The megawad sells itself as an adventure. Does it succeed in that promise?

While the first episode only encompasses that theme on a surface level with its tomb theming and spelunking level design, episode 2 is when the narrative thread of the wad expands to include alien starships and space travel. The mapset sells its idiosyncrasies through vanilla DOOM mechanics, like how at the start of Map 12: Alien Ship, the player takes damage like the ship is hostile to humans outside a radsuit. The next level had these health stations lying around that heal the player when they interact with them. Neat stuff.

The middle part of this wad is the most narratively sound. I’m not quite sure what’s going on in the story but this part of the level progression takes you through space, crash lands you on another alien planet, and has you fight through a canyon that resembles a modern military shooter than any classic DOOM techbase.

The third episode brings us back to the tomb-raiding theme and the last 5 levels or so expand the level size and pump up the enemy rates, for aggravating results. It kills the brisk pacing that the wad had rode upon with Map 28 involving a level-wide switch hunt which turned me against the wad quite a bit. Up to that point I wondered if Epic 2 was a new favourite of mine and I wondered if it could be a recommended wad for newcomers to DOOM modding but this is not a wad I think that sticks the landing. This wad is an adventure, and a pretty good one, but one with a brutal last slice.