

while this collection might be a little rough around the edges in some ways, and could have used just a tad more polish, it remains one of my personal favorites. just the way everything leads up to that crazy chaotic scene at the end is just great, and i really had that satisfied feeling of almost having played an entire little game in of itself by the end, and this was accomplished with just a handful of maps. really cool!

Nice texturing and some really well-done castle areas to explore. Basically, the core maps are ending with boss fights against some elemental knights who are guarding the runes. The story is a bit different - you are a rather pathetic guy who likes to complain about why they sent him, whines after boss fight injuries etc. Only criticism: Even though it has nine maps, it merely features five "real" levels, the rest are quite short intro/outro parts without any combat. Anyway, the authors came up with a clever idea for a creative transition from the end back to the beginning. Final verdict: A lot of fun, a fair challenge and great level design. [Technical info: With FitzQuake Mk V, I had some freezes in "Castle Rapture" for some reason, but I managed to continue by ignoring the knights at the beginning.]

at the time this was released, it was definitely a marvel of creation. i enjoyed every minute! i found few secrets. some monsters or secrets during the cutscene maps would have been neat. i did not experience 'blue gibs.' i use the requiem engine, and quakespasm as backup when i encounter technical issues.

It is still great in 2016. I can't imagine any better ending.

I WALKED ON LAVA!! ^^

I don't think that "labor of love" excuses releasing something that's essentially a great mod in the early beta stage. Unlike commercial works (since we're drawing this comparison), hobbyist projects typically don't have a deadline, so you can playtest and polish them as long as you want.

This particular episode has more problems than an average project, commercial or not, so it doesn't seem like the authors cared long enough. I mean, how hard it was to notice that half the liquids are broken? Thank god you don't have to swim in them.

The point is - it's okay to express your disappointment in such cases.

Very fun, complex and entertaining maps! Castle Rapture must be among my favorite. The only thing keeping me from rating this a solid 5 is the already reported fact that some gibs lack texture and lava behaves weird.

I do think Shalrath's criticisms in the first comment are unfair. Yes, the specific things he says are all true, but they are really very minor detriments to the game.

Although the Daikatana and Hexen textures maked things look a little dark and artificial to my eyes, there is a lot of gameplay to be had in Rapture, some of it pleasingly unusual. In particular, for large parts of the last full level, ogres rain down grenades, and surviving them is a novel challenge.

Also, I think this may be the only Quake release I've ever seen (including ID's original) where the end-of-level texts are worth reading.

Which makes the fact that they're getting cut off by the screen edge all the more ironic. :)

I never wait for them to slowly appear, character-by-character. As soon as they start to print out, I hit the ~ key, and I can read the whole thing in the console. Recommended!

Despite the valid points brought up by others, I'd still say this is worth a solid five. I played the episode first on nightmare difficulty, which provided me with ample grenades lobbed at me relentlessly by the ogres, which was probably the main cause of my deaths. It felt like the ogres were placed ever so fiendishly to make dodging their grenades as hard as ever can be.

It provides for some quite challenging encounters, which made me think what would be the best course to tackle some situations. So, if you're playing this on nightmare and want just some head-on guns blazing action without much thought, you should rather play on an easier difficulty. But, if you're feeling patient and solving some combat "puzzles", this is the nightmare episode for you.

Really great, play now if you did not.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

I felt somewhat backstabbed from the ending. After that grandiose outro it's implied you get telefragged.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

Shalrath's complaints are completely justified, the issues may not completely ruin the mod but it does make it seem very unpolished. The game has been out for over 20 years and there are much better and more polished singleplayer levels here. Some cool level design but it isn't going to get a 5/5 from me. You should never be able to walk on lava in Quake, that's just wrong.

I feel like maybe I sounded a bit harsh in that last comment as this was released quite a long time ago. I didn't realize that, and Tronyn is with out a doubt one of the best mappers here, that goes without saying though.

About the fullbright pixels. Some of the older map packs have this issue, since they were made in the GLQuake era and vanilla GLQuake is missing several features from the original renderer, including fullbrights and overbrights, so people just never noticed the problem.

Anyway, set gl_fullbrights 0 to disable fullbrights. Works in FitzQuake, Quakespasm, Mark V, DirectQ, etc. However, the command in DarkPlaces is r_fullbrights 0, and you also have to re-start the game.

Well, if you disable fullbrights, you don't get to see them where they really should be. Anyway, the false fullbrights didn't annoy me at all. Solid lava... well, that's another story.

A great set of maps. The way they're designed makes Quake feel fast when most maps tend to make it feel slow. You're always being driven forward.

I yanked out the map "Rain Palisade" out of the pak file and played it vanilla ... it was awesome! If uninformed, I would've never guessed there were any missing critters. Just leisurely exploring/killing took me about 20+ minutes, killing almost 90 monsters, including the quintessential shambler at the end. There were zero hiccups, with the exception of just a few textures having some fullbright pixels. I even found all three secrets, which I normally stink at doing.

If you leery after reading the above posts and want to sample Kona/Tronyn's handiwork, try this route. The brushwork is quite good and the gameplay is fun!

Replayed this recently on Hard - still really good! Except a few problems like fullbright pixels here and there, non-damaging and non-animated lava, a few buggy doors with the halves not closing/opening at the same time. The baron enemy looks kinda ugly, but the "Axeman" is neat though! Not sure why some parts like RAINEND are separate, perhaps due to limitations of the times.

I don't know how to put it exactly, but this episode feels different... retro, maybe Doomlike, not in its appearance but in how it plays. I really enjoyed it!

I think rapture is great. On nightmare setting its hard but fun and tears doing it.Puzzles and keys to find are great, maybe a bit of back tracking could do with less, but this pack is brill 5/5

Played this on Hard and enjoyed it, but this is straightforward action. No secrets on some levels means less incentive to explore. In a way, that's a relief. In another sense, it didn't give me a chance to appreciate the architecture or level design. Still, I know I'll return and have a blast.

Very great!! Ending is somewhat.... experimental, though, but not a waste like the ones in Zerstorer and OUM. Good to see some elements from Nehahra. Surprised to see the Barons to be remade into four elemental-based boss battles! The "Vore Knight" enemy is absolutely terrible... in the good way)))

This has good level design, good gameplay and very nice architecture, beating some of the most recent ones by a long shot. And this is quite old.

It is worth 5+ stars and I just wished it were bigger.

I found this pack really awe inspiring when it first released. Decided to revisit recently after using some DK textures in my XMAS map and I was not disappointed.

The fast axe knights are a great addition to the mid-level bestiary and I've always thought Scourge's Imp was unappreciated in its time. Both would be a great addition to newer mods like AD.

Level Design is solid as you'd expect with some standout moments being Castle Rapture and Storm Dungeon, both of which feel pleasingly non-linear and re-use areas to good effect to keep the player on their toes. The quality of the brushwork still exceeds some maps released 20 years later and contains some nice details like uneven ground that would have been quite taxing to create and compile at the time.

The writing/storytelling is spot on and really chimes well with Quake's Lovecraftian themes.

It's a shame about the broken liquids in Castle Rapture and a Cross to Bear (the former actually being potentially gamebreaking in that you have to noclip/fly out of some lava pits), but I don't actually recall this being a problem when Rapture was first released (and it's a glaringly obvious problem!) so could it be a result of some later update?

It's 2022 and this episode is still great! 5 out of 5. Well there's a funny bug with solid lava, but that's not a big deal. Anyway I loved the looks in all episode and most of encounters. Perhaps the 1st map "Rain Palisade" is the best because of all those supporting beams everywhere and very diverse encounters. Anyway kudos to authors! It's still great work 20+ yrs later

Solid lava already fixed: https://www.quaddicted.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=6472#p6472