I feel like this expansion was made without how Quake like, works, in mind. Its trying to be a much faster paced shooter than what Quake was and I kinda wish it had kept the pace of the original. Its not terrible but its just not what I liked about Quake’s main campaign. I also feel like the further in the expansion goes the worse the level design gets even if the actual aesthetic is much more in like with base game quake than Scourge of armagon was. I think over half of episode 2 is just “press 4 switches to unlock the final gate” which felt insanely repetitive. Also the final boss just, is borderline nonfunctional. Its just extremely boring except for the one time you get hit and lose like your entire healthbar; which you can then immediately refill. I just don’t think this was designed very well is what I’m trying to say. If a few things were changed it could have been something; but as is Dissolution of Eternity is just almost fine but leaning more towards just kinda bad.

4.5/10

DOOMATHON entry #7/20
List: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Mariofan717/list/doom--quake-campaigns-ranked/

Where Scourge of Armagon chose to take the dark fantasy theming to more eccentric places in its latter two episodes, Dissolution of Eternity aims to do the same with the premise of travelling between dimensions, having a greater variety of level themes across both time and space.

What results is the wildest theming seen in any of the official content for Quake 1 accompanying some consistently overlong maps and fascinating design choices. I personally didn't find any of it too overwhelming and still had a lot of fun, but I can't blame anyone for wanting to pass on extra long maps in which the ground sometimes quakes(!) for some godforsaken reason, and "new" weapons that are almost exclusively higher-damage variants of existing ones. Although definitely not as much of a must play as the previous mission pack, I found it to be well worth revisiting both for the creative bright spots and for completion's sake.

Cross-posted on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariofan717/status/1748160742833213893

The second Quake expansion, this one developed by Rogue Entertainment of Strife and American McGee's Alice fame. Not quite as much of a success as Scourge of Armagon, but not awful. Scourge had a little more creative flair with the story and the new weapons/enemies and the level design, even if the execution was a little off. This one doesn't really have any new weapons, just new ammo types for all of the basic Quake weapons (except the shotgun), which are all kind of annoying to switch between. The new enemies are mostly palette swaps of enemies from the basic Quake game with slightly different abilities. The most notable ones are the floating swords (kind of like the knight enemies but without an actual knight holding the sword) and the "Wraths" (Scrags wearing grim reaper robes that throw heat-seeking projectiles at you that are like the Vore projectiles except much faster and basically impossible to avoid). This one has more bosses, but they mostly suck, especially the dragon at the end. They also added this very annoying earthquake mechanic where sometimes everything will just shake around and you won't really be able to control anything for a few seconds. Very annoying, I don't know what they were thinking with that.

I kind of liked the variety to the level aesthetics, like how some of them are Egyptian themed and some of them are Aztec themed, but otherwise a pretty bland map pack. Still decently fun to play while listening to old Your Kickstarter Sucks episodes, but I'd rather play the base game or Scourge of Armagon over this.