YMMV / Final Doom

• Anti-Climax Boss: In The Plutonia Experiment, while Cyberden and Go 2 It were hyped up to be the most difficult maps in the game, modern players that can handle the rest of Plutonia on Ultra-Violence difficulty may find them underwhelming, if not outright easier than other Plutonia maps.
  • While the enemy force in Go 2 It is greater than anything in the rest of the official maps, you get absolutely overloaded with resources, including nine megaspheres, so you're given a ton of room for error, and so much ammunition, notably cells, that you may as well have infinite BFG shots. The map also offers many safe camping opportunities while you wait for the enemies to infight each other to extinction, and the connectivity of the map makes it easy to flee encounters at any time.
  • While Cyberden is rather restrictive with its resources in comparison — including no Megaspheres nor even a Soulsphere, and enough plasma for only a few BFG shots —, it mainly consists of fighting four Cyberdemons individually in a large circular arena where they're easy to circlestrafe, nullifying their main threat, and the rest of Cyberden's fights aren't on par with Plutonia's nastiest traps. As long as you're competent at fighting Cyberdemons, these maps won't live up to their hype.
• Breather Level:
  • The Plutonia Experiment
    • "Map 16: The Omen" is this only if you're playing continuously, entering it from "Go 2 It" and carrying from it 200% health and armor and fully loaded in plasma and rocket ammo, allowing you to blow through the map without much difficulty. To exit, you don't even need all three keys, allowing you to exit early if you're aware that you can reach the teleporter to the exit room without the red key. However the map does become a lot more difficult on Pistol-start even with the free BFG and Soulsphere at the beginning, as the map has no armor at all until the final room, so even with the Supercharge you can be killed very fast by the Revenant hordes, and you don't get much plasma ammo, so you'll only get a half-dozen shots with the aforementioned BFG. There's also a nasty double Arch-vile ambush after grabbing the yellow key, where one is teleported into the blue key arena that you fought a large Revenant and Mancubi horde in, while with your limited ammo you can't afford leave too many monster corpses around carelessly where the Arch-viles will stumble upon and revive them.
    • "Map 17: Compound" can be cleared relatively quickly and isn't nearly as troublesome with Chaingunners, Revenants and Arch-Viles as earlier maps. The only hectic area is just before you unlock the exit where (on >= Ultra-Violence) a swarm of Imps, a single Baron, and a single Arch-Vile are released, but a BFG or Rocket Launcher will handle this without much trouble. It's telling that this map is used for the first demo file in the original 1.9 DOS release, as the player is able to progress nearly to the end only dying to the Imps, Baron and Arch-Vile presumably to limit the time of the demo file. After this map, the difficulty starts gradually increasing going into the late game.
    • "Map 28: The Sewers" isn't exactly easy, but it isn't excessively difficult either. The main attractions are the large number of monsters unleashed from teleport-monster-closets but these tend to be relatively easy to counter with your BFG once you know where they happen. There's an elevator that takes you down from the main hub to a fairly well-stocked armoury where you can lock and load, and ammo is generous throughout the map anyway. It's a potentially welcome respite before the much more difficult penultimate "Map 29".
  • TNT: Evilution
    • "Map 4: Wormhole" has a map gimmick where at one point deep within the map, you'll find a teleporter that will bring you to a "parallel dimension", a replica of the map that is bleaker and features much tougher enemy encounters, and both "dimensions" additionally feature an exit, one real and one fake. However, the real exit is inexplicably the one in the dimension you start in, while it's right near the start and requires no keys or any additional requirements to access, allowing you to beat the map in under half a minute easily and skip most of the map. However, if you do decide to explore the "parallel dimension" instead of just immediately taking the exit, the map will get a lot tougher, especially if you try to 100% it.
    • "Map 17: Processing Area" eases up on the difficulty after the relatively confusing and challenging map before it. The encounters are straight forward and quick and the map is easy to navigate. The map can be finished in mere minutes if you so desire.
    • "Map 24: Quarry" is another simple map that isn't too overwhelming. It's a relatively small network of cave tunnels and again easy to navigate. Once you have the blue key, you can open the exit door and just leave.
• Broken Base:
  • The TNT: Evilution half of Final Doom gets this, especially in comparison to the much more universally beloved The Plutonia Experiment. Fans still argue as to whether it's a good, well-rounded entry in the series, or if it's a poorly-made mapset that aged very poorly and should have been cast aside in favour of Plutonia.
  • Back in the day of Evilution's initial release, there was a huge division in the Doom community over Team TNT handing their megawad over to id Software to be a paid commercial release just hours before its originally scheduled free release. Some fans were happy that Team TNT was able to go pro and make money from their work, while some others thought they were lied to and that Team TNT sold out. This controversy landed TNT: Evilution in Doom World's 10 most infamous WADs list. In 2020, Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment would be re-released as free add-ons as part of the Unity port's major updates.
  • TNT: Evilution's Map 27: Mount Pain is a notoriously divisive map. There are many who praise it as one of TNT's best maps or even its best map, finding it to be an epic Marathon Level that's a thrilling challenge and thoroughly enjoy all the hallmarks of TNT it features. There are just as many, however, that vocally detest the map and see it as one of TNT's worst maps, for thinking its difficulty is achieved through unscrupulous means, finding the map to be an overly large eyesore, and hating those aforementioned TNT hallmarks.
• Catharsis Factor: Plutonia witholds the BFG until MAP11, when it usually came earlier in previous official maps (Doom 1 puts it within the first 3 maps of the episodes that feature it, while II gives it at MAP07). But MAP11 happens to be the incredibly stressful and paranoia-inducing level Hunted, so finally getting the weapon of mass demon-annihilation to slaughter the rest of Plutonia with feels all the more delicious at that moment.
• Common Knowledge: It's a frequent misconception that Plutonia is full of slaughter maps that just spams Chaingunners and Revenants at you. While true that a greater proportion of its enemy usage is made up of those two enemies compared to Doom 2 and TNT, its maps aren't remotely slaughtery aside from the super secret level Go 2 It; in fact its enemy counts are surprisingly small for its reputation and not out of the ordinary with the other IWADs, with only a handful of its maps having more than 100 enemies on UV difficulty, and its biggest map, the aforementioned Go 2 It, caps at 206 enemies, which is nothing compared to modern slaughter maps. Plutonia's difficulty is derived from intelligently using the enemy roster in ways to maximize their threat within compact maps, and being more willing to use the higher tier demons in general than the other IWADs are (e.g. it has 99 Arch-Viles total on UV difficulty, while TNT has 38 and Doom 2 has a paltry 17), rather than it attempting to overwhelm the player through sheer numbers.
• Demonic Spiders: Plutonia can make about every enemy above the Pinky feel like this with how the Casali brothers utitilize them. Plutonia however is most notorious for showing just how devastating Chaingunners, Revenants, and Arch-Viles can really be, using them in far more impactful ways than Doom II ever did.
• Disappointing Last Level: Both TNT and Plutonia codified the much-maligned trend of megawads reusing the Icon of Sin in their final maps, and while both of them mix it up, including TNT actually having a bit of a map before the boss fight unlike Doom 2, the general dislike for the Icon of Sin makes most players detest their final map. TNT's final map also gets hated for featuring a difficult teleporter puzzle at the beginning of the map, where the player telefrags themself if they make just one wrong move. If you don't get the hint with the torches at the start or play on a source port that displays teleport lines differently on the automap. it can become Trial-and-Error Gameplay
• Narm Charm:
  • TNT: Evilution's title screen was made using some very basic mid-90s CGI, with what looks like a spaceship made of only one crudely bump-mapped material hovering over a planet textured with obvious Perlin noise. Yet it's so simplistic it becomes charming, like a 10-year-old who's very proud of the Star Trek diorama they made for school.
  • Map 2: Human BBQ stands out as the map is fairly standard but is named after the barbecue grill in the starting courtyard with a corpse decoration over a barrel fire. The area is so hyped as a major part of the level — yet doesn't do anything besides add an aesthetic to the level that gets discarded the moment the player moves on from the starting area. Despite this, it can end up feeling oddly memorable.
• Nintendo Hard: The Plutonia Experiment is significantly harder than the previous games in the Doom franchise. Much of the difficulty is from the placement of monsters like the Chaingunner, making hitscan damage a frequent nuisance throughout the mission pack. Elite Mooks are also much more common than Doom II, especially Revenants and inconveniently-positioned Arch-Viles, who are two very damaging monsters if they actually hit you. TNT: Evilution is nothing to scoff at either, and becomes downright diabolical on the ''Nightmare!'' difficulty, with only one person (ZeroMaster) having ever completed a no-death run of the WAD without saving on such a difficulty.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • It can be hard to appreciate TNT: Evilution nowadays and understand how it was ever a hyped-up release or why anyone would even pay for it when you have countless far better maps to play and all types of mods that have added an unfathomable amount of new content to the game, all for free, so a vanilla megawad you have to pay for of such mixed quality with a scant amount of new stuff (with the only new content besides the maps being some new music and a few new textures) is hardly appealing. But back in its time during 1995, when Doom 2 was only a year old and map making and modding were still in their infancy, there wasn't a whole lot of options for additional Doom content back then, with full game replacement megawads being especially limited in such a primitive era. So a team of recognized map makers known for quality at the time creating a full megawad with 32 brand new maps got Doom fans really hyped up, enough to attract id's attention and get Evilution commercialized. That said, TNT does still have its share of fans for being among the first megawads that tried to make their maps feel like actual places, for its innovative usage of "DoomCute" (which is creating real life objects within the Doom engine, like the loading truck on Map 19: Shipping/Respawning), and for its role with Plutonia in shifting classic Doom's focus completely towards action, leading to fans creating an unofficial sequel in TNT: Revilution, as well as the TNT MIDI Pack to enhance the experience of the original, remixing a number of tracks and adding new ones.
  • For individual maps that can get this reaction, there's Plutonia's Map 32: Go 2 It. Back in the era where players only had the IWADs and primitive wads available, a map like Go 2 It that had the player face an onslaught of 200ish enemies mostly composed of the higher tier enemies, including 19 Arch-Viles (more than Doom II had in its entirety) and 13 Cyberdemons (nearly as many as all of Ultimate Doom, Doom II, and TNT had combined), was an incredibly intimidating force for players at the time, with many even finding it overwhelming. However, nowadays where slaughter maps with enemy counts that range in high hundreds or even thousands are commonplace, featuring liberal Cyberdemon usage and singular battles with more Arch-Viles than all of Go 2 It had, Go 2 It can seem mundane in comparison, if not outright easy for modern players, and a modern mapper trying to hype up a map like Go 2 It as a super difficult secret level would be laughable. As a result, in the aforementioned community-made Plutonia sequels, their takes on Go 2 It would up the ante considerably.
• Paranoia Fuel: Plutonia's MAP11: Hunted. 8 Arch-viles (14 on Hurt Me Plenty and above), which teleport pseudorandomly throughout a giant maze when you try to leave the starting room. You have to navigate the maze to find two keys and leave, with the Arch-viles pursuing you throughout and showing up whenever you least expect it. Invisible door-opening linedefs scattered around the maze get triggered when you them, making it sound like the Arch-viles are opening doors to hunt you down. The entire map is a luxury in anxiety and stress, with those Arch-viles always seeming like they're around every corner as they hiss and prowl around the maze.
• Porting Disaster: The PlayStation port featured maps from Master Levels of Doom II and carries over the well-received changes of the Doom 1/2 Playstation port, such as the coloured lighting, the improved sound effects, and the creepy ambient music, but overall is received much less favourably than the original release and the Doom 1/2 Playstation port. The biggest problem is the majority of maps were cut completely, with the game only having 30 of the 85 maps between Master Levels/TNT/Plutonia, and of those, only a paltry six of Plutonia's 32 maps were included. The port also receives flak for completely lacking the Spider Mastermind (while she does exist in the game's data and shows up in the ending roll call, she wasn't put into any of the maps), for generally under-utilizing the high tier enemies (e.g. Barons and Mancubi each only show up in just one map, and Arachnotrons only show up in a few maps, while Hell Knights get overused in their place), enemies often being haphazardly cut out (e.g. some maps will have Shotgunners or Chaingunners removed without adding their weapon pickup, making their weapons unobtainable on a pistol-start run of the map), and for the back of its case lying about the number of maps included (with it claiming there were over 30 maps, despite having exactly that many). Fans would end up rectifying this by recreating all of the cut maps in the PSX style and with the Playstation's limitations in mind, and would make a mod that makes these recreated maps runnable on an actual Playstation. The fan-recreated maps also tended to do a better job at modifying enemy placement to satisfy the Playstation's limitations, keeping variety with the higher tier enemies and not removing enemies who were crucial to the map.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The most criticized aspect of TNT's map design is its abuse of hitscan enemies, having nearly as much total Chaingunners as Plutonia, while also having over triple the amount of Shotgunners and Zombiemen. Additionally, unlike Plutonia's rather clever yet mostly fair usage of hitscan enemies, TNT tends to just throw them into huge open areas, where the player has no real defence against their unavoidable hitscan fire other than praying that the RNG rolls are in their favour, making several maps feel like "hitscan hell". A side effect of this overuse is that Ultra-Violence is easier than Plutonia's Ultra-Violence thanks to safe cover strats providing safety, but Nightmare is nigh-impossible because respawning monsters make camping unviable; it took a lot longer for all of TNT's maps to be verifiably completed by anyone on Nightmare and have a single-segment Nightmare run completed (with some maps taking over a decade to complete, and it taking over two decades for anyone to complete the whole game on Nightmare in a single segment without using saves nor dying).
  • One aspect of Plutonia that is often disliked is its very inconsistent handling of damaging floors, as there are times where lava won't damage you, while there are times where regular old water will damage you, and there are maps where one type of liquid floor damages you in some spots and then doesn't damage you in other spots of that same map. As a result, without prior knowledge you can't possibly know which floors will damage you without Trial-and-Error Gameplay.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Chaingun ends up this in Plutonia, not because of the weapon being any worse itself (it is actually quite useful for sniping Chaingunners), but rather there is very little ammo for it, exacerbated when it's already so ammo inefficient as is. According to Dario Casali, he and his brother didn't respect the Chaingun at the time they made Plutonia, viewing it as far worse than the other non-Pistol guns, and so they neglected to provide much bullets in their maps (in fact, most of the ammo you get for it will be from all the Chaingunners you slay). It really says something when the final level starts off with the player being given every gun in the game except the BFG... or the Chaingun.
  • The Chainsaw also ends up this way for similar reasons to the Chaingun. It has a similar rate of damage to the Chaingun and unlimited use but is limited to melee range which isn't always feasible for the style of maps Plutonia has. You may find yourself using it to take out the occasional horde of isolated Pinky Demons or save ammo on lost souls, but the Berserk power up (if available) does all that too and can be used against more dangerous foes without locking you into place with your target.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Final Doom takes the difficulty from Doom II and ratchets it up to intimidating new heights by 1996 standards. This is especially true with The Plutonia Experiment, a ball-breakingly hard megawad that is filled to the brim with chaingunners that turns you into Swiss cheese with their rapid hitscan attack and Arch-Viles, whose attack hurts a lot and will hit you no matter what, unless you seek cover. Expect encounters with packs of Revenants who can tear you apart quickly if you're careless.
• Signature Scene:
  • Plutonia's Map 32: Go 2 It is a map that is well known even among those who never experienced it themselves, infamous for the army of high tier enemies it throws at the players, including over a dozen Cyberdemons, and for how it remixed Doom 2's tepid first map, Entryway, into such a fearsome map. The map would additionally serve as the prototypical inspiration for three prevailing mapping trends that persist to this day; mappers reserving their secret levels for the hardest maps they can muster, remixing old maps into more expansive and difficult maps, and spawning the genre of slaughter maps, very difficult maps where the player is faced with incredibly large hordes of monsters at once.
  • TNT's secret maps, Map 31: Pharaoh and Map 32: Caribbean, are nearly as famous as Plutonia's secret maps, being uniquely themed maps that look incredible by 1995 standards and still being fun to play. Especially the former, with its egyptian theme having been imitated by many other map makers (it's such a popular theme, there's a Doom wiki article about it). The fact that both levels were made by Dario Casali, one of the two mappers for Plutonia, certainly helps.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: A common view of The Plutonia Experiment. The game immediately throws the player into maps far more difficult than the typical fare of the other IWADs instead of trying to gradually build its difficulty up, bringing a rude awakening to first-time players whose prior experience was only or mostly with the IWADs, while its first few maps are also among Plutonia's weakest and ugliest maps, which can deter such players from grunting through them to see the rest of the game. Dario Casali would even admit that these first few maps are among the brothers' first creations or were reject maps they tried submitting to TNT: Evilution. Players that make it through that rough start generally end up enjoying Plutonia much more sometime around maps 4-6, as the maps become higher quality and more visually appealing, while the player becomes acclimated to the game's increased difficulty.
• Tear Jerker: A number of tracks such as the cover of "Legion Of The Lost" by Grave Digger as in Map 31: Pharaoh from TNT: Evilution is pretty depressing. Especially when it's combined with the image of Doomguy looking at the horizon◊ during the intermission screens, which sells the lonely atmosphere that the music portrays.
• That One Level:
  • The Plutonia Experiment: The whole WAD overall is noticeably more difficult than "Thy Flesh Consumed" in The Ultimate Doom. Chaingunners tend to be common and placed in inconvenient spots, and the very damaging Arch-Viles and Revenants are much more common than in Doom II.
    • "Map 5: Ghost Town" is a rude awakening and likely the hardest map of the first six intro maps. The map punishes players who are used to playing Doom without taking cover. The map has a central courtyard, with two more courtyards that are required for exiting the map. The south has nests filled with Chaingun Zombies who will kill you fast if you don't snipe them first, and a Spider Mastermind who isn't too bad due to the cover in the central courtyard. The North is very brutal if you don't expect it; a grand stairway leads up to the exit room but if you rush up there aimlessly, two Arch-Viles will lower from pillars to make your life terrifying, and more Chaingunners nests will be revealed in the same room. In addition, there is an arch-vile in an alcove that will never leave his hiding place, and you need to take him out in order to progress.
    • "Map 9: Abattoir" isn't too much of a handful at first, but once you reach the final stretch of the map, reaching the exit can be a real struggle. Chaingun Commandos in a sniper nest can turn you into burger fast, and if you didn't save the invulnerability power up just for this, it's even more of a pain. Playing on the original engine, retaliation is difficult here due to the lack of mouse aiming, and rushing in locks you in permanently and opens up some painful traps. Don't fall off the edges, or it's Game Over. Patience is a virtue.
    • "Map 11: Hunted" puts you in a maze with only a Super Shotgun and 14 Arch-Viles. There are no health pickups in the maze itself, so 2 hits, and you're dead. Oh, and if you want to get 100% kills on the map, not only will you have to kill every single Arch-Vile in the labyrinth, but you will also need to enter the trap teleport and kill the final four in a room with a special sector which will deplete the player's health and end the level once the player in question is near death. While you do get the BFG near the teleporter choice, you will still need to use it wisely as even a single room for error will rob you of the 100% completion of the level.
    • "Map 15: The Twilight" looks deceptively simple, but taking cover from enemy fire is near-mandatory. The hallways are very claustrophobic, and distant enemies are often able to attack through hard-to-see-through metal bars. Much of the pain in this map is from slowly sniping the enemies to make each room safe to navigate, but a nest of Chaingun Commandos are resurrected by hidden Arch-Viles indefinitely until the end, making the central hub unsafe to stay in.
    • "Map 29: Odyssey of Noises". The map is a Quicksand Box with a large city street to explore and not much in the way of sign posts. Without a strategy guide, it's very easy to find yourself spending a half-hour to an hour just looking for the first key wondering where in the hell you have to go. It gets easier after the first key is found, and modern source ports (a likely way to play the game) can show on the map where the locks can be found. That's not to say it's all bad as it's also regarded as an impressive city-style map and a nice sequel to Doom II's Downtown level, and its the penultimate level so an epic level like this is more likely to feel appropriate for helping conclude the level pack.
  • TNT: Evilution:
    • Map 8: Metal is not as difficult as the map that follows it, but it has you under attack by hitscan mooks in wide-open spaces. It's even worse on the DOS port due to Fake Difficulty from enemies appearing as pixels off in the distance, making it difficult to get a bead on what's shooting you. The final arena at the end ratchets up the difficulty further, as you'll be surrounded by the various Formers in a massive open area and be taking fire from all directions both up above and on your map. This map additionally has a notorious spike on Nightmare difficulty due to the aforementioned final area, where without proper preparation and a good deal of luck, the hitscanners would inevitably gradually wear the player down to death, with the complete lack of cover in such a massive room full of hitscanners, and there being several slow lifts the player must wait for, which prevents the player from clearing the room before enemies start resurrecting and waiting for these lifts makes the player a sitting duck for the hitscan barrage. Just because of this final room, this was the second-to-last IWAD map verifiably completed on Nightmare difficulty, with its difficulty on Nightmare only being exceeded by...
    • Map 9: Stronghold, a map notorious for being by far the most difficult map any of the official IWADs have on Nightmare difficulty, and it's already a rough ride on Ultra-Violence as is. It features a staggering 297 enemies — the highest of any official map — and 70% of those are hitscan enemies, including 68 Chaingunners. The map also requires the player to repeatedly backtrack through areas with very little cover, while windows open up and expose the player to enemies within the other areas, which is a really big problem when you're dealing with constantly resurrecting hitscan enemies that fire nonstop the instant they see you. As a result, the player must deal with being constantly shot at by numerous enemies that shoot instantly on sight, and whose fire cannot be dodged nor hidden from, making death a quick inevitability as your health is drained nonstop by this army of resurrecting hitscanners. This map is so difficult that it was considered humanly impossible to complete on Nightmare difficulty until it was beaten 15 years after the game's release, being the last of the official IWAD maps to have a confirmed completed Nightmare run, and even today, only a handful of players have actually verifiably finished it. Likewise, just because of this map, TNT: Evilution's entire campaign in a single segment run has only ever been completed by one person on Nightmare difficulty — a player named Zero Master, 20 years after its release.
    • "Map 14: Steel Works" can be a rough time thanks to an abundance of hitscan enemies. While not as dangerous as Map 9, it is still possible to run low on health which is very unfortunate due to a mandatory need to cross damaging floors and limited Rad Suits. Obtaining all the secrets also requires putting yourself in harm's way by crossing additional damaging floors.
    • "Map 27: Mount Pain" truly lives up to its name. It has an abundance of hitscan enemies — some of which are hidden behind fake walls — in long narrow passages, Revenants and their homing missiles chasing you through in wide-open areas, mandatory treks through winding tunnels full of damaging floors, and near the end the titular Mount Pain is covered with Lost Souls that will hunt you down through a massive trench. Furthermore, if you're playing a source port that counts Lost Souls as enemies, you need free-look and exceptional aim with your pistol to snipe them off the mountain and get 100% of the kills. Top all of this off with the last room with two Revenants, a Mancubus, a Chaingunner, and an Arch-Vile with little cover and some stray Lost Souls from the previous room, and a shortage of health throughout the map, and you have one hell of a painful map.
• That One Puzzle: TNT's Evilution's final map, Map 30: Last Call, is infamous for featuring a platform maze at the start, with each platform having a coloured torch on it, and should the player step on the wrong platform, they'll be instantly teleported on top of another instance of themselves through the "Voodoo Doll" exploit, telefragging themselves in the process. To know the right path, there's a series of coloured torches lined up along the wall of the starting area, and the order of the colours in the lined-up torches matches the correct order of the platforms the player must cross. At least it's at the start of the map, so no real progress will be lost by failing it, but nonetheless, it's hated by the player base, and the length of the puzzle makes it difficult to memorize the correct path (the correct sequence goes through 14 platforms, so the player must memorize a sequence of 14 colours to get past the maze or blatantly Save Scum through each step of the maze).
• Vindicated by History: The Plutonia Experiment was initially criticized for being simply a Mission-Pack Sequel to Doom II. However, the megawad drew notice overtime for its distinctive architectural style, difficult-but-fair gameplay, and — praised most of all — that the Doom II monsters are utilized inventively to maximize their threat: Chaingunners tend to be placed into guard towers to discourage players from rushing through maps blindly, Arch-viles have opportunities to make the player's life miserable by resurrecting the dead and sniping him if cover is not kept in mind, etcetera. The Plutonia approach to map design even inspired the Doom mapping community to make unofficial sequels that aim for Original Flavour, as well as inspiring megawads such as Alien Vendetta with its orchestrated and trap-oriented combat design.

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