Struggle: Antaresian Legacy
By antares031 - 33 Maps
Format: Limit Removing
[Download]
Started: April 22nd 2025
Finished: April 30th 2025
Status: Shelved
I hate feeling the way I do about Struggle. Antares is very much a fantastic level designer, his contributions to Eviternity 1 and 2 are some of my favorites from those wads, and Struggle itself also has phenomenal level design. Unfortunately, too much of a good thing is still too much. After 15 maps of Struggle, I eventually realized (after much frustration) that there is a very specific design formula for these maps. Start the player out with 3-4 different paths to go, spend 15 minutes looking through all of them to find the right one, finally get the first key and go straight for its door, get the next key, then get lost for another 10 minutes looking for something else you need to access the 3rd key, then go straight to the exit. All of Struggle's maps end up being the same headache inducing confusing techbase hellscape, but it's also 100% not the fault of the map design. Progression is rarely ever badly conveyed, and all the maps are still good in a vacuum, but every map ends up being the same 20-30 minute experience, all the same metallic gray techbases with really good music, it just gets really draining. When I go into a new map I wanna be excited for what it'll be, not dreading doing the same thing I just finished up doing. The enemy and weapon changes I'm a bit mixed on. I mostly like em, the powered up arsenal is fun to play with, and the custom enemies are cool, but having every enemy move at what seems like double speed can sometimes be a bit much. I really hate that I ended up dropping this, it's definitely high quality, but slogging through another 17 maps (the secret maps are mandatory in struggle) when I already started getting exhausted after 10 no longer feels worth it. Maybe one day...
Rating - ⭐⭐⭐½
Favorite/Least Favorite Map skipped because the WAD wasn't completed.