Another great Night Dive remaster, but this is them polishing kind of a turd here compared to the other boomer shooters they’ve remastered such as Blood, Doom 64, or Powerslave. Rise of the Triad originally was supposed to be a Wolf 3D sequel before Tom Hall left id and man does it show; this game feels more archaic than Doom and it came out two years later. Rise of the Triad exemplifies most of the flaws people levy at classic boomer shooters, its obtuse key hunting in samey labyrinthine corridors; if the in-game map wasn’t such a massive QoL that highlighted pressure plates and what areas open up I probably would have dropped this game. The game doesn’t haven’t much of a consistent aesthetic, it’s very slapdash and amateurish, and so is its game design in general. Feels like they just threw everything at a wall to see what stuck and it doesn’t really work super great. Your arsenal is absolutely anemic, I mainly used the infinite ammo MP40, because most other weapons are pickups with limited ammo so you really just want to save them for the bullet sponge enemies like the Enforcers. The powerups are mostly useless trolls aside from God and Dog mode and are best ignored aside from those two. There’s also a live system that just feels tacked on because you’re better off just quicksaving because dying just sends you to pistol start at the beginning of the level.

The soundtrack is indeed quite a banger though.

I did have enough fun with it and I don’t regret getting this game at all, especially because as I said, Night Dive did great work, but I had my fill after beating the shareware campaign and Dark War. I’d only recommend this if you already a fan of this game or if you’re a boomer shooter fan who’s already played the better games of the era.