This must be played.Its very military.Hard on skill 3.Lot of enemy jumping out of alcoves and things,plus also teleporting in from teleporters,its a great episode,def 5 star.Main thing is, once you complete it you want to start again,secrets hard to find, didnt find many,but im not a secret hunter,

The attention to detail in these maps is extraordinary. The scale is wonderful and immersive. The monster placement is intricately thought out, whereby, there is often escape routes or infighting opportunities. The architecture is complex and really does reward thorough exploration. I'm not even done yet - still on map 4 (31 secrets) and dreading finding the end as I'm totally absorbed. Update later. The whole experience thus far 5/5.

The map "Sillä Aikaa Kun Nukumme" has another secret and needs patience and pen an paper to find out :)

---spoiler alert!---

MIELIPUOLTEN ULOTTUVUUS

Those puzzles in smej2end were so unenjoyable I cheated just so I could bypass them. If there's a way to do it, I certainly couldn't figure it out.

Yes, those puzzles were one of the only downsides of this new episode.

I'm now giving Mazu's map a second run mostly to hunt for those 50 (!) secrets. I've cleared most of the map but I've only found 14 of them so far. And I'm a bit frustrated that I've now found the silver key but can't remember where that silver door is.

The scale, interconnectivity and progression that these maps go through is rarely seen in Quake. Each map exudes its creators personality in just the right amount while connecting succinctly to the next, sharing common geometry and location in the overall area. You slowly rise to the peak of a snowcapped mountain, descend into it to find a grand hidden holding place for all runes, and take the fight to fuckin' SPACE to end it all. I enjoyed all of them, however some minor cheating on one puzzle in smej2end was required to get through it all on hard... and it was the first one I encountered! :P

Oh, I had the wrong map in mind. I noticed that the silver key disappeared some time after having "koffe", so that must have been its use.

Well, still 25 secrets to go ...

Its a gorgeous, challenging set of maps - and for me, a real step up from the original SMEJ. Definitely challenging, but not (until the later maps, at least) gruelling. Progression through the styles really well done, and they're out of the box - neon base with lovely storytelling, a honey-style sewer map, a snow-licked tomb warren, all leading up to my favourite - Newhouse's fourth map (pictured.)

Newhouse hit it out of the park with this one. There are so many god-damn vistas here, so many bits where you turn a corner and get your breath taken away, and a lovely eye for distinct 'areas' to explore each with their own style which break up the 300 enemy count and make the time fly by. One of my favourite maps in Quake, and worth playing the pack for alone - although the other maps are fab too!

smej2s1 is broken due to an exploding box stuck in the floor. HostError: SOLIDBSP with a non bsp model (misc_explobox at -608.000000 176.000000 -1968.000000)

Two more map breaking exploding boxes, this time in smej2m5, at 3456 -1176 -1408, and at 2632 -1600 -1408.

I was wrong, it was 4 exploding boxes, same error, the other two boxes are at 3272 -1760 -1408 and 2876 -972 -1408. All in the same room. I think these are supposed to be triggerable but not shootable and for some reason they show up lodged in the floor or walls. Sorry for spam.

well done 'guest' for not including any relevant information along with your report.

0/10 not enough ammo on hard for 3rd level.

What's the point of taking a game that's all about the shooting, then forcing the player to NOT shoot and make the monsters kill each other instead?

I'm sure SuperAmazingIncredibleDouche players can get through these missions no problem and I'll just a bunch of GitGud comments, but that's...not....fun. Throwing players in a tiny room they are unable to get out or maneuver in is not fun or hard, it's just a shitty thing to do. Reloading after the first time I got through it without taking more than 25pts of damage, but still, not fun.

@aluminiumhaste If you're having too much trouble, try a lower difficulty setting. It's not the map pack's fault you're bad at the game. Having a hard time on hard and then complaining about it is hilariously daft. What's the point of difficulty settings if people don't use them?

To clarify, I am using Quakespasm 0.93.2 "for older Macs" and this download of smej2.

Wow. This is a collection of Megalevels. Hard, tested well, planned well... And truly exhausting. This is like a war.

Well, the authors are Finnish. "TULTSA MUNILLE"! :)

Well, I'm giving it 4/5. Smej2 offers masterfully crafted maps, well-balanced, challenging level progression, while offering enough new content to be considered "unofficial add-on". Still, it's not my type of Quake-gaming, so 4/5 is purely IMHO. It is well worth of 5/5.

Combat is cool, but I would prefer more new monsters. There are only 3+ new beasts, including slightly buffed, but still the same Spawns, blue enforcers, flying enforcers and Sharlath-dogs. Standard, but challenging vanilla-Quake-like combat encounters are supported by some horde/arena segments. All feels great... but I'm more a fan of Tronyn's works [Where he is, btw?].

Music is wonderful. Levels are great. Final level, though, will be a favorite of those who like puzzles and secret-finding. For more combat-oriented players like me... it was a chore. I cheated, sorry.

Final boss is ... both unremarkable and... well... FUN! --SPOILERS-- It's a recolored Spawn with tons of health, teleporting ability and lightning attack, like that of Shamblers. It's boring concept-wise, but fight itself is good, designed like something from Doom (2016)/Eternal.

OVERALL: please, smej crew, make a combat-oriented episode with tons of new enemies, bosses, and maybe... oh God.. storyline?... but the same music))) Still enjoyed the smej2 very much!!

How get Hightmare? I spent about one hundred tries to jump, but with no result. I know the theory of bunny-hop - dont touch W, press A and turn mouse to left - but i have no results. I can only make curvy jump this way, but no extra acceleration. I heard that in oroginal Quake this trick required 1-tick-precise actions and extremely hard. Is it possible in Quakespasm without extra bindings?

"Gitty McGuddingson Guest 29 March 2021, 23:06

@aluminiumhaste If you're having too much trouble, try a lower difficulty setting. It's not the map pack's fault you're bad at the game."

Told you, GitGud... comment alert.

The only time I run into issues is when there's not enough ammo for the amount of baddies, and I don't want the enemies to kill each other, I WANT TO KILL THEM!!! It's a first person shooter, not a first person sit in corner while the level takes care of itself shooter.

User above got a warning for the use of "GitGut***".

Slurs like that won't be tolerated here. Be decent.

I understand spirit, it's part of the Dark Souls memes, but I guess not everyone has participated in that community. Can I edit my post then?

@Aluminumhaste

Slurs aren't cool, man. Also, I can assure you there's more ammunition on lower skill settings, as worse players don't use ammunition as efficiently. Hope this helps.

People cannot edit their comments, sorry. I have removed it in your comment now.

Don't let yourself fall for "Gitty McGuddingson"'s pathetic baiting. They are just trying to pull your strings by talking down. Ignore and move on.

In earnest, do consider dropping a difficulty level, or even two, and revisit the levels on Hard with more knowledge of them.

The names id chose for the "skill" levels in 1996 are not a reflection of anyone's real gaming capabilities in 2021, and there's no shame in finding a specific set of maps more difficult than average on that particular skill setting.

And also, please understand: not every release is beholden to being equally difficult across the difficulty levels.

This will increase your enjoyment of custom releases a lot.

Oh I went back and did it the way I guess it was supposed to be played, had the monsters mostly infighting and was bored to death. Watching ogres and fiends and death knights slowly wail on each other while I sit and wait for them to be done is...just boring.

Super interesting and quite challenging in many ways. It took a considerable amount of effort to finish this on hard. Definitely not a typical Quake content. Absolutely recommend if you want something different, unique, thought through, and a tough. Four stars only because I did not completely enjoy some of the puzzles - I solved all of them, but it felt exhausting and breaking the otherwise good pace.

I got lost a lot, and would have enjoyed it more on skill 1 for my first play, and I cheated to get past the end puzzles. But it is a truly epic quake experience.

m1: A base map with wide areas. Running around wildly in the final fight was great.

m2: An enormous cavern. The main cavern area works as a big fight lasting the entire map forcing me to skip monster too far away, and constantly switch focus to new monsters.

m3: A outdoor castle that feels cramped. I love the constant ambushes from all directions, great monster jumps.

m4: A grand journey through all types of castle environments.

m5: A almost mini-episode in a single map that does not feel disjointed. Many novel arenas. Very difficult in every way: fights, low ammo, low health, few weapons. Getting to the recognizable ending truly felt epic.

end: Playing it was difficult and unfair with the ranger system and boring with the puzzles. But thinking back on it after a few days, I love it. id1 boss maps have the same problems, this follows that dupious tradition but makes it so much more epic. I played it again after a week without cheating and the 3 beams was by far the most difficult for me.

s1: The geometry feels 80% quake and 20% something else. Same with the monster placements, and the level progression, and the difficulty, and the general atmosphere. This map feels just as weird as a low gravity map, but weird in a way I cannot put my finger on. This weirdness makes it a great secret level.

I do not like the explode-on-death monster because it slows down game play waiting for them to explode. And I do not like the blue boys because their lasers are too difficult to predict and dodge. I moved far away and killed them slowly, which was a bit boring.

My first play through: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtUzU4eAHQpKz8HGG1ofbhq0CUosPqQ6e

https://i.imgur.com/W1XbmuE.png

H O W

Jump.

Well, I don't think I've ever played a map before that enraged me like smej2end, with its sequence is impossible jumping-reflex puzzles and its instakill system. It takes a lot to make me give up a map half way through, but this one has achieved it. Hate hate hate that map, despite the nice architecture. A game is all about gameplay (radical, I know!) — and this fails 0/10 on that score.

I liked the earlier maps much more, without ever quite loving any of them like I love my favourites — I think perhaps because of an over-reliance on teleporting monsters and on set pieces. Were it not for the last level I would be a wavering between four stars and the full five. But there is no forgiving a map that actively wants to make the player's life miserable.

Best map pack to date, the Finnish super squad does not disappoint!

The first 4 levels were very good and humongous, 5 and 6 it starts to get a bit tedious and silly, the last one was way too much especially that unrealistically tough final boss. I guess it's true when overdoing a thing it looses its lustre.

Clearly much work has gone into this pack, level design and deliberate and sometimes ingenious placement of monsters being readily apparent. Levels are big, very big, varied and certainly requiring a lot of attention and determination to progress. It is a constant, gruelling combat, constantly having you on edge.

Sadly, I didn't like the space level at all. I had to skip the puzzles. I simply hate puzzles, they destroy the pace and in my humble opinion, belong in shooter games only for secrets, not to progress in the main story. The boss combat I finished on god mode, since my previous use of cheating to bypass the puzzles rendered victory only meaningless in the long run.

4 long maps of gruelling combat and I had to resort to cheating in the end, this left me with a distaste. Still, tremendous work and a milestone of level editing, if unbalanced and annoying at the end.

I've just rage-quit the (2nd?) secret level, Alakerta SMEJ251. It's clearly someone's very early experiment with mapping that they thought it would be fun to include -- it's not fun. It's a series of killboxes full of difficult to navigate geometry and hitscan enemies hidden by fog. Its inclusion as an amusing easter egg would be more forgivable if I hadn't spent so long trying to find the secret exit in the previous level.

Speaking of which, the previous level had some great moments in it, definitely the highlight of the pack so far, but as of yet none of it lives up to Smej1 yet. Once my rage subsides, I'll godmode through the rest of Alakerta and hopefully find something redeeming afterwards.

Currently up to the middle of map3, playing on skill 0... and this does not feel like a skill 0 or even skill 1 experience (in particular, there's a sequence on map2 which I literally couldn't get more than halfway through without god mode).

On a design level, map 1 and map 2 are great - and there's even actual storytelling moments! - and I love the giant cavern structure of 2 in particular.

But some of the combat setpieces are just gruelling to the point of being unfun.

I was going to update when I got to the end map, but I've spent probably at least 2 hours wandering around map 4, falling off things and having to backtrack, so I thought I probably had enough thoughts to make another comment.

Map 3 was weirdly claustrophobic - if you like being ambushed all the time, it's your map.

Map 4 started out being really interesting - large expanses, a progression through the wilderness, a town, heading towards the castle/cathedral at the peak, and so on... but it's also frankly in danger of overstaying its welcome, especially from requiring so many keys. (I've just spent 30 minutes wandering around trying to work out where I have missed one, in mostly de-monstered castle with the odd unreachable zombie just causing enough annoyance to make the whole thing less pleasant), and I still don't know where the thing is. There's some beautiful vistas, but even those aren't sustaining me now, near the end.

So, after cheating to give myself another gold key to get off of map 4 after even failing to find the necessary third? gold key after noclipping through the entire map looking for it... I decided I might as well try out the secret map...

which I don't recommend. smej2s1 is... as Text_Fish notes above, a weirdly unsatisfying map - fog obscured annoying hitscan enemies, there's some unfun backtracking through the uninteresting map geometry, and the gameplay just isn't fun.
The best part is the final room or two, which are deliberate echoes of part of map 4.

(In retrospect, by the way, Map 4 is still a really good map - it's probably my favourite of the set, just for the multiple vistas and the evolution as you progress - and I'm assuming that my need to backtrack is a bug or something and not that there's a horribly hidden key somewhere, since the "final approach" to the exit is a wonderfully constructed high in the map itself).

Map 5... I can tell is by Mazu (it is) - as it combines some incredible mapping, geometry and lighting, with combat encounters at least 2 "skill levels" above what is usual. This felt like most maps at "skill 2" playing at actual skill 0... and I had to godmode to complete the thing. (There's some lovely design, and the final "room" has a nice resource expenditure mechanic... but Mazu needs to learn that no everyone is as good at Quake as he is. ;) )

The End map, on the other hand, is by Smilecythe, which is also very obvious, as it's full of incredibly hard movement puzzles which I am nowhere near good enough to even attempt. I can see what some of them expect... and I just can't do it. This isn't an unpopular opinion, apparently, from the other comments...

Overall, if I were rating things, I'd probably put Maps 1, 3, and 5 at 4/5 (not penalising Mazu too much for excessive difficulty), Map 4 at 5/5, and the End map at 1/5 as at least it looks nice.

I've been playing a lot of Quake mods, and appreciate different takes on play style, but this is designed with malice against anyone adopting a certain approach.

There are considered cheap tricks and traps everywhere that stymie flow. Player reaction predictions are also factored in and further traps are set for typical Quake "twitch" tactical responses to cheap spawn-in situations.

Despite my being open to different takes on Quake gaming, to include multiple-trigger jumping puzzles that only an autism sufferer could feel a sense of achievement from eventually completing earns a big "No" from me; not in Quake. Sorry. I couldn't believe it remained tedious even after I resorted to permanent NOCLIP and GOD just to get it done and uninstalled. By the cheated-end I still never found out how to switch off the anti-ranger rocket system.

I did enjoy the descent underground but it came at a price. I, too, ran out of ammo, but NOT from being a BAD SHOT. From being corralled over ammo pickups only to waste them due to being only a couple of shots short of a full complement at the time. This is the issue that I assume others have come across.

Like many others, I do like to encourage in-fighting, yet I've never seen it implemented at such a level to force a "BENNY HILL" play style, lest the player wishes to take on the remaining quota of level monsters with their axe.

In short, this mod is meticulously considered to the point of being un-fun. Any deviation from the path and style of play the devs intended is punished. Unfortunately, I don't know how one would telegraph a desired play-style aside from gradually introducing aspects over a longer game broken into smaller chapters.

I'm not a Quake expert although I've returned recently for its mod community and, for the past couple of years, I've always had 5-10 mod/derivation shortcuts on my desktop that I switch between.

I've played hard mods and accepted defeat without need to post anything negative. This one irked me like a form of controlled conditioning.

ps. Evidently the modders' skills are there for a "5" product but there's something else present that's at odds with my psyche beyond mere Quake gaming. Sorry guys. If I had an account I'd be giving this a "2" rating - yet NOT from a technical perspective.

i don't like copper

Must-play for a Quake fan. If it's hard then play it on Easy (as I did for example). All maps are gorgeous looking. But that giant snow mountain map is a hell of a map - a true Q masterpiece imo. 11 out of 10 of course

Very well made, but man, that last map is a bitch.

This is absolutely a must-play and the map quality is leaps and bounds over SMEJ1 which was already good-to-great... but do yourself a favor and skip the secret and end maps. Smilecythe's SMEJ1 map got a lot of criticism, but that one might be by far the most reasonable map he's made - this one (the end map) absolutely 100% hates the player and I have no idea how people can legitimately complete it.

Also, what's the deal with lecturing Aluminumhaste (who was only anticipating trolls, not actually conveying the flagged term) and not the ACTUAL troll (who literally has the flagged term in their name) - and then telling AH to ignore the troll rather than, y'know, actually deal with the troll, which is literally what moderators are supposed to do? Super bad form and seeing that kind of toxicity condoned on this site tanked my mood even more than the end map did.