Replaying the Quake II campaign via Yamagi has only made me appreciate the Remaster even more. There's so many small gameplay tweaks in the Remaster that sum to an overall smoother and more engaging experience. My biggest peeve with the original is how movement down slopes feels so incredibly shitty.

I'm surprised it also took me this long to start using the Power Shield. It trivializes the entire game. At least the remaster more strongly incentivizes burning cell ammo against enemy shields, but I'm not sure that's enough to fix the overarching issue of Quake II turning into a cakewalk at the press of a button. It's a real "just don't use it" piece of design that mars the title.

Play the Remaster instead.

played it through the nightdive port on steam, was pretty good!
weapons felt surprisingly satisfying to use and had better variety i feel than the ones in Q1 and the levels felt for the most part pretty solid for a 1997 game

the change in tone/setting from Q1 is extremely jarring though, it still did start dragging its feet by the end and the boss was.. better by default (it felt like a bossfight) but still not great

also this game might actually have the worst weapon wheel in history, so much so it taught me to use hotkeys for once

I don't really fault id Software for wanting to take Quake in a new direction. I think I would have preferred the Lovecraftian-influenced setting of the first game, but it also did feel just a step removed from the demonic presence in Doom. Still, the new sci-fi influences are creative and interesting, and the Strogg provided an entirely new set of unique enemies to blast through. The level design is still top-notch, with a single-player campaign that takes you through various installations and facilities, but the real star of the show here is the multiplayer. Back in the day, I played the heck out of this game on Heat.net (how's that for a throwback?), and felt like deathmatches were really taking some leaps forward since the days of Doom. It's a fun game, if not quite as striking or inspired as the first.

A much more cohesive and forward-thinking game than the original Quake, with some pretty novel interconnected level design that hints towards what Valve would eventually achieve with Half-Life. I wish this had more personality, it just doesn't pop quite like the original Quake. The cyborg enemy designs are really boring, and the bland sci-fi aesthetics pale in comparison to the imaginative Lovecraftian/medieval sci-fi look of the first game. It just doesn't have that thick omnipresent arcane atmosphere that made the original so compelling.

It's still pretty fun though, much better than the haters back in the late '90s had led me to believe. Glad I played it.

Quake 2 is better than Quake 1. That said they're both essentially just doom but everything is brown and green, and you can look up now. Quake 2 isnt offensively bad, its mostly just boring bad. The story is nothing which doesn't matter, hitscan enemies still exist for some reason, most encounters take place in tight corridors. I played on the second hardest difficulty, and let me tell you, enemies are so insanely tanky. They would tank like 12 rockets late game like its nothing. The super shotty is damn near unusable in some of the later levels. Maps are mazes with oblique objectives and worthless secrets. Music will just cut off completely once you get the main objective done for some reason. The music also comes off as royalty free rock metal music. Enemies are diverse but the design of some are too similar to tell them apart. They also tend to attack the same way which is either hitscanning you or shooting rockets. The game also LOVES to spawn enemies behind you. Sometimes, it feels like I'm playing dark souls with the way these enemies spawn. They also love spamming enemies from the sky too. The bosses are a joke because you can hoard power ups. The last level is fucking terrible and nauseating to navigate. A lot of weapons become worthless very quickly; the game is too front loaded. Blaster, shotgun, smg, blaster, grenades become useless and bloat your weapon selection. The railgun starts off kinda useful but becomes shit fast because of its low fire rate and damage. I have a bit more complaints, but I'll end it there, I shouldn't cook this old game for not aging well. There's little to no reason to play this today, just buy any new blood game.

I will say that the little secret credits area in the final level was cool and when it said "Quake will live on in the cosmos forever" kinda got me in my feels a bit. I respect the labor of love, and the effort that was poured into this game even if I don't like it all that much.

This is a really weird game. It got a cohesive plot with actually continuing levels, the way enemies fall on the floor or will do some final shots before dying is so cool and something barely any game does to this extent today, and in general feels like a big inspiration for every late 90s/early 2000s game, especially like a protoype Half Life. I do not know to what extent this is true, this is simply how it felt to me.
At the same time, it is quite sad that it got completely rid of the dark fantasy aspect of Quake. And while I understand that Quake I was a convoluted mess that had no actual identity in what it was, it made it its own special thing. Seeing that completely ditched for pure sceince fiction, while working, is sad.
It is also unfortunate that almost all enemies are humans or some variant of a cyborg / power armor.

Nice experience and I will go ahead and play the expansions, but I think I do prefer Quake I as well as id's early Doom games.

Quake II feels like it should have been released under a different name - it's very different from the original Quake. Still, it's a great first-person shooter, made even better by Nightdive Studios.

Special credit goes to Machine Games for releasing an amazing expansion for it at no extra cost.

If you're a fan of the original Quake and/or a fan of first-person shooters, you owe it to yourself to check this out.