suffers a pretty large amount from having doom 2 demon numbers but missing two enemies present in doom 2 (revenant/chaingunner), causing the levels to be stuffed full of barons/hell knights which becomes repetitive extremely quickly.

even on the highest difficulty which is the equivalent to UV in doom 1/2 (which i of course played on, ultra-violence is the only way to play doom), the game is far too generous with pick-ups, including the normally RARE invulnerability. this game will just toss you invulns in plain sight as if to say "hey, we realize a lot of these encounters are tedious or otherwise annoying! here's a free win button!"

pain elementals are back with a vengeance. i think this is the most egregious incarnation of them in ANY doom game. they spit out lost souls almost every second, and lost souls in this game are far more aggressive and quick than in previous games, and do more damage to boot. it doesn't really matter that they take less damage to kill when it seems as if pain elementals spawn one every second. one lost soul charge will do about 20-30 damage on Watch Me Die! and they will do it over and over and over. lost souls are BY FAR the most dangerous enemy in this game and it isn't particularly close.

many of the puzzles in these levels aren't immediately obvious, i.e. not at fucking all, and there were times where i would spend 10 minutes doing all the classic doom shit you do when you're not sure how to progress in the level to no avail. however i'll chalk that up to my own incompetence over it being the fault of the level designers.

i realize i've spent a fairly large chunk of this review tearing into this game, but honestly i did love it quite a lot. MANY of the levels are annoying but they don't feel like straight up shit to play unlike a lot of the levels in doom 2, which is my favorite of the bunch. everyone and their mother knows that this game has a brilliant atmosphere and art direction, with a much moodier look than in the other games. this can be observed in the default brightness being almost pitch-black in the original north american n64 release.

overall i would pretty strongly recommend this game to classic doom fans, just not on the highest difficulty. i found the experience more annoying than difficult, largely.

I would not say this game is bad by any means, it just sort of felt unremarkable to me. I will give it credit in a few areas such as enemy design, weapon design, and atmosphere. T‎‎‎he new, unsettling look of the enemies was a step up compared to how they looked in the original Doom games. All of the original weapons make a return in this game, along with a new powerful energy weapon called the "Unmaker." While I was really disappointed that there was no cool soundtrack, the droning sounds of the UAC facility and unnerving ambience of the Hell levels (which even sampled a crying baby at one point) formed a sufficiently creepy atmosphere. Some of the things I really didn't enjoy was what I considered to be bland, repetitive, and maze-like level design, and especially the final boss. Overall, completion of this game took way less time when compared to other games in the series, so I am thankful for that.‎

Doom 64 es un juego que busca centrarse en la ambientación sombría de la saga, presente en algunas secciones de los primeros juegos, sin dejar de lado el gameplay tan divertido que la caracteriza; el resultado: uno de los juegos más hermosos y controversiales de la franquicia.
Midway aprovecha bastante bien las capacidades técnicas de la N64 para dotar a sus niveles de animaciones y visuales más imaginativas que en títulos anteriores, desde los tenebrosos pasillos de la estación marciana a los paisajes oníricos del infierno. Logrando muy bien la ambientación que se propone en todo momento, siendo imposible no quedarse con las visuales de algún mapa en la mente.
Lamentablemente serían las mismas capacidades de la N64 que limitarían el gameplay del juego; debido a la escasa memoria que poseían los cartuchos de la consola se realizaron diversos recortes al título de Midway.
El peor de estos fueron los enemigos recortados, limitando bastante la variedad de encuentros en comparación al anterior juego. Llega a hacerse demasiado cansado que la mayoría de encuentros "difíciles" del juego, más que nada por la mitad de este, recurran a usar los mismos grupos de barones infernales que solo tanquean y pegan muy fuerte usando los mismos proyectiles simplistas que sus hermanos menores. Y escribo "difíciles" porque este juego es el más fácil de los clásicos, el carecer estos enemigos más complejos hace que el gameplay se vuelva menos dinámico y más repetitivo, junta esto con el backtracking que llegan a tener ciertos niveles por la mitad del juego y la experiencia pasa de ser "acción frenética con descansos en medio" a "acción frenética con momentos aburridos en medio".

It's baffling how out of the classic Doom games, only 1 is good. 2 Is too big for its own good, with a scale that does not fit the gameplay, and this one either falls into the same trap (it even just reuses some Doom 2 levels) or shoots itself in its own foot with new design approaches.
The shotguns have worse and lifeless reload animations, the overall redesign of a lot makes it feel like a cheap knockoff more than anything else and the atmosphere does not mesh with the game.
Levels are more confusing than ever, and they decided to adapt something from Quake - where you have to shoot buttons sometimes in respect to a 3D environment. Only you cannot look up and down like in Quake, so the game may ask you to find a spot where you match the height of the button and then shoot it. Good luck even figuring that out after wandering the empty halls in confusion for a while.
Rounded up with a final boss that is either ridiculously difficult or easy depending on if you found some secret levels. Seems like it is only a balanced fight when doing one or two of the three secrets, as otherwise you are either both overwhelmed and weak or underwhelmed and overpowered.

Is Doom 64 truly 'the real Doom 3'? I mean, maybe. It's a different Doom, but still Doom as far as I'm concerned.

The map designs and frequency of key/switch based objectives therein make me think of Metroid progression. These levels are slower, with little to no flexibility with which to take varying routes through. They don't feel as much like they invite speedrunning like the DOS classics.

Combat is still unmistakably Doom, if way too reliant this time on Hell Knights. Variety is the spice of life in Doom combat scenarios, and this game would've done well to remember that more often. I don't mourn for the loss of the Chaingunner or Arch-vile though lmao. Lost Souls were remarkably annoying here, somehow even more so than in either of the originals (perhaps to make up for the enemy types that didn't make the cut.)

I suppose the history of arguing whether or not Doom was intended to evoke fright and horror alongside a heavy metal power fantasy is rich enough that you can come to your own conclusions regarding the aesthetic change for this game. You might vibe with it, you might not. If you'd prefer a more consistent experience to the original forms of the first two games, 'Doom 64 For Doom II' is a mod that may be worth looking into.

What remains unique to this game though is secret levels serving real function beyond novelty. Eternal's Slayer Gates and the Unmaykr as the reward for their completion aren't subtle about being inspired by this game--and frankly don't live up to the legend either. The original Unmaker, especially when buffed by Demon Keys, is ridiculous, and makes a complete joke out of the final boss when all 3 keys are gathered. (The Demon Keys themselves also deactivate the demon spawners in the arena btw, isolating the boss for its absolute destruction even further. It's absurd.)

If nothing else, Doom 64 is definitely interesting and different, and worth giving a go for that reason alone. And who knows, maybe you'll even come away thinking of it as the real Doom 3. I'd say it earns it, all things considered.