YMMV / AMID EVIL

• Awesome Music: Andrew Hulshult continues to deliver outstanding music, with this game allowing him to showcase his diversity:
  • False Prophets is an ambient track that builds with drums over the second half, getting you ready to slay some enemies.
  • Distilled Chaos is a tense industrial track, with synths sounding like something out of Unreal.
  • Eventide is an atmospheric synth track that gradually picks momentum, featuring ethereal choirs towards the end that give it a quite epic feeling.
  • God Killer is a harrowing battle theme that will get your blood pumping in anticipation for the fight against the Episode 5 boss.
  • Aetheres is a hauntingly beautiful track starting with a somber-sounding piano before building into a grandiose composition of choir and orchestration. It makes for a memorable introduction to the Arcane Expanse, particularly if you've been playing the episodes in order and just finished the gloomy Forges.
  • Aenigmata is a track full of epic synth goodness that continues the mystic atmosphere of The Arcane Expanse.
• Broken Base: Even the biggest proponents for the game are divided on Episode 5, The Forges. Some consider it one of their favorite episodes for its visuals, brutal atmosphere, and challenge; while others feel the levels and enemies are needlessly brutal and tedious.
• Demonic Spiders: So far, every episode has its resident Demonic Spider.
  • The Astral Equinox has the lowly Equinox Acolytes. While they're no threat on their own, their insane speed means they can quickly close the gap while you're busy frying bigger fish, and their hits can shave off a good portion of your health. Getting cornered by them means a swift death, especially in higher difficulties.
  • The Domain of the Sentinels features the Watchers, amorphous flying blobs of flesh covered in tentacles and eyes. What makes these enemies annoying are their homing shots. They're fast, pack quite a punch and they're translucent, meaning they can be hard to spot if you're distracted by other enemies. Prioritize killing these first.
  • The Sacred Path has these Fire Visages, which are by far the most dangerous enemy in the episode. They're surprisingly fast, breathe flames which can deplete your health in seconds and have the nasty habit of ambushing you in groups. If they surround you, it's a one way ticket to your last quicksave.
  • Pretty much any enemy in the Solar Solstice is a candidate, but among them the shielded spearmen stand out. The spears they throw at you not only deal moderate damage on impact, they stick to you for a while, and since they're on fire, they will continue to deal damage before disappearing. Also, their shields aren't for show, they will actually reflect most projectiles you fire at them, forcing you to aim carefully, risk closing in with the Axe, or waste more valuable ammo on them.
  • Where do we even begin with The Forges? Again, every single enemy in there has the potential to ruin your day (which, combined with the Malevolent Architecture makes The Forges That One Episode), but the Painmasters deserve special mention. They're slow, and their attacks have a quite short range, but they're basically a walking almost-"Instant Death" Radius in higher difficulties. They also have enough health to withstand 3-4 planets to the face. Encountering more than one at the same time means you're in big trouble unless you have ammo for the Aeturnum (which thankfully, isn't uncommon in that particular episode).
  • Make no mistake, the Arcane Expanse is hard, in big part due to being populated by very dangerous enemies. Among them, the crystal beast riders might be the deadliest. The beasts have tons of health, and are fast, meaning they can quickly close the gap and bite your face off, while their riders fire projectiles similar to those of the powered Star of Torment (thankfully, these are not homing) that will put a very serious dent in your health if they connect. And after you kill the beasts, you have to deal with their riders, who aren't slouches either. In the Hexed Passage (E6M2) and the Circle (E6M3) they start to ambush you in groups, so make sure you save your Aeturnum for such special occasions.
  • The enemies of the Void will also bring the hurt, as befitting their status of inhabitants of the final epiode of the game. Of all of them, you'll learn to hate and fear the Fists of Evil the most. Lots of HP? Check. They teleport around? Check. They cast a powerful spell that rains energy upon you and deals quite some damage? Check. Devastating melee attacks if they get close? Check. And to top it off, they are resistant to Aeturnum shots.
  • The Black Labyrinth DLC is pretty much full of these, with quick attacks that can catch you off-guard, hard-to-dodge projectiles and huge hp pools. The ones that take the cake, however, are the Knights of the Labyrinth. These are tougher versions of Solegionnaires, whose shields cover their entire body, protecting them from most of your projectiles. They also trade the spears for much more damaging magical energy blasts, and are extremely reoccurring in the latter half of the campaign. All of this pretty much nesseciates the use of Voidsplitter, whose ammo is scarce, or making circles around the enemy while punching it which can be dangerous when it's present with other enemies.
• Memetic Mutation: Frick cancer in the butt^Explanation The game got a Colbert Bump from a run at AGDQ 2020, during which the developers were on voice-chat. The event supports the Prevent Cancer Foundation, but does not allow swearing, so the devs dropped this line a couple of times. It soon showed up in one of the game's top Steam reviews.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The only way to activate Super Mode is by the left mouse button, the same one for attacking. More than a few players have lamented this as it results in accidental activation of it, especially when you just cleared the area of enemies. This was mitigated with Update 3, as it will no longer activate when holding fire until your next shot.
  • Author's Saving Throw: Mitigated even more in Update 4, which added the option to activate said Super Mode with an alternate bind (Although Word of God warns this is not how the game is meant to be played).
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Despite being a homage to the 90s, the game makes good use of modern technology. The usage of lighting, pixelated textures, weapon sprites that blend excellently with the game, combined with the rather colorful locales results in a fairly striking look.^note Yes, we said weapon sprites. Those are not 3D models, but normal- and material-mapped pixel work with carefully done animations and design to hide this fact, making it one of the few games to attempt this and succeed in the illusion if you don't know ahead of time. A beta for RTX implementation is now underway.

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