Before describing games and campaigns included in this release, I have to say that this current port is a masterclass of ports. Four campaigns (one of them is brand new one) + level editor and custom campaign with Steam Workshop support, multiple settings, including UI settings, 3 sets of soundtracks, alternate SFX sound, restored alternative enemies, that were cut in the original game, every level has designer's name written down. And they nerfed Monks, with option to undo it! It's absurd amount of love and care to a – let's admit it – mediocre shooter.

RotT is an interesting beast. It's hard to grade this game. One one hand, its revolutionary for its time because of the high variations, 3D elements and dynamic lighting. Oh, and one of the first games that allows you to dual wield pistols. But on the other, it's stuck in the past: Wolfenstein 3D engine, thus only 90 degrees walls; most of the locations are blending together; combat certainly feels like Wolfenstein 3D (not always, but mostly); low variety in enemies (5 out of 10 common enemies feels the same in their behavior and moves) unnecessary life and point system since game allows you to save. And all of this came out after Doom 2. Game still have certain appeal. Variety of explosion weapons, powerups and powerdown, ability to fly, gimmick to rocketjump before Quake (which is necessary for good ending in original campaign), it helps to differentiate this game from others.


The Hunt Begins is a short campaign with 11 levels, which was shareware version, showcasing environments, basic gameplay, some enemies, pover-ups. Nothing to say about it, it can become a little boring before final level, which introduce Triad Enforcer. Best enemy in the game, constant threat and annoyance. Most of the enemies you can stunlock in hurt animation so they cannot do a thing, but not this lad. And they throw 5 or 6 of them right at the fake end of the final level.

Dark War is the main original game, with 30+ levels. Pretty decent for the most part, some levels are interesting, some traps and enemy placement is engaging, but this package is a little uneven. One level will take you 10 to 15 minutes, short, tightly designed and sometimes even beautiful, but another level will be tediously long, confusing to navigate with very detailed map, sometimes enemy placement is way too dick-ish and some secrets are almost impossible to find without humping every wall. I was growing tired by the end of the campaign. Highlights: little gimmicks like heating food with explosives to recover more HP, bosses, especially the NME (i have no idea how people back in 1995 – with little to no experience in shooters – dealt with him), platforming and gimmicky sections like The Room level.

Extreme RotT, at least in this port, is more interesting. Yeah, most levels are gimmicks, but because of it, levels are shorter and more focused than original ones. Well, i didn't play it on max difficulty because I still have some love for myself, only on Normal, and that made experience way more tolerable. Because this is a cruel campaign. Most of the traps in Dark War designed to caught you off-guard and give you some room to deal with ambush. Traps and even normal encounters in Extreme RotT designed to kill you. This is very unique, a lot of staff you see here feels like user created levels that found out about certain tricks and gimmicks in level editor. But no, this is pretty much equivalent to commercial release of Kaizo Mario World, and Tom Hall and Joe Siegler are laughing at your misery. And funny I mentioned Mario, game sometimes has a certain feel of 3D platforming before 3D, in a good and in a very bad way. I still had more fun with this than with Dark Wars, levels are never overstaying their welcome, they are mostly short, I think this format suits RotT better. But Lord help you to go through levels blindly or without cheats. Hmm, maybe one day I should do it on hardest difficulty...

The Hunt continues is a brand new campaign from New Blood stuff. Good, if a little bit long, levels, most of them wrap around itself pretty nicely, fine traps and enemy placement. Showcasing some new stuff like new lighting settings and effects. Very good addition.


I'd say i gave this game too much time (30 hours to complete every campaign), but I do not regret it. Maybe it's better to appreciate this game through videos, since game can drag on in some places. Watch Civvie 11 or something idk. Oh, and listen to the soundtrack from Lee Jackson (and a few from Bobby Prince), this is 10/10 soundtrack. And Andrew Hulshult's 2013 RotT soundtrack is a banger, also included in this port. Maybe not the best game, but pretty interesting experience.

I will slowly pick away at EROTT but for now I'm saying it is complete. It's a pretty unique shooter that has a lot of good going for it though I think all the tanky enemies while having to use the MP40 gets quite tedious. The new episode suffers from that the least as the map creators recognized this and provided a nice cathartic monk killing level. It's cool that it's basically an advanced Wolfenstein 3D 2, I just wish there was a shotgun because again killing things can be tedious, as well as almost everything being a hitscanner. Also some of the most annoying (but funny) sounds in gaming. DOOM is my FPS GOAT but wow this OST is probably better than DOOM.

Amazing remaster of a already great game, easily the best way to play this game in my opinion. There's a lot of content here, and most of it is good, although I didn't really care for the shareware episode too much, it felt too slow paced and didn't give me enough weapons and enemies to play with. The main part of the game is great, and there's a new episode called The Hunt Continues that's pretty good as well. It took me about 20 hours to play the shareware episode, the main game, and the new episode while getting all the steam achievements and I think that the game overstays its welcome if you do all that. But the main part of the game is easily my favourite part and it alone is worth the price in my opinion. I also loved how you can use the soundtrack from the Rise of the Triad remake, which was awesome. I will say though, that the new lighting option makes the game harder by restricting how far you can see while enemies can still shoot you just as easily as before from far away, I had to turn this setting off because it made the game much harder for minimal gain. All in all, this game is weird and I love it for that, I highly recommend it.

Full disclosure, this review is about the main game of rise of the triad and not the several expansions added in this port or the port itself. I generally consider myself a fan of New Blood and this port is once again another excellent addition to their catalog of great games, it has basically everything a fan of this game could ever want and about hundred times more than that.

Rise of the triad is an utterly bizarre collection of ideas and concepts haphazardly stitched together in a Frankenstein's monster of a game that only sometimes accidentally stumbles into fun gameplay. Most of this game's enemy roster is hit scan which results in most encounters feeling very unengaging as this severely limits your options on approaching encounters. Not to mention the level design only feels like a moderate step up from that of wolfenstine 3d, while not as monotonous and labrythian as that game was, levels often have a stream of consciousness vibe to them that feel more like the designer was just making them up as they go along as opposed to something that's actually layed out well and feels fun to run though. (Apparently the expansion levels are better but I didn't play them.) Despite this however the weapons for the most part are very fun to use, especially any explosive weapon which the devs seemed to have taken the time to make as spectacular as possible. Which is a pretty consistent theme of the game, rott might not he the most well designed or even competently put together games of the era but it's developer's enthusiasm is made extremely apparent from all the wacky and bizarre ideas they were able to stuff the game with, resulting in a fun and weirdly carefree atmosphere that's admittedly a little infectious. I was not as huge of a fan of this game as I thought I would be after hearing people in the retro shooters community talk it up, however I understand how a game this willing to go crazy with it could stick out in the minds of so many people all these years later. I wish even half the triple a titles that come out today had even half the enthusiasm that rott has.

Another remarkable remaster from Nightdive, but I really want to commend NewBlood for their contributions as well. NewBlood focused on restoring the cut enemies, putting together the new episode and working on QoL features like the extra HUD, which really elevates this remaster as an ultimate edition.

The new episode is great if you're into ROTT's brand of level design and uses some more advanced features as well as taking advantage of the verticality that's possible with the jump pads and platforms of the game. I am surprised at how flexible KEX is sometimes, everything in this feels right, from the rendering to the movement. I don't love ROTT nearly as much as other people do but asides from a near complete overhaul like the Quake II remaster, which I feel like would just mess up the personality of this game, there's nothing more I could ask from this.

It's true that nobody loves ROTT more than NewBlood and Nightdive and I'm really glad they're the ones who got their hands on this after it got taken away from 3DR, if you're a fan you can't miss this release. Not completed cause I'm not playing Extreme ROTT.

review of the OG maps here

besides the quality of life features and the great port, the Ludicrous Edition of Rise of the Triad includes an all new 23 level campaign for the game, made by some people at NewBlood and even an OG dev (i think, not that sure); it's called The Hunt Continues.

in many ways, it mirrors the original Dark War campaign with the same bosses at the same points and similar themes in each episode, but the maps here are somehow even wackier than the original ones. some are pretty difficult, others are just a little gimmicky (like David Szymansky's wide open foggy level) but most end up touching on the things that made the original special for me. sometimes they are too combat-focused but not always. even many of the boss levels are mostly based on exploration or trap-filled obstacle courses.

since some of the mappers here worked on the 2013 ROTT reboot (such as Indefatigable's Leon Zawada), they touch upon an odd homage to both the original game and the reboot's more linear progression. i usually get fatigued while playing those old school FPS expansions, but since ROTT's formula is so unique and followed upon creatively here, it wasn't a problem at all! the port's new features, like the ability to place different regular textures on the same wall, are used to create a denser atmosphere that makes the levels feel more alive. the halls you traverse, while still claustrophobic, now provide a wider sense of space. this campaign is almost a reimagining of the original because of these constant nods and rethreads, but since it's shorter, it can work like a different but still familiar revisit for old fans.

The Hunt Continues was a great time. it even made me pumped enough to want to make some of my own levels for the revamped level editor. i'm always impressed that the old school FPS community has reached a point where only a few games are left inaccessible and even some less remembered titles get this 5-star treatment. even the titles that don't get official remasters or ports still get great fan-made ones. besides that, we still get some all new games with fresh ideas and interpretations! i could gush about the state of the genre all day.... i hope that's eventually the case for some other genres.

After making it my mission to play through as many iconic FPS games as possible, I gave this game a go shortly after the release of the remaster and hated it, resolving to never play the damned thing again.

Fast forward a few months and I gave it another try, and I'm glad I did.

First of all, I love everything about how the game looks, feels and sounds. Digitized actors are a fetish of mine, and I adore the bizarre and often hellish liminal spaces the game makes you inhabit.

My first issue is the weapons. They look and feel good, generally. But the machinegun is so much more useful than anything else in the game that you'll only be switching off it if you have ammo to spare for one of your special weapons (almost all of which are explosives.)

This means that while it's cool to dual-wield pistols, you never feel the need to. And many of the more interesting special weapons are lost in the crowd amidst one another, reduced to serving the same purpose of nuking the stronger enemies on sight.

Then there's the level design which is labyrinthian, obsessed with hidden switches and invisible touchplates and obnoxious traps.

That being said, the game does several things I adore, particularly with the way it handles having multiple playable characters. And the powerups, while often annoying on purpose (shrooms and elasto come to mind) are a fun novelty.

There's also so much character to everything, for better or for worse. The game is ridiculous and doesn't take a single moment of itself seriously. And I never got tired of seeing a cultist get down on their knees and beg for mercy.

It also has an absolute banger of a soundtrack.

In summary, I find myself endeared to the game despite it's problems. And I just might play it again someday with another character or try out the new episode.

It’s ludicrous! A flawed gem of a mid-90s shooter given the level of spit and polish that its ambition (if not its execution) deserved. What we’re left with here is still a game that has real personality, especially in the first full episode as you curse the level designers for their nasty tricks and traps.

Sure, it doesn’t hold up as well as something like Blood, but it’s finally getting the recognition it is well past due.

Steam Deck report - Runs great as you’d expect, while sipping power. I’d probably still be more comfortable with a mouse but it’d be a good excuse to get that soundtrack going through some quality headphones!

RoTT is an often overlooked shooter that's absolutely worth playing and this new port makes it more accessible than ever. Yes it has some rough spots but it's brimming with personality. The whole game consists of ex-id employees making the most unhinged shooter they could think of doing the craziest map designs they weren't allowed to during their time working on Wolf 3D and Doom. Yeah some maps are kind of a slog but gosh dang do I admire their approach of just doing whatever the hell they thought would be fun without any consideration to the player.

Another great Night Dive remaster, but this is them polishing kind of a turd here compared to the other boomer shooters they’ve remastered such as Blood, Doom 64, or Powerslave. Rise of the Triad originally was supposed to be a Wolf 3D sequel before Tom Hall left id and man does it show; this game feels more archaic than Doom and it came out two years later. Rise of the Triad exemplifies most of the flaws people levy at classic boomer shooters, its obtuse key hunting in samey labyrinthine corridors; if the in-game map wasn’t such a massive QoL that highlighted pressure plates and what areas open up I probably would have dropped this game. The game doesn’t haven’t much of a consistent aesthetic, it’s very slapdash and amateurish, and so is its game design in general. Feels like they just threw everything at a wall to see what stuck and it doesn’t really work super great. Your arsenal is absolutely anemic, I mainly used the infinite ammo MP40, because most other weapons are pickups with limited ammo so you really just want to save them for the bullet sponge enemies like the Enforcers. The powerups are mostly useless trolls aside from God and Dog mode and are best ignored aside from those two. There’s also a live system that just feels tacked on because you’re better off just quicksaving because dying just sends you to pistol start at the beginning of the level.

The soundtrack is indeed quite a banger though.

I did have enough fun with it and I don’t regret getting this game at all, especially because as I said, Night Dive did great work, but I had my fill after beating the shareware campaign and Dark War. I’d only recommend this if you already a fan of this game or if you’re a boomer shooter fan who’s already played the better games of the era.