I've only really scratched the first few combat encounters but it really seems like they made it super hard, even on the normal difficulty. I haven't noticed anything mechanically different but there are just TONS of enemies coming your way now. Like, probably a lot more than seem necessary! I noticed in one of the fights that I took out most of the bigger enemies but grunts and imps kept spawning for a few minutes afterward anyway - seems weirdly balanced in that way?

Looking forward to trying more of it, though!

The biggest thing is probably multiple marauders. That's really the only thing that gives me pause, because those guys require a fair bit of micromanagement. All the others you just run and dodge attacks.

They definitely made it to where of you aren't familiar and comfortable with your entire toolkit, it's gonna be real rough.

I love that though. Doom Eternal always hit me as more of a puzzle game than the mindless fast paced shooter of 2016.

I haven't even been able to beat regular ass Eternal on babby difficulty yet, because I am not very good at shooters, though I love the game dearly. It sounds like this DLC is really hearkening back to things like Final Doom/Doom 2 Master Levels, where new episodes basically equal 'fuck you' difficulty, and I'm into that idea.

Overall I feel like the whole vibe of Eternal has been this exact concept of ratcheting up the difficulty to uncomfortable levels if you aren't a Doom savant. I wrote this many times before but while I came around on the combat in Eternal once the game finally started giving you more options for dealing with the baddies it ultimately did feel like a slog near the end if you aren't that good at it. There was a time when I was great at FPS games but that was years ago. These days I like a challenge but Eternal was definitely pushing the envelope on what I consider enjoyable even on the regular difficulty. I was curious about this DLC but after hearing Rorie say it's even more hardcore than the base game and having seen the ending go even further into this self-serious lore hole they started digging I think I'm just going to pass on this.

I've only run into one marauder so far (still tough), but yeah, you really do need to have the entire toolkit in your brain before you can take on some of these encounters. My main issue is that I hit the R button ALL THE TIME because I still think I need to reload which just fires off my flamethrower at nothing. Unmapped it finally.

I'm loving it so far, but boy howdy I am rusty as hell. And yes, it is definitely very challenging, and still more of "Hey, if you don't use all of the tools in your toolkit you're going to have a tough time." Which I love, but it doesn't make it easy to ease back into after several months.

I wonder if it's less that it's harder and more that it doesn't let you get by without using all of the systems. By the end of the game even on Nightmare I found that the flaming shotgun into chainsaw, blood punch or blast was a real get out of jail free card. Curious to see if that works less well here. Super excited to get into this though.

@sethmode: No I'm definitely in the same boat. Lot of systems and I just get flustered really quick a lot of the time!

I’ve had the same experience including the weirdly continuing weak spawns at the end of some arenas. I also had a climbing/collision glitch that launched me up up and away through the skybox.

It was rough as hell at first getting used to using everything again but damn rewarding once I got back into the groove. Without getting into spoilers, one of the new demons is a relentless bugger but I love them. I’m using mods I never used once in the base game. Looking forward to finishing this tomorrow.

Played through it. According to the Steam clock, it took me 8 hours to clear the 3 chapters and I started on Hurt Me Plenty then tuned down to I'm Too Young To Die. Id Software definitely got up their ass with the diffculty. The thing I dislike the most is infinitely spawning enemies during boss fights. I mean I need to focus fire on those bullet sponges when there are million other assholes trying to kill me. So, wtf, id? I took the Sentinel Armor finally and not asheme of it.

The writing is atrocious, probably worse than the base game's.

Multiple Marauders at the same time! Lol no! Nope! Not even a little bit! Pass! This coming from someone who beat the base game on Nightmare on console.

Sounds like a hard pass for me. Doom: Eternal was a shoe-in for Most Disappointing game for me this year (and possibly of the entire console generation). Adding multiple marauders, endlessly spawning enemies, and more of the Uwe Boll-level writing just sounds like a recipe for a bad time.

I suppose the next DLC will focus exclusively on the platforming?

Trainer to the rescue!

Yeah the DLC definitely feels like they intended to keep amping up the difficulty well past the end of the base game. Sadly the level design isn't as tight as the main game because I find myself getting trapped in corners way more often. Like others have said jumping into this game after not touching it for months feels like being thrown into the deep end of the pool and I must sink or swim. It makes me miss the simplicity of DOOM 2016 where the only plates you're juggling are health and ammo with the glory kill and chainsaw attacks. Having to remember the extra plates like the flamethrower for armor, ice grenade for crowd control, and blood punch feel like too much.

Also the spawn points for some of these demons seem ridiculous. Like a Cyberdemon right behind you in a tight, dead-end corridor, what the fuck. My bigger issue with this DLC is that it's noticeably less polished than the base game to an almost alarming degree. I've had demons get stuck on geometry, seen janky textures and physics on objects, and had a door open to a black abyss of empty textures that didn't pop in until I walked through the door. Nothing game breaking so far but the polish isn't there like the base game had.

And anyone want to talk about the music? It sounds like a royalty free version of Mick Gordon's work at best or at worst you forget there's even any music playing because it just fades into the background.

It's funny how the new Doom is taking the exact arc the original ones did where it was a classic the first go, a harder and messier sequel despite having more stuff, and then eventually it dwindles to focus on people who are way too good and deep in.

So next in the cycle is a divisive horror-themed Doom that is really just an excuse to show off fancy lighting and rendering.

@bacongames: The third entry of the new games would line up well with your theory in that it could be a very compelling showcase of raytracing effects.

Just put in maybe half an hour

I am not sure if this is harder than DOOM Eternal was but it definitely starts assuming you remember how to play and have your flow down and... after however many months it has been since I played (5 or so?) I am VERY rusty.

Saw someone compare this to Thy Flesh Consumed (ep4 of doom 1) or Plutonia Experiment and kind of getting that vibe

"Core" DOOM tends to make the hell (hee hee) rooms pretty wide open with good cover and room to maneuver. The later WADs would put a Cyberdemon in a narrow corridor so if you weren't REALLY good at strafing you were boned. And kind of getting that feel now as the flaming sword wolverine guys pop up in small rooms while I stupidly run for ammo in ways that make me laugh AND piss me off in all the good ways.

Have only gotten to the first Marauder before taking a break but definitely remembering why I hate those folk and thinking I should spend a life or two remembering how the Ballista works. Because you just NEED to use a super shotty on those guys but I remember they go down REALLY fast to the Ballista in one of its modes.

----

Like, it's a mother fucker. But it is also why I always loved DOOM. The core game is very much meant for anyone to finish it (assuming you could ever find your way through Fortress of Doom or whatever the Doom 2 level with the green pillars and shit was. Or the city in Doom 2... Look, a lot of Doom 2 was hard to navigate) and this is the DLC that most people never even knew existed. You can beat Inferno. You probably will bounce off Thy Flesh Consumed

And I love that kind of stuff. I don't replay E4 whenever I do my annual replay of DOOM 1 but I do it every few years and always love every aggravating minute of it.

I get folk will get annoyed because we are all completionists these days and there IS story content in this. And that is very valid. But we also have more than enough content (even in this god forsaken year) that it is perfectly fine to ignore stuff that you don't like.

Played farther in (maybe a third of the way through mission 2?) and... it is very much a mother fucker

You know how I talked about a cyberdemon in a narrow corridor...

More or less got my groove back after the first slayer gate and having a blast. Still wiping a lot on normal encounters just because some geography is weird in that you would think you can mantle but you instead jump in the air and get lit up. Also feels like you need to be a LOT more tactical in when you shoot the shield guys because they are mini barrels for crowd control purposes. Same with using the shotgun grenade launcher for more than weak point attacks. Finding I am even forced to switch weapon modes a few times which was (almost) never the case in base D:E which is fun.

Between DLC and that one mother fucker of a slayer gate in core, I think multiple marauders is actually easier than one. It more or less forces you to keep kiting them in a way that keeps them at optimal (sword wave) range rather than giving up some health to a shotgun blast because you just want to bait out the right attacks and get it over with. Maybe they spawn with less health for those (I don't think so?) but that may be the one case where it is easier to fight two enemies than one.

That said, the two (likely more coming) new enemies... I am not at all a fan (hey, its Doom 2 again!). Turrets just feel tedious as the optimal way to fight them is to snipe, wait, and snipe again. So they are a distraction at best and completely kill flow. The other is Spirits that supercharge enemies. Supercharged Tyrants and flamy slashy barons are kind of hell and to kill them you need to switch to the less useful plasma rifle mode and stay focused for WAY too long.

Very much glad that we still get the endless creep spawns near the end of an encounter to avoid running out of ammo/health but ALSO incredibly disappointing when you manage to take out the fourth mancubus in a wave and then get chipped out by an imp.

Got through the first mission on the easiest difficulty and it was still pretty tough. Liked the environment but some of the encounter design was a little off. The one part I really hit a wall on was the slayer gate, spent a solid half hour trying to beat that.

It’s still a lot of fun but it’s damn exhausting. One mission probably took me up to 2 hours, that was doing most things though there were a few lives I missed.

Time to keep spamming this thread!

Finished the DLC. if I recall correctly I had 16 or 17 hours for the core game. I am not at 25.4. Taking about half the time it took to beat the core game to beat 3 levels sounds about right. Playing Core I could generally do one, one and a half, levels before needing a break. This... I made a LOT of progress on catching up on TV because I needed an hour or so break after every two or three encounters. Watchmen is awesome, by the way.

Some encounters were overly frustrating. Lots of boss level turbocharged enemies with no cover or fighting in a fog where you can't see where the walls of plasma are coming from was just not fun. And some were truly amazing. Running circles around an arena frantically trying to find a mob you can glory kill while hoping you spread out the last two or three enemies long enough to fight one is straight up The Raid levels of shenanigans. And The Final Boss was kind of everything I wanted from Icon of Sin while also being complete and utter bullshit because of a claustrophobic arena with lots of AOE attacks. The Fog and The Bridge are the only two encounters where I almost quit playing. The rest were the fun kind of frustrating.

Also, Hugo et al definitely played Sigil because there is some of that straight up assholery that I loved. The best example being that you get trained pretty fast to hunt down a Totem the moment you get the notification because turbocharged enemies hurt. Except this totem traps you in a room with a turbocharged Marauder and you can't break the totem until you kill him.

It is very flawed with a lot of janky level design. For something that came out 5 months after launch this feels VERY rushed. But it was also awesome and may have actually propelled Doom Eternal to my favorite Doom since the original. It still isn't REALLY Doom (closer to Hotline Miami meets Painkiller. So Bulletstorm but I don't want to acknowledge that) and the DLC feels even more like a rhythm game in the sense that you need to constantly maintain "the beat" of glory kills, chainsaws, blood punches, and shooting. But it FEELS like Doom did back in the day as my stupid kid fingers are getting overwhelmed as I try to play with a four button gravis joystick (yup).

And the story continues to be REALLY stupid and missing at least a third of it. But it also had some fun "holy shit" moments and The Intern might be the greatest character in a DOOM since Dwayne the Rock Johnson.

The thing about Marauders is that for everything else in the game you have to be aggressive to get through them, while for Marauders you have to be defensive and tactical and sometimes the shift in perspective can be jarring.

I finished as well, and liked it because it's more Doom Eternal, but I agree it felt janky as hell and for as much as I love this game I'm still very bitter about the story. Are we really just never going to know what happened between 2016 Doom and Doom Eternal?

One thing I didn't like (and I get it, DLC, smaller areas etc) was going into a room to collect/activate something after a combat encounter then going back to the same area for another combat encounter with a minor variation like an electric floor. Also I'm finding the Marauder encounters to be boring now. They were a cool boss encounter in the main game but once you have them worked out it's just a exercise in patience.

That being said, this DLC has reminded me that while I had my issues with the main game, it's still one of the year's best so far for me.

I just beat it last weekend on Nightmare, this dlc is definitely catered to people who mastered the core combat loop of doom eternal and wanted more challenge out of the game. They spawn more ultra heavies through out the level, combine with even more hazards and special type enemies that require you pay great attention towards.

The dlc is a lot harder than the base game, I'd say its a notch above the master levels the base game provide you with. Also, if you dislike the design philosophy of marauders, I would not recommend you to get this dlc, cus they absolutely doubled down on this idea both figuratively and literally.

So...

If people were wondering if DLC2 would be less hard. it is NOT. So far it seems a LOT harder (with more encounter design that I would probably call "bad" and that fucking purple sludge) with some new enemy types who are very much mother fuckers.

That being said, it seems to get a lot crazier and a lot more "doable" after you get the big upgrade of the DLC. Basically, it is a hammer that can destroy weak enemies and stun heavies while giving you a LOT of ammo, health, and armor. And it just takes two glory kills to recharge so you go from barely having enough ammo to swimming with it in a way reminiscent of the parts of Icon of Sin that "worked" in ways I really like.

That being said: the encounters are a LOT more draining. Probably did 50-75% of any DLC1 mission in a single sitting. This I am needing a break every two or three encounters in ways I really like but also need something on the side for.

@gundato: I will have to give this a whirl at some point I have more time to play!

Thats odd to hear cause when I was checking out the reactions to the second DLC I saw most people being angry that apparently Id "nerfed" it after all the comments about how tough the first part was and how much easier it is. That was the most Doom Eternal commentary I've ever heard but it definitely seemed to be the majority consensus in a thread full of Eternal enthusiasts.

I can see The Hammer being the kind of thing that can make encounters a lot easier because it feeds into The Loop so well and so naturally. Maybe it was just the opening few encounters but after I got The Hammer I no longer ever had to care about ammo which I guess might make it easier to break away and just super shotty everything that isn't a weak point based heavy? But it also feels like the encounters were designed with that in mind.

Kind of reminiscent of the spirits in DLC1. If you either avoid or prioritize the super charged heavy they aren't TOO bad and it definitely felt like there was a LOT of purple ammo any time those folk popped up. But what hits hard is needing to rush in and ghostbuster their ass for WAY too long all while getting hit hard by all the adds that are clustering around the corpse.

I'm only most of the way through E3M1 at this point but that was around the point that the E2 loop was established and it feels the same. Maybe moment to moment encounters are still hectic without being a nail in your peepee. But the big set piece battles and "difficult" encounters seem on a whole different level to E2 in ways I dig.

I also kind of wonder how much is just mental. DLC2 felt like slamming into a wall at full speed with the first encounter kicking my ass until I remembered how to play. DLC3 has a similar feeling but I was expecting it and bracing. So my ass still got kicked but I expected it and was already practicing how to serpentine while frantically looking for a glory kill. DLC1 was a repeat of the core game's "This isn't THAT bad once you understand how to play the game" awesomeness/issues and maybe that finally set in? I tend to say that D:E is best played on UV just because it forces you to learn The Loop and isn't THAT bad once you get that down. Whereas, on lower difficulties it is very easy to progress without mastering that flow. And maybe DLC1 was enough to beat The Loop in to people?

Similarly, I wonder how many "normal" folk already noped the hell out and just left the people who actually did all of the bonus missions and whatever.

I bounced off of Eternal pretty hard due to the platforming - I have huge issues with platforming in first person games, its just something I hate doing, especially in a shooter.

After restarting something like 10 plus times (on the easiest difficulty) on one set of platforming I closed down and deleted it.

I only have so much gaming time available these days, and would much rather throw sometime into Jedi Fallen Order, or of all things Kingdoms of Amalur.

So having finished this and continuing my trend of spamming this thread:

I stand by my "mental" but I do think that the hammer renders the chainsaw MOSTLY useless in a way that streamlines The Loop and makes it a lot easier to flow through. I am not sure if the new hud helped or not but the snappier weapon wheel (?) probably did as there are definitely some time sensitive weapon swaps where i relied on it.

I think most of the transition encounters are definitely a lot easier. DLC1 it felt like each hallway was storming the beach at Normandy and you fought for every single floor tile. Whereas in DLC2 most of the transition areas felt like an excuse to get some glory kills to recharge things.

I do think most of the encounters are a LOT harder but that the easier hallways and streamlined The Loop make thing a lot less stressful but I for one still find them exhausting in great ways. I was getting stuck on level geometry a lot less but also getting ping ponged between mancubi and makyr drones a LOT more. Or the feeling of a marauder kool-aid manning into an arena to fuck your shit up. And the dirty trick of forcing you to actually fight the supercharged enemies continues in ways I really actually like. And the bonus encounters were all really fun.

But I also think the hammer makes it a lot easier to brute force through encounters if you get lucky and have a good cluster of imps to rearm. Noticed one or two encounters where it felt less like I beat it and more like I got lucky in ways that DLC1 never had.

And as for the final boss: I hated every second of it but fighting a heavily armored, multi-round, marauder was the only way this could go. It was a 100% fitting boss and I truly hated it. Loved the story and the lead up though.

I concede that a lot of it has to do with DOOM Eternal (and Yakuza) being my "pandemic games" as it were but I had a blast and am continuing to think this may have become my favorite DOOM even if it isn't ACTUALLY a DOOM game.