I'd rather go to hell than playing Doom II again, so here I am, playing Sigil, a new chapter for the first game, created by John Romero, and since it got a standalone release, I decided to log it and give it a review.
Romero's levels for Doom 1 are the best ones, in my opinion, a perfect balance between exploration and challenge. This game design is pretty clear in Sigil, well, at least for 2/3 of the game, unfortunately there are 3 levels that really suck, being confusing and labyrinthic, which is a shame, but there are still 6 other great levels.
There aren't really any other additions, such as new enemies or weapons, which would be excellent, but an understandable abscence.
Soundtrack fucking slaps, truly, play it with headphones, it's better than the original tracks.

Sigil is a set of nine new levels for the original DOOM by series co-creator John Romero, self-described as “The Unofficial Fifth Episode of DOOM”. These new levels are okay, but I wouldn’t say that I was the biggest fan of them.

I do like how elaborately designed they are. Finding the correct switches to open the way forward was really satisfying after being stuck for a while. It’s just that my least favorite types of levels in DOOM are the ones where you have to navigate in the dark, and Sigil has those kinds of levels in spades. You end up encountering enemies frequently in tight and cramped spaces, and you’re constantly ambushed by a ton of enemies all at once in areas where you can barely even see them because of hilariously cheap traps. You’ll end up dying frequently, and the levels can feel very tedious as a result.

I really like the use of textures that give this series of levels its own distinct feel, and I enjoyed the music a lot. Otherwise, I didn’t care too much for these levels. They aren't completely awful, I did enjoy a couple of the earlier levels. As a whole though, I didn’t really dig this expansion. I really hope that Sigil II tries something different from this with its levels.

A very interesting level pack for Doom that mixes fascinating challenges like narrow platforming, hidden eye switches, and disorienting mazes to freshen up Doom's mechanical appeal somewhat. Sigil is short and fast-paced, staying just long enough not to bore, but it does objectively feel like EXACTLY what it says on the tin...more Doom levels. And if you've played through the main campaigns even once, these levels won't shock you like some other popular mods might. All in all, a good use of two hours or so.

Lmao Romero came around and delivered the best DOOM episode since the first one. The levels are less mazelike and frustrating, and more interested in guiding the player through some interesting levels with the occasional oblique wall for that classic flavor. Also the music (even just the MIDI ost) is incredible, maybe my fav DOOM ost, or at least up there with the N64 version's. Romero's crafted almost Mario-like levels in terms of mechanical progression, with the added bonus of the most cohesive feel and tone in the series. Who coulda guessed?

The master returns and boy is it good to have him back. John Romero doesn't hold back in Sigil—this is designed as the 5th episode of Doom and it just starts out the gate assuming you're intimately familiar with the prior 4. It's a tough son of a bitch—"Hurt Me Plenty" in Sigil is about on par with vanilla Doom's "Ultra-Violence"—and John Romero uses every dirty, evil trick he can think of to get one over on the player. This is a Doom level that assumes you've been playing Doom for 30 years and does everything it can to predict and punish your behavior.

It should just be included in rereleases of Doom as an official episode. It's all but official to me.

I've played a decent number of Doom WADs in my time, and they almost all run into the same problem for me: excess. 32 levels, slaughter maps, maps with 500+ enemies. I personally find this style of WAD to be completely exhausting, and even though I've overall enjoyed some of them (others not so much) I still tend to walk away feeling like I would've preferred things scaled back a notch or two.

So then comes Sigil, designed by John Romero himself and only 8 levels long, which I can honestly say is the most refreshing bit of Doom I've played in quite some time. Instead of massive hordes Sigil relies on clever enemy placement, deliberate resource allocation, and unique level design to challenge the player in ways I personally find to be 10 times more engaging than most of what else I've played. Sigil is hard, don't get me wrong, but I never felt like it was being cheap or repetitive. I was actually a bit hesitant going into this since it's only Doom 1 monsters but Romero really knows how to do a lot with so little, I'd forgotten there was a time when Cacodemons could feel like a legitimate threat.

Of course I couldn't sing the praises of Sigil without mentioning the stunning visuals or rocking midis. I've heard great things about the Buckethead soundtrack and I'll definitely check it out sometime, but it's got some stiff competition. I guess if I had anything to complain about I'd say a couple of the levels were a bit too dark, but given the insane amount of visual options most source ports have today it's almost not worth mentioning.

Sigil was a blast from start to finish, and I think it's awesome to see Romero return to the game he helped create and show everyone he's still got it. Can't recommend it enough.

DOOMATHON entry #2/20
List: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Mariofan717/list/doom--quake-campaigns-ranked/

For my Doom marathon, I decided not to go in strictly release order, but to instead play all the official content for a given game in release order before moving onto the next. Seeing as Sigil is one of the add-ons featured in the 2019 source port of Doom and is designed by Romero himself, I seemed like the best next step after Thy Flesh Consumed.

Romero's work on Knee-Deep in the Dead was probably the highlight of the base game for me, serving as a silky smooth introduction to the world of classic Doom that still had plenty of personality despite the relative lack of complexity. As the semi-official fifth episode, Sigil strikes a great middleground between the fundamentals nailed in KDITD and the often comical complexity of Thy Flesh Consumed, making for some really challenging maps that can be fairly frustrating at times, but have a specific design language that had really clicked with me by the time it was over. There's an greater emphasis on large scale environmental puzzles and lava floors that limit your movement options, allowing for combat that revolves more around environmental factors than anything in the base game. I also really enjoy how visually distinct this aesthetic of Hell is from episodes 3 and 4.

If I wasn't a save scumming coward, this episode probably would have proved too much for me to handle, but because I have no shame, I was able to see it through to the end. A highly worthwhile addition that's well worth checking out and has thankfully been made available on all modern platforms by the source port.

I had a really good time running through Sigil. These are the style of Doom levels I like with an emphasis on environmental puzzle solving and navigation, rather than strictly monster closets and ambushes.

Romero's brand of Doom feels less cheap and more interesting than levels designed by the other members of the original team and that personality comes through here.
This expansion focuses on switches you have to shoot to change the level, which works really well! There is engaging gameplay in searching for the switch you need to progress as well as in preparing yourself and a plan of escape for the level change and possible assault you will face when you shoot it. I am definitely not good enough at Doom to just blast through these in one try, but the trial and error and learning of the level was satisfying for my play style (failure and save-scumming).
Some things Romero loves to put in don't work quite so well for me. These levels have quite a few narrow walkways and ledges to navigate, which doesn't really feel hard or satisfying, just tedious.

Playing Doom is, of course, kinetic and even with the lack of a wider monster roster in this original game, feels great. The relatively low number of enemies lets the game focus on putting you in interesting situations and having interesting level exploration. Romero is obviously more interested in the level design levers he can pull here -- he only uses a couple of Cyberdemons and Spiderdemons in the whole set. It isn't about killing more and bigger demons, it is about finding your way through these spaces and exploring them completely. Approaching Doom level design in this way lets these levels feel unique and meaningful in a way that I find many levels in even Doom II don't achieve.

If you like Doom, Sigil is a cool set of expansion levels made by the man himself. Play it!

(Big thanks to @Scamsley for reminding me that this was a thing that existed and encouraging me to play it!)

Would you look at that, it's December 10th! What better day to beat and review Sigil... than the day that Sigil 2 releases!... Dear god I’m terrible at organizing these things…

You may have caught on to this, but I really, REALLY like the original DOOM, even after arriving too late to the party and having played the modern side of the franchise first, that didn’t stop me from having the time of my life with it; it was a fantastic shooter, to tightly designed and fun that I could just not stop playing, and even after the admittedly cold shower that was Thy Flesh Consumed, I needed MORE.

And it’s not like I had a shortage of content; even when ignoring the existence of DOOM II, the community around the original game is so massive, so unbelievable expansive, that I’m convinced that I could play only fan-mad Doom WADS and Episodes for an entire month or two if I wanted to. Hel (on earth), there are even some expansions that have been made kind of official through their release on the Steam version of DOOM, something that also eliminated the hard process for my weak and feeble mind that is installing GZDoom, so I quite literally had no excuse for not playing AT LEAST one of them.

However, one of them in particular was brought into my attention, one that I remembered noticing it when it released simply because of the impact and excitement it generated through the internet and even in some of my closest friends, and how it could not? It’s not every day that you get an expansion made by one of the fathers of the game itself. In every instance I’ve talked about DOOM, I’ve refrained myself into diving deep into its creation and the people behind it, simply because it’s such a well-documented part of gaming history by people far more capable than I that it would be hysterical of me to try to add something to the discourse in any major way, but I just cannot talk about Sigil without at least mentioning John Romero, simply because how intrinsically tied one its to another.

A figure controversial (Daikatana shall be a story for another time…) as it is beloved, the pedigree of one of the masters of Doom incredibly interesting at times and fucking ridiculous at others; it also turns out he was also born in a 28th of October, so me releasing the DOOM review on that day ended up being even more fitting! But ignoring funny coincidences and other tales, Romero has made efforts to be remember more-so by its successes than its mistakes, and can’t say the man hasn’t succeed: to this day, he’s a very prominent figure in Doom community, participating in events in conferences dedicated to it and beyond. At a glance, one could easily thrown him with the pile of people living off their past legacy, but good ol’ Johnny decided to go one step beyond, ‘cause some legacies last forever, but Doom’s… Doom’s is eternal.

Sigil’s release in 2019 was already a pretty surprise even to someone that wasn’t really into the original back then, and now here I am, having beaten it to the very end, and the only thing I can say for sure is that… this makes look Thy Flesh Consumed even worse and I didn’t thought that was even possible. I sheer fact this wasn’t an actual official release boggles the mind, Sigil is not good, it is absolutely outstanding. It’s still more DOOM, there are no crazy additions or changes, nothing of the such, this is just taking everything that the base game had and going all in with it, and my fucking god if it does. The demons, weapons, secrets and looks, at a glance, it all feels taken straight up from the three original chapters but it goes even further; the set pieces like cacodemons rising from a crater that reaches the depths or hell or walking past passages filled with imprisoned Lost Souls are unlike anything seeing in Inferno or any other chapter; there are no two exact same passages in this megawad, everything feels so distinct and cathartic, which is something that could be said the level design as a whole.

In my original review I defended Inferno and said I really like how it experimented with a ton of cool ideas, and I wished that the game expanded upon there even more… Sigil is exactly what I wished for multiplied by 100x. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really noticeable bumps; M5 as a whole feels extremely confusing and even a bit messy, and the whole ending of M7 feels unfun to move through and the lack of ammo given to you in it makes up for a frustrating time rather than a tense one, but the rest? HOLY CYBERDEMON THIS IS FIRE. Each map feels like a complete world of its own, not because of its structure and how it experiments with mechanics like the teleports in fancy ways or the way every location feels incredibly different and feels like your are reap and tearing through actual hellish locations, but because of for. E4 also did both of these things, but meanwhile in there the result was often confusing, jarring and it sometimes even feels artificial, in here it feel like how it should be, and the results just speaks for themselves: creative and original challenges, masterfully designed areas, some of the most tense and fun combat I’ve experience in ANY Doom game, and a fantastic OST on par with the original pieces to go and with it. I still get shivers thinking of that final stretch in E8, or the tension of going through all the passage ways in E4, it has given me an experience that I could have perfectly been playing just after finishing the original game, this feels like DOOM, it is DOOM.

To me, Sigil is right up there with the best moments in Knee-Deep in the Dead and The Shores Of Hell, which it’s the best thing I could have ever hoped to say about it. It is technically harder than Thy Flesh Consumed, and it is, but minus all the tedious stuff that plagued that chapter. It is not the first un-official work done by Romero for DOOM, but it is done with such care and respect it truly feels like it could have really been some kind of modern DLC. It is not a magnum opus, nor does it put the original as a whole to shame in ANY shape or form, but it feels like a culmination, the result of everything that base DOOM should be turned into 9 maps, a sawm song dedicated to each end every person that has worked on keeping this game alive through amazing and incredible WADs and fan-episodes, and it’s kind of incredible to see and play.

If you enjoyed the original DOOM in any way, I cannot recommend Sigil enough, I didn’t expect to love this so much, but it’s not the first time this year I’m surprised like this; a wad that got me in awe at some holes in the ground and it showed me how truly good the plasma gun is, truly impeccable…

Sigil sure is a John Romero Level Pack for the original Doom. I wouldnt say its total shit, but Sigil does combine Romeros best and worst Level design traits into one.The levels are far from generic, always trying to have interesting challenges.

The key word here is trying: Someone should have slaped Romero across the face 20 years ago when he was working at Id and was spamming the Monster spawns. There are only so many cheap deaths I can take because of traps I couldnt possibly forsee or Hell Knights sniping me from across the map. The best thing about Sigil is the soundtrack by James Paddock, probably the best in classic Doom right next to Doom 64.

4,5/10 - Length
6,0/10 - Enjoyment
3,5/10 - Story/Experience
4,0/10 - Originality
7,0/10 - Gameplay

Score = 5,0/10

Look Romero I bought Daikatana both on Steam and GoG you don't need to punish me THIS much. But thanks nonetheless

Probably the peak of Doom 1. Straight from one of it's creators, John Romero, who would've thought the formula needed even more punishment to it. The levels are a symphony of pain and edginess, perfectly balanced to test everything you know about this game (played on Hurt me Plenty, but I have heard UV is not very well balanced) alongside a banger MIDI soundtrack and a rendition by Buckethead or something, I ain't a music nerd. From the enemy placement to the amount of health and ammo you get for each encounter, this WAD expects the absolute best from you without ever feeling cheap.

Really, a great experience. I'd say play the OG episodes before trying this one tho, it definetely is a product for veterans of the game.