When talking about Duke Nukem 3D even people who enjoy it struggle to put into words why they like it so much. People who don't know will say it was having an action hero pastiche, others will say it was the "interactivity" as in being able to play biliards in one level. Duke 3D actual biggest strength it's his level design, levels that are still to this day looking actual places while allowing gamey stuff to happen with small narratives and setpieces in them, no memorable story obv but levels leading into one another at the exit rather than just dropping you there and amusing theming in the levels adds a lot to it. Duke 3D actual loop is also pretty good and standout for the genre, with the core loadout from the first episode being usual but slightly different to further additions like the Shrinker and Devastator being nice and fuctional gimmicks, sadly there's also the Freezethrower and a good chunk of actually useless weapons and items, not many games are designed around the fact that the player could have a jetpack on themselves at all times though.

Episode 1: The most iconic the game gets and probably a good reason why the saying that the freeware episode in a retroshooter is the best one is said to begin with. This is as tight as the game gets not the other episodes aren't to look forward too.
Episode 2: Drop down in quality but not as severe as a lot of people make it out ot be. Levels are still really good but plagued with the overuse of suicide drones and less varied in their colors.
Episode 3: Back to earth with more colorful and better levels.
Episode 4: Pretty nutty. There are a lot of annoying encounters but over this is Duke 3D at it's limits.

Duke Nukem 3D is still to this day a standout in the genre with it's design and unique gimmicks. And it's still probably the weakest in the Build Engine Trinity.

It's not very good.

It's a classic RE clone solely focused on puzzles that has puzzles on the level of those games, so get X Item to Y Place only and the items aren't displayed in the enviroment and youneed to interact with them to know if anything is there, so have fun there.

Guess it's a little amusing.

As someone who was looking forward to this hoping for it to improve on what I disliked about the original I'm overwhelmend by how much better this sequel turned out to be.

I disliked the original because it was more a 2D dark souls and I'm not really fond of that formula anymore. This game follows the metroidvania beats far closer with it actually having movement upgrades that while basic all make traversing the enviroment more enjoyable and come with lots of challenges. The the new weapons you can get are all great even with the clear superiority of one over the others and interestingly early on dictate the routes and upgrades you can get since these weapons have specific interactions with the enviroment allowing you teach otherwise unreacheable places. Generally the game's got a great rythim with exploration and rewards and only gets less interesting when you run out of new places to see and things to do by the end. Impressively even the visuals are better, shame the cutscenes are no longer obscenely detailed pixeld art

People might take issues with far lower difficulty but that's mainly due to your chatacter being much much stronger. The real issue are enemy types who lunge forward at you, have fun taking damage as you wake up because their on top of you.

If you had a decent impression of the original or just want a great game in the genre be sure to play this.

(Played through the Japanese PS1 collection)

One of the first RPGs ever and influential in ways you need to play to fully understand, the NES/Famicom port of this game is probably the biggest influence on the japanese side of the genre at the time and it's influence can still be felt even in games made much later who developed further away from those roots, sadly as game it's one of those cases where you can tell it's one of the firsts in the genre still trying to figure how to be.

The game itself ain't as brutal as it was made out to be, as someone used to the convetions of older RPGs at least, but every encounter of even level with the enemy could mean a potential reload depending on how things go, particulalry on later in the game, still regardless of that the game is rather dull since the dungeon floors as big as they are don't have much a reason to explore them, you won't find loot outside combat encounters and even then you won't find much worthwhile outside the late game, making most the floors pointless to explore outside needing exp and grinding, this is also a game where you might want to reload after a level up because your stats got worse. I managed to beat the final boss solely because he didn't use his party nuke spell on one attempt which otherwise would've meant need to grind for a few more hours to beat him.

As fascinating in it's influece as is I didn't find it particularly enjoyable

Probably one the best adapations of a movie franchise into a game, not solely for the gameplay alone. This game is something you might think the creators of the movies had a hand in making.

It's an FPS games on slower more methodical end with significant RPG elements in the form of more open levels with multiple objectives and an experience based skill point system.

Playing as Robocop, you stomp around like crazy whenever you move (with different sounds depending on what kind of ground your walking on), you're allowed a sprint but your generally pretty slow but the levels accomodate for it nicely enough, still you're a tank on legs, opposition needs to be overwhelming to pose even a simple threat to you, mowing down the dozens of criminals at once with Robocop's signature weapon and one other side arm from an interesting selection of period weapon with limited ammo. One would think that such a formula to get old eventually but it really doesn't, every major shootout could potentially be from the movies themselves and enemies get varied enough to even have you switch things up a little, the game is moderately hard on normal difficulty and the RPG progression system is surprisingly tame, helps a little and spices things up a bit but never felt major, like the game was designed it with having that part of the game not influence things too much and it's for the best. The RPG experience system is there mainly for the more openeded part of the game, you don't just shoot irredimable criminals, you're also investigating and helping citizens. This part of the game can be menial but is necessary for the writing of the game and allows to flesh things out very well, for a game that might resemble Fallout 4 in that regard it's actually filled with far more significant action and consequences.

Writing is genuinely the highlight of the game, it bears repeating that it genuinely feels like another (good) movie in the franchise. Everything that made the first movie awesome is here. It's funny, it's gorey, it's messy, it's satirical of grim world run by corporate overlords and humanity still pushing through despite it all. Visually is also something straight out of the movies too even with being a budget title and all, the enviromental artists really nailed the decadent detroit, every places is just packed with details.

Genuienly a really funny game too. It's pretty fanservicey towards the rest of the franchise but in ways that feels elegant and smart.

The only negatives I can think off are the performances at release, the checkpoint system sometimes not having enough checkpoints and the first boss being a shitty bulletsponge I needed to cheese to beat.

It's not common a game changes genre entirely and it improves entirely on all major fronts while retaining the interesting mechanics of it's predecessor. The switch to a mostly low-poly 3D style benefits it's art-style and more than that it takes advantage of the shmup/STG format immensely and frequently, plenty of switches of perspective for effect. You also get to have more fun with the tools you get, having less but more significant tools you can upgrade more easily.

As for it's issue the main one it's readability of what can harm you or not has not been improved much from the original but mainly it's a balance issue, one of the first mandatory unlockable weapons (Brigner of Mayhem) is easily the best weapon in the game, allowing to kill everything on the screen with little on the way of putting yourself in danger making the game far more banal.

As a shump/STG it probably loses to it's competion even having not really played anything else in the genre but a sequel to Valfaris is almost a complete improvement, worth a try over the original if you didn't like that one much.