Eviternity II
By Dragonfly et al. - 36 Maps
Format: MBF21
[Download]
Started: February 23rd 2025
Finished: February 27th 2025
Status: Completed
fucking masterpiece.
There is SO much right with Eviternity 2. Level design is consistently fantastic throughout, the chapter themes are even better than the first game, and the MUSIC. THE MUSIC. All the songs done for Eviternity 2 are incredible, but Tristan Clark's songs eclipse everything by a ridiculous margin. Dust Devil's desert-y jam, Velocity's unwavering excitement and push-forward pace, the Floating Islands' cool use of Japanese instruments, Downpour's somber but still encouraging vibe, and the absolute slam dunk that is the final boss theme. it's just, such a good WAD.
Chapter 1 is a great opener, the return to the heaven theme from the first game's finale but now corrupted and decaying is great. Map 1's use as basically just a cutscene is a great tone setter, and the rest of the chapter continues to be great. The gore nest type arenas in map 3 are really cool, the secret level does a great job of introducing the Perforator, and map 5 is both a great sendoff to the heaven area for those who played the first game, and a great closer to the opening act of this vastly expanded adventure.
Chapter 2's desert theme does a lot to make itself stand out thanks to some cool architecture, map9's surprisingly awesome, and map 32 is just, absolutely perfect. The scenery is beautiful, fall's already my favorite season and I'm a huge fan of tech-y buildings constructed onto mountainsides so it just works. Gameplay HITS the whole way through, making your way up the mountain cutting through hitscanners with rockets and the chaingun, then the pinky stampede on the bridge, and the crazy ass slaughtery fight in the dam's center where you can flip the switches to vaporize everything on the water. And the MUSIC is just, so, EVERYTHING. It's so catchy, never stops driving you forward, perfectly backs up the action no matter where you are. This might just be my favorite map of all time. Map 10's a bit frustrating, introducing one of the strongest custom enemies in probably the hardest way possible, but it's probably more doable with hindsight.
Chapter 3's brutalist megastructures mixed in with serene lush nature makes it my favorite area visually across both games, and it has some of my favorite maps in the entire wad. Map 11's concrete building in the side of a mountain, map 12's ever evolving arena, and the calm and beautiful puzzle garden of map14. Map 33 also isn't actually that hard, shut up. /j It doesn't end off super perfectly, map 15 kinda drops the ball at the end but it doesn't do enough to stop this from being my favorite chapter overall.
Chapter 4's redo of the medieval theme is great, though it's probably the weakest chapter overall, but the secret map is one of the most beautiful places I've seen in doom, map 19's quaint village is a great time, and the colossal castle in map 20 makes for a cool finale.
Chapter 5's frozen techbases hit me in the same way as chapter 3's mix of nature and blocky buildings, the secret map is great despite somewhat underusing it's gimmick, and map 24's setpiece is nothing but fantastic. Map 25 isn't the greatest finale unfortunately, but it does its job.
And then there's Chapter 6. Map 26 is, to put it bluntly, not great. The concept is nice, but the challenge rooms range from being annoying and uninteresting, or unclear and massively frustrating. The final fight doesn't redeem that map either, as with the right challenges cleared you can effectively just run around the arena like a headless chicken while the enemies kill each other in the confusion. It's a horrible introduction to the chapter, and really should've been reworked and given a different map slot. Thankfully everything else brings it right back to the usual standard of quality, map 27 would've made for a much better first impression, and map 29 is a great but admittedly underwhelming penultimate map. But then, tucked away behind the hardest to find secret exit, is map 36. Kenosis. Kenosis is a breathtakingly incomprehensible hellscape, a soul crushing web of interconnected demonic structures, each with their own devilish challenge inside, all required to prove your strength and reach the central chapel to cleanse this realm of whatever corruption has taken hold here. The opening room isn't particularly nice, but once you're done there, working your way across the desolate cliffs to clear each room is a grueling but satisfying task, and the finale in the central building is a fantastic capstone to this epic journey. While the song used for this map isn't really my thing, it's perfectly fitting, and it's title "I Wish I Was Where I Was When I Wished I Was Here ", perfectly captures the dread of realizing what you have to accomplish to leave this place after all the work it took to get here. And that final boss. Doom usually doesn't have good final bosses, a weakness of doomguy's fairly limited moveset, but Eviternity 2 proves you can still make it work. The Origin has a cool moveset that expands as the fight progresses, going from just projectiles and an archvile flame, to collapsing the floor underneath you, and phase 3's bfg blast and the projectile storm that blots out the sky itself. Supplemented by squads of astral and nightmare cacodemons between rounds, the fight is a fantastic conclusion to your world hopping adventure, and by far the best final boss fight the doom engine has ever had.
This whole thing is a legendary experience, and the entire devteam should forever be proud of what they've made here.
Rating - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Favorite Map - Map 32: "Charge"
Least Favorite Map - Map 26: "Myriad"
Honorable mentions to Map 11: "Titan", Map 14: "Equanimity", Map 34: "Freya", Map 24: "Temeraire" and Map 36: "Kenosis", they're all way too good and could've easily taken the top spot had Charge not absolutely stolen my heart from the very start.