History YMMV / Blood1997

* GameBreaker: The Napalm Launcher is a hideously overpowered piece of equipment. It's the game's analogue to the rocket launcher, except it spreads fire to everything struck in its area of effect in addition to exploding with the force of a dynamite stick. If anything survives being struck by the initial blast, they'll be set on fire shortly thereafter, which makes it a strong tool for clearing rooms in later Episodes. It also has a destructive alternate fire that launches what can only be described as a bouncy cluster napalm grenade, which is even more powerful than the base shot. While the alternate fire costs a justifiable twelve shots, the normal fire costs only one napalm ammo per shot, making it a very cost-effective weapon. All in all, the Napalm Launcher is the best weapon in the game next to the Tesla Cannon and can carry you extremely far by itself.

** Shial, despite being responsible for the death of Gabriel, is one of the game's easiest bosses. She's little more than a MookMaker with no other offense, whose mooks aren't that strong and whose health isn't that high. Even looking at her, you might be surprised to hear she's a boss; she's actually smaller than most of the normal enemies. It's especially blatant because you fight a Stone Gargoyle at the end of the previous level, an enemy who ''actually would have worked'' as a boss.

** While ''VideoGame/{{Shadow Warrior|1997}}'' and ''VideoGame/DukeNukem3D'' both got updated Dosbox releases on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} that fixed the mouse and keyboard controls for modern gamers, the Dosbox release of ''One Unit Whole Blood'' does not have these updates. The controls are exactly the same as they were upon the game's original release, making the mouse controls a nightmare to configure.

* ItsHardSoItSucks: One of the main criticisms of the game is its far steeper difficulty compared to fellow first-persons shooters of the time. A lot of enemies are {{hitscan}}, a lot more are GoddamnedBats, maps can be incredibly large and labyrinthine, and your arsenal of weapons is unorthodox with high skill ceiling, promoting a DifficultButAwesome playstyle. It's one of the reasons why its remained a CultClassic rather then a mainstream hit like ''Duke'' and ''Shadow Warrior.''

* ItsHardSoItSucks: One of the main criticisms of the game is its far steeper difficulty compared to fellow first-persons shooters of the time. A lot of enemies are {{hitscan}}, a lot more are GoddamnedBats, maps can be incredibly large and labyrinthine, and your arsenal of weapons is unorthodox with high skill ceiling, promoting a DifficultButAwesome playstyle. It's one of the reasons why it's remained a CultClassic rather then a mainstream hit like ''Duke'' and ''Shadow Warrior.

* ItsHardSoItSucks: One of the main criticisms of the game is its far steeper difficulty compared to fellow first-persons shooters of the time. A lot of enemies are {{hitscan}}, a lot more are GoddamnedBats, maps can be incredibly large and labyrinthine, and your arsenal of weapons is unorthodox with high skill ceiling.

* ItsHardSoItSucks: One of the main criticisms of the game is its far steeper difficulty compared to fellow first-persons shooters of the time. A lot of enemies are {{hitscan}}, a lot more are GoddamnedBats, maps can be incredibly large and labyrinthine, and your arsenal of weapons is unorthodox with high skill ceiling. A number of FPS fans don't outright hate Blood, but find its higher difficulty makes it much harder to return to compared to Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior.

** Tchernobog himself has only half the health of the Cerberus boss, and [[SuspiciousVideogameGenerosity there's a ton of health and powerups in his boss room]]. It's not unheard of for him to die before he even gets out of his room.

* EarlyGameHell: While the first game is challenging, the early levels are especially difficult, particularly "Wrong Side of the Tracks." You have few weapons, limited ammo, a train station full of cultists with hitscan weapons gunning for you, and likely haven't yet fully gotten a hang of the combat. You will by the time the level is over.

* BreatherLevel: The second episode of is a lot easier than the first one. It has a larger variety of weapons, including the Voodoo Doll, and its final boss, Shial, is just a big spider that can only spawn lesser ones and cannot attack on her own, and is nothing comparing to the first episode's Cheogh the Stone Gargoyle, which does heavy damage and is unbelievably hard to kill with the first six weapons. Sure, there are Stone Gargoyles in episode 2, but the Voodoo Doll chews them up and spits them out. In turn, the episode has a breather level, namely Level 5 (The Haunting), which is long but quite easy; unlike the level before, it doesn't feature any kind of Cultist or (in the case of the secret level) Stone Gargoyles.

* SpecialEffectFailure: The cinematics have ''not'' aged well, to the point of bordering on SoBadItsGood. Caleb's attempt to grab Ophelia out of Cheogh's claws (e.g. jumping in the air and flailing his arms in a silly manner) is corny enough, but when Caleb's hat falls off in the first cinematic, keen-eyed viewers will spot that Caleb seems to have neither hair nor ''ears''.[[note]]WordOfGod mentions that technical limitations, the cinematics being made at the last minute, the 3D modelers (of average talent) who borrowed the stop-motion puppets used for reference ''not being informed informed that Caleb does have hair,'' and the difficulties changing anything once everything was animated already lead to the baldness being left in.[[/note]]

* SpecialEffectFailure: The cinematics have ''not'' aged well, to the point of bordering on SoBadItsGood. Caleb's attempt to grab Ophelia out of Cheogh's claws (e.g. jumping in the air and flailing his arms in a silly manner) is corny enough, but when Caleb's hat falls off in the first cinematic, keen-eyed viewers will spot that Caleb seems to have neither hair nor ''ears''.[[note]]WordOfGod mentions that technical limitations, the cinematics being made at the last minute, the 3D modelers (of average talent) who borrowed the stop-motion puppets used for reference ''were not informed that Caleb does have hair,'' and the difficulties changing anything once everything was animated already lead to the baldness being left in.[[/note]]

* SpecialEffectFailure: The cinematics have ''not'' aged well, to the point of bordering on SoBadItsGood. Caleb's attempt to grab Ophelia out of Cheogh's claws (e.g. jumping in the air and flailing his arms in a silly manner) is corny enough, but when Caleb's hat falls off in the first cinematic, keen-eyed viewers will spot that Caleb doesn't seem to have neither hair, nor ''ears''.[[note]]WordOfGod mentions that technical limitations, the cinematics being made at the last minute, the 3D modelers (of average talent) who borrowed the stop-motion puppets used for reference ''were not informed that Caleb does have hair,'' and the difficulties changing anything once everything was animated already lead to the baldness being left in.[[/note]]

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: One reason ''Blood'' is praised is for its subtly comedic dark atmosphere, and both versions of the soundtrack do it justice: to simplify, once the game installed, you could play it without the CD in the player, and depending on its presence or absence in it, you could either hear an already good [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L928CmhAPQY MIDI soundtrack]] in the latter situation or a more [[{{Pun}} fleshed-out]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-OS06n2My0 CD soundtrack]] in the former. Both are available in the ''Fresh Supply'' port.

** The "Dark Carnival" is probably the most iconic level in the first episode, a truly twisted AmusementParkOfDoom with unique areas like a freakshow, a tightrope, and even playable sideshows.

** All of the Cabal's human forces. ''All'' of them. [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter The regular brown-robed Cultists]] fire their shotguns fast with no need to reload like Caleb, and frequently toss sticks of TNT (or considerably more powerful bundles of it in higher difficulties). [[MoreDakka Black-robed Fanatics]] spam their Tommy Gun nonstop until you either hit them or get out of their line of sight, and in earlier builds can throw TNT just like Cultists. [[PsychoElectro The blue-robed Zealot]] is mostly the same, only more damaging and less accurate. And finally, [[ThrowDownTheBomblet the green-robed Acolytes]] don't shoot, but make up for that by spamming TNT like there's no tomorrow. Not taking any of these guys out very fast or from too far for them to attack effectively means a struggle even in the medium "Lightly Broiled" difficulty, and a death sentence on "[[HarderThanHard Extra Crispy]]".
** Gill Beasts are a real threat, given their downright ludicrous speed (Caleb isn't exactly slow himself, but the Gill Beast can close the distance in about one second) and their melee focus making the old shotgun a risky pick, and it's not at all helped by the fact that they're typically fought underwater. Luring them out of the water cuts their speed to a crawl and leaves them as sitting ducks, but this isn't always feasible.

** Axe zombies and any variety of Cultist that leave behind a Life Essence when killed will leave ''another'' if their (already dead) bodies are gibbed[[note]]if they can be gibbed instead of just getting knocked back a little – as a rule of thumb, if they're killed with bullets, the Tesla Cannon or melee, their corpses can be gibbed[[/note]]. Another bug is that, if an enemy is launched in the air when it's killed, its corpse will gib when it lands. ''And'' the SawedOffShotgun's SecondaryFire has more than enough knockback to [[BlownAcrossTheRoom send both cultists and axe zombies flying]]. It doesn't have the same sheer visceral fun of launching a bundle of TNT at an unaware group of zombies and watching the chunks fly, but attracting their attention and air-juggling them with the scattergun leaves you with more health pickups, which may come in as handy [[NintendoHard or even necessary]].

** The Merry-Go-Pukey in [=E1M4=] Dark Carnival will spawn gibs if it's attacked. That includes being gently poked with the pitchfork. An explosion will make it spout a literal shower of body parts.
** You can NoSell the Bloated Butcher's cleaver throw just by crouching (the projectile still ''hits'', oddly enough, as the smoke puff on contact shows, but doesn't cause any damage). His puke ball is negated the same way, but at least it visibly flies right over Caleb's head when he's crouched.

* SpecialEffectFailure: The cinematics have ''not'' aged well, to the point of bordering on SoBadItsGood. Caleb's attempt to grab Ophelia out of Cheogh's claws (e.g. jumping in the air and flailing his arms in a silly manner) is corny enough, but when Caleb's hat falls off in the first cinematic, keen-eyed viewers will spot that Caleb doesn't seem to have neither hair, nor ''ears''.
* ThatOneBoss:

** The Beast boss fight in ''Post Mortem'' is downright notorious. He starts as a shotgun-wielding Cabal member in a red robe, but when you take enough health off, he goes OneWingedAngel, at which the actual terror begins. If the Beast gets relatively near you, he does a ShockwaveStomp that knocks off a good chunk of your health, stuns you, cannot be blocked, and penetrates armor. Essentially, he's a walking InstantDeathRadius, and the only chance you have is to stay as far away as possible, unload your handful of long-range weapons while perpetually sprinting backward, and hope you have enough ammo to kill him. And then you have to do it again, because there's three red-robes and you have to kill at least two of them.

** [[PlayingWithFire Hellhounds and Fire Pods]], enemies that can [[ManOnFire set you on fire]] for a lot of damage if there's no water nearby.

** Gill Beasts are a real threat, given their downright ludicrous speed (Caleb isn't exactly slow himself, but the Gill Beast can close the distance in about one second) and their melee focus making the old shotgun a risky pick, and it's not at all helped by the fact that they're always fought underwater. Luring them out of the water at least helps, but this isn't always feasible.