WARNING! UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
First and foremost, the style of the game is absolutely stunning. The combination of modern technology and low resolution textures and and models creates a fantastic and memorable style sure to leave you awed for a long time.
The music is once again composed by Andrew Hushult, previously known for making soundtrack for Doom Eternal DLC and New Blood's DUSK. Examples in YMMV page are just few of the examples.
Should you jump straight to reading the Story section of Codex, you can learn that Champion, the player character, has beaten a legendary trial to obtain the Axe Of Black Labyrinth and is the first mortal in a thousand years to be worthy of an honor of accessing realms of the higher beings. If this doesn't give you the first taste of what badass hero you're playing as, what else can?
The Black Labyrinth DLC will allow us to see how exactly that trial went. Definitely not gonna be a simple task, but considering he has the axe in the main game, no doubts should remain on his worthiness of possesing such a relic.
From the moment you first listen to the intro, you're thrown into the hub world of Amid Evil: The Gateway of the Ancients. Not only does it look visually impressive, resembling elements of Mayan culture, but it's also the Hub world akin to Quake, allowing you to physically choose your difficulty level and the episode you want to play instead of pushing buttons to do so.
The place you first spawn in gives the first impression of how magnificent the Gateway is: floating rocks, stairways, torches in ancient jars, mosaic floor and lines - everything creates a great atmosphere of ancient and colossal place.
The little bit of lore we get about the Gateway tells us it's a Hub world not only for us, but also In-Universe: Ancients built it long ago so that they could visit different worlds, and it worked both ways!
Once you get past the lore and looks, comes the time to choose the difficulty. And just like in Quake, it's complete with the difficulty options shown differently:
The pathway to Easy is just a small slope down.
The gate to Medium is separated by a gap you must jump over. Should you fall, you'll be greeted with a message:"Perhaps this is not your destined path? "
The portal to Hard must be reached by traversing a series of moving stone blocks which required timed jumps. Fall - and you shall be turned away, for "you're not worthy".
The Evil difficulty is hidden and even has an achievement for finding it. It requires you jumping on a ledge, going along it to find a secret spot to get down from and has lava spread around the room where portal is. Not only that, but the message with the difficulty level doesn't state the amount of enemies and pickups. Worst part? Once you choose to go to the Evil difficulty portal, you can't get back up without using cheats or loading a quick save. And this is when other paths allowed getting back up.
The Champion is voiced by the composer of the game, Andrew Hushult. And although he only has one speaking line uttered during secret level, mostly producing laughs, grunts or screams, he makes a very good impression of unstoppable Barbarian Hero, taking pleasure in fighting many threats of this world and having a chance to prove his worthiness of title.
He looks the part, too. The fur coat, the armor, a cool helmet and muscular build. Not to mention that under the helmet he's revealed to be a Humanoid Alien with four eyes and a hair worthy of a barbarian that, according to the dev, can change colour!
Tamara Ryan, Voice Of The Ancients, also does a fantastic job. Portraying the representation of all the Ancients of the universe in more ways than one, she does good job at conveying the hopelessness during the intro, as well as pride and happiness for Champion's deeds during the rest of the gameplay.
She's set to reprise her role during Black Labyrinth DLC, this time communicating with the Champion(then Heretic), inquiring about his reasons for arriving at the Black Labyrinth (or, perhaps, it's whereabouts). Perhaps the Voice will comment on Heretic's progress more often, but that remains to be seen.
During the course of the game, we get introduced to the arsenal the Champion wields. It is an array of magical artifacts from the days long gone, and not only do they look cool (by the way, those are sprites, not models), but each of them is unique and distinct, not getting useless once the other is found. And, should the Champion gather enough souls from dead enemies, he can enter Soul Mode,which significantly increases the strength of weapons.
The Axe Of Black Labyrinth is not your usual FPS melee weapon. It's quick, it's strong and can bring enemies you point it at to you, allowing to cut the distance for a strike instead of having to always approach foes yourself, while also stunning them. Most enemies from the last episode take double damage from it due to being Shadow PeopleMade of Evil. And if you use it during Soul Mode, it turns into a dangerous propeller, mowing down the hordes that dare to come close, trading utility abilities for raw damage. It can even be used underwater this way to push yourself in the opposite direction on high speed.
The lore behind it proves this even further: it was made by the Old Gods themselves, was hidden behind a huge trial to test the worthiness of one to wield it, has been used by many great heroes previously, can sense evil and even acts as a key to the travelling between many worlds. And that's your starter weapon.
The Staff Of Azure Orb may look weak, but it's actually pretty versatile. It rapidly fires homing orbs, which means that you can take down weaker enemies very quickly. Due to homing properties, you can shoot around the corner and still hit, as well as have easier time dealing with flying or very mobile enemies, both of which the game has aplenty. Power it using collected souls, and it turns into a magical equivalent of a minigun, now able to slay tougher foes and liquifying foes it kills.
Whisper's Edge, a magical sabre, is as close to a magical shotgun as you can get: it holds less maximum mana than Staff of Azure Orb, but compensates by firing powerful waves of energy. The direct hit deals more damage, but if an enemy is hit by the side of the wave, it passes through it, allowing more hits. When powered up, it shoots bigger waves that pass through anything regardless of hit point and bounce of walls, allowing to turn anything in tight rooms to ribbons.
Voltride is Poseidon's weapon blessed by Zeus - it quickly shoots out hitscan lightning bolts that can stun enemies with a certain chance. But that's not even the main gimmick: if you kill an enemy with it and then keep shooting him as he twitches, the accumulated electricity bursts out in form of chain lightning that can take out entire groups of evil forces. Should you decide to charge with essence of the dead, it shoots out a constant electrical beam, allowing for more DPS!
Celestial Claw. Good Lord. Imagine a rocket launcher, but instead of shooting rockets, it takes random planets, shrinks them and puts them in its chamber for you to shoot. Sometimes you can shoot out the Earth, which the game will comment on and even give you an achievement. The damage it deals is extremely high, enough to blow even medium monsters to pieces with a couple planets. Give it some energy from the other side? Well... You too can have the power of Sun in the palm of your hand!
Star Of Torment more than lives up to its name. It shoots shards of crystal at high speed with enough strength to pin those it kills to walls and ceiling. It shares the same pool as Whisper's Edge and consumes two mana per shot instead of one, but it's a go-to against stronger foes, which makes it worth it. Let the spirits possess it, however, and you've got yourself a single most powerful Game-Breaker - for a price of four mana per shot, it increases a shooting speed, adds homing to projectiles and amplifies the damage so much, it can utterly annihilate even the strongest foes. Using it during boss battles is frowned upon, however, as it turns even the later bosses into pushovers and takes all the interest out of the battles with them. The only exception to this is the Final Boss, who actually has a resistance to this particular weapon's Soul Mode.
Capping off the main game's arsenal is the strangest-looking weapon: Aeturnum. Don't let the appearance of clumped purple ribbons fool you though: even non-powered, this is the strongest weapon in the game not to dissimilar from BFG-9000, is said to exist in infinite realities at once and no one knows where it actually originates from. Give it some soul energy, and you've got yourself a black hole launcher that is the true One-Hit Kill of the game, or a powerful Damage Over Time dealer. Be careful though: this black hole can actually kill you too.
The levels in this game are divided into seven distinct episodes, with four levels each capped off by a Boss-Only Level. While that may not seem like much, even the starting levels are beautifully designed, massive and non-linear, have distinct themes and enemies not shared between episodes, contain many well-hidden secrets and lore messages and even have many destructible objects for you to hunt and smash to pieces. Finding everything in a level is very satisfying, especially since many secrets can have additional weapons, mana, or even power-ups.
