TropicHELL
By lilywaves et al. - 24 Maps
Format: MBF21
[Download]
Started: September 28th 2025
Finished: October 4th 2025
Status: Completed
Well, it sure is a community project. TropicHELL is a very weird overall package. The first episode is fairly chill and promises a pretty good time, episode 2 is full of a bunch of very amateur maps that are extremely unfun, and episode 3 fulfills the promise set by episode 1 by having all the best maps, before the wad takes a nosedive in quality for the last two maps. Map 20 is an exhausting and confusing hour+ long adventure nightmare of unclear progression and a lack of real identity where I noclipped to the exit after having found all the keys and guns except what I needed and had no idea how to open the path forward, and map 21 is a janky icon of sin fight that seemingly didn't work right (though I'll once again give it a pass on account of me running everything through GZdoom which does tend to break things. There's also 2 secret maps, one weird seemingly joke one you can find in the credits map that I didn't bother playing, and one normal one that I missed before beating the wad, but it unfortunately takes place entirely under the ocean (which unsurprisingly triggered my thalassophobia) and while I could probably push through it since it's not that bad, I just wanna be done at this point. It's not the worst mapset I've played, and there are some great maps hidden in here, but the huge quality downgrades in E2 and near the very end make this one hard to recommend.
Rating - ⭐⭐⭐
Favorite Map - Map 16: "Lunar Waterfalls"
Least Favorite Map - Map 20: "Lost City of Doom"