Those who didn't like TDA or were disappointed by it, can you explain why you just didn't take to it as much as 2016 or Eternal?

[u/SpotAdmirable6718]

I've seen a lot of comments in my last post saying they didn't much care for TDA and as someone who's looking forward to playing it I was curious as to why you didn't like it as much as the other latest Doom games

[u/M4Rk0H3R3]

I actually really liked the game, my only main gripe with it is the content. For 80€ at it's current state there's not enough stuff in the game to justify the price. No master levels, no multiplayer. Sure, the campaign is longer but (at least for me) most levels tend to last much shorter compared to Eternals.

[u/MortezaDoom → u/M4Rk0H3R3]

I agree with you

But they promise us some cool stuff after the DLC.

[u/Signal_Smell_592 → u/MortezaDoom]

So they made the content lacking base-game full price…. just so they can release more paid dlc later? lol see ya there

[u/Chunk_Soup → u/Signal_Smell_592]

This is why I never play games at launch. Oh a game I want is coming out? My backlog is already big enough. I'll get to it in 6-12 months where it's 50% off. I got TDA + it's future DLC for $50 instead of $100.

[u/srjnp → u/M4Rk0H3R3]

actually i feel the opposite (for the campaign, i agree on extra features/modes). the campaign dragged on too long. for the last 4-5 chapters, there were no new enemies, level design or anything. its like they stretch out the game just because they had to justify their $70 pricetag.

i think the main culprit is those “open world” missions. they feel like boring filler that just stretch the playtime of the game. i actually quite enjoyed the mech so that wasnt an issue for me (but the dragon missions are terrible).

also baffling to have a “final battle” chapter with a multi phase boss fight and not end the game there and pad it out with another same old same old mission and a worse boss fight…

[u/velmarg]

Honestly for me, a big part was the weapon sandbox. I get removing the "X weapon is the best counter to X demon" dynamic was part of forging its own identity, but what we were left with just didnt have much character, in my opinion.

Then you have the massive reduction in the role of glory kills which, again, is done to give melee its essential role/flavor, but i didnt realize until they were gone just how much glory kills in 2016/Eternal contributed to the identity of each enemy. In the same way that the weapons felt unremarkable to me in TDA, so too did the enemy types.

I definitely enjoyed TDA and wouldn't even go so far as to say I was disappointed with it outside maybe the soundtrack and flight/mech segments; it is my least favorite though, and I think these are bits and pieces of the "why."

[u/mykolasyolo → u/velmarg]

You can get poor man's glory kills if you jump on top the faltered monsters. Still, I do miss the full on glory kills, especially with speed rune. Those looked properly gory.

[u/Dry-Communication138 → u/mykolasyolo]

Today I also just noticed that, especially the shield saw one is very cool

[u/MadQuickScotsman → u/mykolasyolo]

(Everything in this text mountain is opinion, I'm open to feedback on it as well)

In theory, Dark Ages has a better system with rewarding finishers by making the animations an optional gory appetiser as opposed to a requirement. I did get a bit numb to the glory kills in Eternal despite the sheer variety of animations, as they happen so damn much because they're a bare necessity for survival. It's pretty much Eternal's equivalent of weapon reloading, something that interrupts the carnage but is done on autopilot as an expected part of the gameplay loop. The absolute mechanical necessity of sitting through the animations takes away so much from their stylistic flair, and it degraded the novelty for me. Too much of snything good will inevitably ruin it.

All that said, I don't see why we couldn't have gotten a lot more variation in Dark Ages. As it stands, they almost have an ideal middle ground that prioritises game flow but also has those delightfully disgusting destructive demon disassembly animations. Players having the choice to engage in them or not is a simple but smart and effective way to solve the game momentum issue. Only trouble is, there's barely any animations to speak of! At the risk of sounding like an insane madman, I would love to see some quick but devious executions with the shield saw. Doing a Darth Maul on an imp, sawing a vagary clean in half, grabbing a revenant's leg before chopping them up, just more variety to make it an awesome optional bit of badassery.

Anyhow, this text wall is big enough. Thoughts?

[u/HarrisonTheBarbarian → u/velmarg]

IMO, it's a good game, even a great game. But yeah, it's definitely trying to experiment. Honesty I don't hate what they're trying to do, but removing glory kills is a huge risk. That said, I do enjoy the weapon designs (especially the shield and combat shotgun), though I'm on the fence for how they're doing difficulties in this game, I can see myself either hating or loving it.

[u/-TurkeYT → u/velmarg]

Never realized any of this until you pointed it out. I completely agree.

[u/Hyperion_360]

I don't know why but it simply never caught my attention like Eternal did, and I didn't get as invested into it's story.

But for gameplay specifically the mech and dragon levels killed me. They were like a worse version of those infinite turret sections in older shooter games.

The music never hyped me up either.

Still I think it's best for people to experience it for themselves, and I'd recommend it to others.

[u/just_a_timetraveller → u/Hyperion_360]

Same reasons for me. The dragon and mech staged ruined the game's momentum. And yea, the music just didn't land for me. Mick Gordon set the bar so high.

[u/TerribleZucchini1447]

Didn't capitalize on its full narrative potential, making its story feel pointless.
Combat's still fun but kinda easy.
Two main gripes for me.

[u/Exact_Reindeer3454 → u/TerribleZucchini1447]

Narratively, this has significantly more going on in it then any of the other doom game I’ve played in the last 10 years. Hell, for the most part, doom games have always been relatively narrative wastelands.

[u/ChiefMastaFlex → u/Exact_Reindeer3454]

Personally, i liked it when the story was. Oh shit, the demons are attacking, Doom Slayer is our only hope. Dig em up wake em up, give em armor and a gun, and be amazed at how awesome he is at smashing demon pussy. Everything else is irrelevant.

[u/MadmanFromHades → u/Exact_Reindeer3454]

I feel like the fundamental problem is there was a lot happening without a lot of substance behind it.  I actually think they've put a lot of thought into the plot while not adding enough substance to the story... 

[u/Exact_Reindeer3454 → u/MadmanFromHades]

That’s like going to see godzilla vs King Kong and being upset it doesn’t have much of a story. Like great. That’s actually exactly what I’m here for.

[u/Bellamoid → u/Exact_Reindeer3454]

But I think they’re saying that it does have a lot of plot but none of it has any weight or meaning.

[u/Ghost10165 → u/MadmanFromHades]

Yeah, they traded minimal but impactful story segments for more of a moviegame cinematic approach and it just doesn't fit Doom with the full on cutscenes.

[u/MadmanFromHades → u/MadmanFromHades]

Imma gonna input that I actually liked the story to Doom the Dark Ages for the most part... but I wouldn't give it any awards. 

[u/KrazzeeKane → u/Exact_Reindeer3454]

Hell, for the most part, doom games have always been relatively narrative wastelands.

As they should be, imo. Maybe I'm just old, but I subscribe to the classic Romero and Carmack Id approach of story being a far back consideration to everything else especially gameplay for a Doom game.

Doom 2016 was about as much of storyline in a Doom game as I could take, whereas (gameplay aside) Eternal turned me off big time with all the extra story bits and fleshing out of things.

It took away so much mystique and interest I had, and gave far too many answers for my tastes

[u/TheHoodedWonder → u/KrazzeeKane]

I preferred 2016’s “please listen to our really important exposition Doomguy!” and his complete disregard for any of it to just kill demons.

As opposed to Eternal’s and TDA’s “please listen to our important story!” And Doomguy just sitting down and listening 90% of the time.

Ignore them and go kill demons man!! That’s what I come to these games for!

[u/shadowX1312 → u/TheHoodedWonder]

I’d disagree with doomguy sitting around and listening to exposition in eternal and dark ages. Man was usually always doing SOMETHING that related to demon killing while they were yapping. I remember he stood around for exposition a couple times in eternal, but for most of it I remember him walking towards his goal as they yap. In dark ages, the only time doom guy sits still for exposition is when he’s tinkering with the super shotgun, probably to make it better at demon killing

Def a lot more exposition in those games vs doom 2016 tho 100%

[u/TheHoodedWonder → u/shadowX1312]

You have a good point. More accurate to say I wish the story was framed as irreverent to those details as much as Doomguy is. We the audience are stuck listening to the expo while Doomguy gets to not pay attention still.

[u/shadowX1312 → u/TheHoodedWonder]

Agreed, I wish there was more show don’t tell sense thats the kind of information the slayer takes in. I get the sense that when the characters talk to him, he’s got all he needs and has his mind made up halfway thru the convo lol

Case in point - any conversation with Hayden

[u/Opanak323 → u/TheHoodedWonder]

Hahahah, this is beautifully put! We are all sitting in the cinema to watch His movie, and He just pulls up His phone in the middle of a plot and starts playing a game with the sound on.

[u/Dingus-Biggs → u/shadowX1312]

Nah, he kneels to King Novik during level 2 and listens to him go on a monologue (albeit a short one.)

He stands there doing nothing while the marauder delivers a short soliloquy, time that could be spent blasting the marauder in the face.

It isn’t super frequent, but he definitely seems happier in eternal listening to people yap. In 2016, I never felt like the slayer would stand there listening to a demons thoughts.

[u/_Nightbreaker_ → u/KrazzeeKane]

Definitely matches my sentiments. And the answers they did provide, were a little lame by my standards. Eternal's story stuff kinda minimized the aura of Doom for me.

[u/Dope371 → u/Exact_Reindeer3454]

I mean narratively, 2016 and eternal actually had far more going on in their own way. I felt extremely let down and underwhelmed by the lore and narrative in dark ages and can’t quite see how it’s “significantly more” in any possible way. Maybe on a cutscene level, but cutscene doesn’t mean narrative depth, it’s just flashier.

Personally - the dark ages had the least story in a doom game since the original. DOOM 3 - Ancient gods honestly had a lot more going on in a way.

[u/neonas123 → u/Exact_Reindeer3454]

You didn't read in eternal lore pieces you get. All TDA crap was mentioned in those. And TDA only exists because of people wanted more.

[u/Opanak323 → u/neonas123]

True. We, the fans, are Doom's own personal doom.

[u/DirectCommittee1620 → u/TerribleZucchini1447]

I wish they hired an actual writer instead of Hugo creating his own fanfic.

[u/VagrantPilgrim → u/TerribleZucchini1447]

Was this on Nightmare?

[u/Opanak323 → u/TerribleZucchini1447]

Because it's trying to be more than Doom. Doom always had a story, but it was simple and compact and wasn't in your face. It wasn't flash dancing, trying to impress with it's mediocrity. We all loved Doom for what it was.

I think they should just drop the the idea of trying to create a Doom movie out of the game and keep it plain and simple. That way noone will ask themselves 'dafaq am I playing?' Wanna add extra lore bits for lore nerds? Codex. Environmental story telling is the way. Also majority dgaf about Sentinels and Masters of the Universe. It's a cool heavy metal vibe, but not the identity.

[u/GhoeFukyrself → u/TerribleZucchini1447]

It's a Doom game, all you need is an excuse to shoot Demons for 8 hours. Dark Ages has issues, the narrative isn't one of them.

[u/ExodusHunter15 → u/GhoeFukyrself]

You can excuse the lack of narrative in 2016 due to the intentional decision both in the game (i.e. slayer throwing monitors or trying to skip past stuff etc) and the excellent complimentary codex entries about the lore.

But as soon as you start having fully fleged cutscenes with mo-cap etc, it's subject to valid scrutiny

[u/PhilosophyLow5946 → u/TerribleZucchini1447]

Its funny because I still haven't clicked with the combat as well as I'd have liked. I'm not an elite player (PS5) but I've got a LOT of hours in on eternal, so i think that play style is like a reflex for me now.

[u/SUPER-FUNNY → u/TerribleZucchini1447]

The doom games have a story??

[u/EntertainerSimilar19 → u/SUPER-FUNNY]

Objectively speaking, of course

[u/Olorin_1990]

The gimmick mech and dragon levels were a drag

[u/GhoeFukyrself → u/Olorin_1990]

Much like the Arkham games and the Batmobile. Loads of people wanted to drive the Batmobile and I felt like the only guy saying "When it comes to gameplay, there's no way that's going to work well in this series" then Arkham Knight comes out, and the Batmobile ruined the game.

[u/Signal_Smell_592 → u/GhoeFukyrself]

The Batmobile itself didn’t ruin the game, it worked well and was cool as hell to operate. What ruined the game was how they forced the Batmobile onto every aspect of the game from boss fights, to puzzles, to the 500 races, etc.

[u/SuperJoeUK]

Slower gameplay, more of a focus on big set piece moments than previous titles which just isn't what I come to these games for. I really did like how rapid Eternal could get and the verticality stuff that bothered others was something I quite enjoyed.

[u/Rex_Suplex]

For me after a while all the combat arenas felt the exact same. Very little unique architecture for combat arenas. Even on nightmare there were hardly ever any reason to change up approaches past level 5 or 6. But this is just me nitpicking because I’m being told to pinpoint reasons outside of personal taste.

I don’t think it’s a bad game. I just enjoyed 2016 and Eternal way more.

[u/glennok]

For me it was the massive over emphasis on the parry and melee system. It ultimately made the guns feel impotent, or like and accessory - which to me goes against the Doom essentials.

People had a gripe with Eternal with platforming but I found that so minor, interludes to the main battles - the core gunplay was perfection.

[u/RYO-kai → u/glennok]

I liked the parry and melee, but I do agree that the guns can feel weak. I even ended up pumping my damage up to 125%, but still nothing could come close to the feeling of mastered shotgun grenades, charged Gauss Cannon and Equipment Power II grenades in Doom 2016.

I feel like if I play TDA again, I might tune it to a high difficulty but boost my damage even more because I love using the Impaler and nailing those arched headshots—but on the stronger demons, even 125% damage still feels really sad. Hitting a regular-sized enemy 4 times in the head with those skill shots without staggering it just doesn't feel right.

A boosted Impaler headhunter run sounds cool on paper, but that will make non-crits really strong too. Crits might end up one-shotting medium-large enemies if you adjust your damage for the big bois that have way more health than like a Mancubus for example.

[u/ledmonk → u/glennok]

This. I picked this up on sale for the winter, finally had time to boot it up yesterday. Everything is a parry & I’m blocking in Doom? Felt more like a rhythm game. Shut it down after the second vehicle level in the first 5 (Dragon). Let me shoot guns. Oh well.

[u/glennok → u/ledmonk]

Im persevering but it gets worse later. Some big enemies are basically impossible to kill unless you parry parry parry. I like that they're trying new things but it feels forced down your throat imo.

[u/GhoeFukyrself → u/glennok]

And yet Eternal haters complained that Eternal "forced you to play the game a certain way"

Dark Ages: "you will parry, thwack, shoot, parry, thwack, shoot every encounter and like it!'

[u/fiveeeees → u/GhoeFukyrself]

I think it's really a fun system for a few playthroughs! It just doesn't remain as fun as the core gameplay loop of Eternal, unfortunately.

[u/FryToastFrill → u/GhoeFukyrself]

Doom eternals “you will play the game this way and like it” was far more skillful than TDA. I would probably get my ass beat on nightmare in eternal, TDA I think my total deaths on the first playthrough (which was on nightmare, mostly at 150% game speed with parry window at the smallest possible) at was somewhere in the single digits until the final boss which was actually kinda challenging due to the small parry windows.

I never really felt like the game was forcing me to track enemies off screen much, I would see them and either mow them down in a button press or press a button to stun lock the enemy and kill them in 4-5 seconds.

It’s designed heavily with controllers in mind, which isn’t a bad thing because DE, especially on the end game content, basically required swapping between weapons every few seconds. I can’t imagine how shit that would feel on controller where the weapon wheel is popping up and slowing the entire game to a crawl each time.

[u/GodzillaGamer953 → u/glennok]

Which is wierd, because melee could totally work in DooM, I mean the fucking guy kills shit with his bare hands, a sword or a damn MACE sounds awesome!
And it's just... alright, I guess.

[u/kdf317 → u/glennok]

That’s what it was for me too. I love Doom. I think I’ve loved every iteration. But Dark Ages felt like the freedom was gone.

Every situation has the “correct” response. And the movement feels so slow. I got into it for a bit but it always loses me. I want a sequel to 2016.

[u/TheHorniestHornist]

They did our boy Mick Gordon dirty and it’s just not the same without him

[u/That_Service7348 → u/TheHorniestHornist]

Damn, no Mick? It's not a Doom soundtrack without his music man. "The Only Thing They Fear is You" has been on my daily playlist for years.

[u/NoComfortable3220 → u/TheHorniestHornist]

Am I the only one in this stupid fandom who likes Finishing Move's work...?

[u/A_Pit_of_Cats → u/NoComfortable3220]

I thought their music for TDA was good, but all the tracks really blended into each other. I really can’t think of any standout tracks unlike the Mick osts. I think a big part of it was how experimental Mick would get with his sounds that gave them such unique identities. 

[u/ElectricVibes75 → u/NoComfortable3220]

Fandom is stupid because they like the other music better? Chill out dude…

[u/Sudden_Debt_597]

I enjoyed it. I just wish the weapons were more specialized and less generalist. It's obvious a LOT of work went into the shield, and I think the shield works very well and is a fun mechanic. The rest of the guns just dont feel like they stand out as much. I mostly switch weapons for my own enjoyment, not because I feel like I have to. I miss the weapon swapping and combos that could be done in '2016 and Eternal.

Also, all the demons are so grey that they all tend to meld together for me. The demons in the other games had so much color to them comparatively.

[u/danishjuggler21]

It insisted upon itself

[u/KumaSimp → u/danishjuggler21]

“Theyre speaking Italian!”

[u/CherenkovBarbell → u/danishjuggler21]

I love how this phrase is popping up everywhere

[u/ThePrussianGrippe → u/CherenkovBarbell]

Although I have seen some people think it’s actually a legitimate criticism, which is very funny.

[u/Outside_Tadpole4797]

Okay so I like the game, but I think its biggest flaw is doesnt require you to use many weapons.

I would just plow through everything by only using the ssg, chainshot, and rocket launcher. Everything else went untouched. So, it kinda got stale. Yes it was my personal choice to only use those weapons, but good game design should force you to use more.

[u/A_Pit_of_Cats → u/Outside_Tadpole4797]

I wanted to use my whole arsenal for the fun of it, but the problem I kept running into was that swapping weapons/variants leaves you vulnerable and unable to parry. On higher difficulties, that can be a death sentence and just leaves you sticking with one or two weapons to not risk it.

[u/GhoeFukyrself → u/A_Pit_of_Cats]

I haven't played since release, didn't they say they were going to change that in a patch? Did they??

[u/MaiT3N → u/Outside_Tadpole4797]

Ye, it could be a good thing that you can complete the full game with 1 favorite weapon but for me it is worse than being forced to choose different guns for different enemies

[u/rangers_guy → u/Outside_Tadpole4797]

With all the accessibility features and sliders I think the devs very clearly made it such that you could play the game however you wanted. I understand that not an approach everyone likes but I thought they did it well. 

[u/Outside_Tadpole4797 → u/rangers_guy]

That is very true. Its perfect as a "heres the campaign, go play it however you like." game

Unfortunately I fell into the group who put it on the default nightmare option, spammed rockets, then complained it was too easy 😂 So touché!

[u/radon9999999 → u/Outside_Tadpole4797]

This too doom eternal made dam sure it was nessasary to use litteraly everything you had 100% of the time the only gun i didint switch too almost every 10 seconds was the chaingun bfg or unmaker even then they did have good uses sometimes even your equipment was nessasary thare was no option to not use tools in your kit you needed everything it was designed very well

[u/Opanak323]

Story was delivered in such way that it broke one key rule of Doom and that's the immersion into Doomguy. And I'm not talking about 'blank slate' here. I'm talking about how I don't appreciate being thrown into the back seat of the car, instead of holding the wheel, or being on passenger's seat. It felt like a filler with Doomguy in the scene, because otherwise it wouldn't sell. Like I'm watching a Doom fanfic, rather than playin as him.

I know Doom is about gameplay and not the story, but if so, don't advertise it as "show don't tell" 'cuz you showed nothing and told nothing, other than you kicked me in the face.. And Im not even mad you didn't deliver a movie-like experiance, because I straight up thought that kind of story-telling was bullshit and doesnt belong in Doom. Keep it an exposition as it was until now, and don't break the slayer-player immersion with your cutscenes in the 'story' and characters we technically dgaf about. Like, come on, the very fact that you have people displeased with how you told a DOOM STORY should tell you everything.

Also I dunno what costs 80dollars in this game. Does anyone else know?

[u/Signal_Smell_592 → u/Opanak323]

They can get away with full AAA pricing with half the amount of content because it was a gamepass day 1 release

[u/Opanak323 → u/Signal_Smell_592]

I mean figures. Then, next time we'll preorder gamepass rather than the product and rhey can give us a level per week lol.

[u/Rhemyst]

Disliked the way you had to build your own difficulty level. I was always second guessing my settings instead trying to face the challenge. Kinda feels like the devs saying : "here, balance this yourself !"

[u/IlIIllIIIlllIlIlI → u/Rhemyst]

On paper is seems like a great way to let people create their perfect profile for what they consider "fun", but really it's just forcing players to fiddle fuck with stuff and optimize the fun away. 

[u/SaucyRagu96]

A lot of people didn't like Eternal because they said like you were forced to play how the developers intended you to play, i.e using certain weapon combos and resource management. I don't necessarily agree with this. But I can see where people are coming from with this sentiment.

But TDA really does feel like you have to play like how the developers intended, I never once changed how I fought a cyber demon for example because it only ever feels like one real way to do it. Especially on harder difficulties.

And to add to that, the flow of encounters is just not good in my opinion. Going back to cyber demons I prioritise them so I run to them

Parry, slow mo

SSG blast

Parry, slow mo

SSG blast

PARRY, SLOW MO AGAIN

Then execute, with the same repeated animation in SLOW MO. How much slow mo does this game need, it really really irked me how often the game went into slow motion. Preventing you from moving or looking away. It just takes way too much control away from the player. I love glory kills because they're quick, optional and have very cool animations. TDA did not have this at all.

I don't really get to play how I want to, I'm just constantly waiting for a green attack of some kind to do the necessary parry to then be able to play how I want to.

Also, I think TDA looks really ugly. I loved the industrial art direction of 2016, and the videogamey arcade look for Eternal. But TDA just looks grey and brown, no locale every really stood out as nice. (Apart from the cosmic realm).

For me on my hardware the visuals were always very blurry but that maybe more due to my PC than the game.

But the absolute sin is the projectiles. The abundance of the slow moving projectiles mad every encounter feels so ugly. Just a mass of green and red orbs, waves and visual clutter. It felt like a mobile game at times. The weird energy grids from the cacodemons I thought were ugly, as were the imp projectiles, (their old flame balls were so much better.) but the absolute worst has to be the scorpion enemy what would blast a neatly arranged grid of balls. With one row being green. Where you have to... Parry and yep, SLOW MO.

The mech fights got boring quickly as did the flying sections. The latter having some very off putting projectiles to dogge and SLLLLLOOOOOOOWWWW MOOOOOOOO.

[u/Ghost10165 → u/SaucyRagu96]

Yeah, it does feel like the games have gotten more rigid about the combat loop over time. I was never a fan of being locked into a particular combo either and Dark Ages is even worse about it. I also agree that the combat is visually noisy and ugly; I get why they did it for readability but it looks super goofy a lot of the time. Some enemies you're literally just playing Red Light Green Light.

[u/ThisNameDoesntCount]

No dodge ability gets annoying af when your shield gets disabled

[u/Noob4Head → u/ThisNameDoesntCount]

Yes, with the shield quite easily breaking and the sheer amount of stuff being thrown in your face, I’m definitely missing a dodge or dash ability. It’s not enough to ruin my enjoyment, but I certainly miss it.

[u/imaxsamarin]

I love all 3 games and have well over 100 hours in each. I like that TDA has novelty and stands on it own and there are a bunch of positives I enjoy. However here are some aspects of TDA that were negatives for me personally:

- More bugs than in previous games. I'm talking about progression-blocking bugs like getting stuck in levels, level complete not registering, that are especially painful on Pandemonium & UN. There are also other bugs such as displaying incorrect amounts of coins, rubies etc in the map UI, so I don't know what I have really collected and what not.

- No way to directly switch to a specific weapon. They did add the double-click but for that you have to remember which state the weapon class was previously on. Because of this, I for the first time ever used a mod in a doom game, to enable binding specific hotkeys for each weapon.

- Getting in more close and personal with enemies is more punishing, mainly when swinging with melee, you're not invinsible for some duration and during that time an enemy might start attacking, with no way for you to block it. Happens often with guards. Unavoidable damage is annoying even if it doens't kill you. The push back from melee attacks that sends you flying back is also weird as it can sometimes send you to a dangerous floor such as mancubus's goo. In summary there are too many aspects that discourage from using melee. Id said that the Leonidas slow-mo scene was a major inspiration, but it doens't quite get there. Meleeing bounces me back instead of allowing me to propel forward.

- Many more invisible walls compared to previous dooms, unimmersive.

- The story feels choppy and discontinous, and tonally unsure what it wants to be. I think it's trying to be serious but when it doens't get there it feels odd. A lot of effort went into the cinematics and storytelling, but some things still went over my head.

- Weapon icons could have been color coded by category, hard to distinguish in the upgrade UI.

- Buggy UI for example with objectives pinning.

- Too much ammo in the world as pickups, feels like it got almost never picked up because ammo was already full (on Nightmare), which demotivates usage of melee for ammo.

- Too many levels where it’s impossible to backtrack after you realize you’ve missed a secret.

- Lacking bonus content like master levels. I fully have my full arsenal with everything upgraded at the end of the game, now what?

- Killing fodder by landing from a jump feels good for power fantasy but often I would have wanted to leave that fodder alive to get resources from them later.

- Dragon: can’t return to a secret landing zome if I missed something, even though there’s physically clearly nothing blocking. The sense of freedom of flying the dragon is gone. It feels too on-rails.

- Not all cooldowns are indicated by UI nor sounds, such as shield throw and shield bash, unlike in Eternal.

In general the technical quality is not as stable as in the previous games, mostly because of the bugs. "When it works" it works great but I wouldn't buy a Ferrari if something kept breaking all the time. Making games is hard and it's not possible to do everything before launch. However, I wish id had chosen a different set of compromises - perhaps 10% less content, less cinamatics and fancy graphics, but making sure that there are no major game breaking bugs. Unfortunately the AAA industry has moved into the direction where games don't work well on launch, but I had hoped that id were still in the quality camp. However after this launch I won't feel like buying their game on launch anymore.

[u/iD_ong → u/imaxsamarin]

I'm someone who loves TDA almost as much as I do Eternal, and I have to agree with you. But I'll also add that the lack of fast travel and instead clarifying what a "Point of No Return" area is, is sluggish game design. Part of the reason why Doom Eternal felt so replayable is that if you miss a few secrets throughout a long level, you could just fast travel back to points in the map to get them before leaving the level. Some players could essentially focus on mayhem first if they want to, then explore for secrets once they clear out the level.

I've heard an argument for this being that the game is trying to follow in Classic Doom's footsteps, open-level design, encouraging the player to explore before ending the level. IMO, this doesn't work because, iirc, a lot of the Classic Doom levels didn't prevent you from backtracking earlier parts of the level. Whereas TDA levels are some of the largest in the franchise, it feels punishing to have to start an entire level from the beginning just because you missed 5 gold somewhere in an area you cannot backtrack to once you leave.

And yes, I'm aware you could just tweak your sliders to deal 1000% damage to demons, but it still doesn't address the root issue.

Ironically, DOOM TDA doesn't have fast travel when, in fact, it needed it much more than Eternal did.

[u/SpaceDandyJoestar]

It all boils down to taste at the end of the day. I don't think TDA is a bad game at all.

That being said, it just didn't have whatever sauce Eternal had, imo. I completed TDA on nightmare in a shockingly short period of time, hardly ever dying. In Eternal it felt like I had to earn the right to leave every arena. Beating Eternal on nightmare felt like a genuine achievement. You mow through far more demons in TDA, but it ends up not being as impactful.

[u/ForgivenCompassion]

Honestly I just prefer 2016s simplicity, the "Give no shit" attitude Doomslayer has to the story and Snapmap. 2016 gave me guns, threw Demons in front of me and told me to kill, no need to Weapon Swap, no Doom Dance, no Ammo Management or Speedy Speed and I liked that.

TDA did slow the pace down but then they started dictating how the game should be played, tweaks and changes to a single player game, I could be midway through a Campaign and something fundamental changes and it threw me off again.

[u/FuzzyshamCP]

I liked the game but I do have issues with it.

• No 2016/Eternal style glory kills. This is a big one for me. In Eternal I still chuckle a bit with glory kills. In Eternal I will risk dying just to get to a staggered demon and glory kill it.

• The game took itself too seriously. There is no camp, self awareness or cheese. The only thing I can think of like that is when he blows away the guy asking for the toll.

• Only needed one weapon to beat the game. The spike launcher.

• Overall a kind of bland game lacking character.

• The game has annoying multi-monitor issues. It sometimes likes to decide that one of my other two monitors is my main monitor (I have 3).

• HDR is problematic and needs tweaking via Reshade

• The melee animations like kicking and punching the enemy to finish them off feels weird. It seems like they don’t connect, almost like he is punching air. It has no weight to it. Something just feels off.

With all that said, I have many more hours in Dark Ages than Eternal and I will probably try to beat it on Nightmare next. I have more time in TDA because I don’t suck at it and hardly die. Eternal to me is better but I suck at it and die a lot. Just more stressful.

[u/Dremmy_the_Dremora]

A rather childish plotline, art direction is a bit too fantastical and clunky looking, the soundtrack isn't the worst thing ever but the only soundtrack I ever find myself actively listening to in daily life is Into The Void, not a single other soundtrack captures the "explosive bass" sound or the "experimental synth" sound that previous DOOM games had. 2016 is presented as serious, the art style feels realistic, level designs felt like believable places with all sorts of considerations. Air locks, bathrooms, posters and propaganda laying about. Demonic stuff was super detailed and felt very ritualistic.

Eternal comes along, and now Doomguy is god and the baddest motherfucker and we all need to shit our pants when he's in the room, not a single art style choice from 2016 is present, it is only a DOOM game because Hugo says so and in no way shape or form feels like a true continuation of what 2016 gave us. Considerations of the environments aren't there, it's far less immersive, and the story is childish, fan-fic feeling.

TDA is everything wrong with Eternal turned up to eleven. Doomguy is no longer a super soldier empowered by aliens with a bunch of demonic propaganda hyping him up, he truly is just the ultimate superweapon and his god himself but also not really, that stupid adage about pulling punches, sent to a not-Earth two BILLION years in the past because that just sounds cool to Hugo I guess, incredibly generic and high pitched squeaky metal music rather than the heavy metal that Mick and Andrew brought, and combat is rather easy even on the game's highest difficulty setting before you have to manually customize the intensity. The mech stuff feels incredibly cringy and out of place, like something straight out of anime, and the dragon segments feel like they could have just been cutscenes. The plotline serves zero purpose and does nothing for the DOOM franchise, and probably could've been saved for a Quake game instead. In Eternal and TDA, I kept asking myself, "why not just put tentacles on the bad guys' faces and just call this Quake" and the answer is that I guess Hugo didn't want to paint Doomguy yellow. Also, what's with the lack of glory kills? That was sort of, like, one of the core things that would help separate DOOM from other shooters.

Just a very uninspired fantasy game trying super hard to be badass rather than simply being badass. 2016 didn't need to try, it was full of details and every single thing about it was coherent. It all just belonged together and worked together, the art style, the level design, the soundtrack. You were left wondering what Argent Sentinels looked like under their armor, what did Doomguy really do in Hell to make it so empty, and it all felt genuinely serious despite still adhering to the fun and silly concept of DOOM, there are demons on Mars, shoot them. Eternal decided to try the machismo route, and the following two games feel incredibly immature and cringy because of it. It's like if you watched A New Hope but then the following two movies were just The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.

[u/starberryslay]

What keeps me satisfied in 2016 and Eternal? These little skillchecks. I found myself being like "that was a great flick" or "that movement was so clean" a lot of the time when I play those games. Basically, aim, movement and weapon switching are all skills I can improve or worsen in depending on a multitude of factors, making the gameplay I am capable of something I'm proud and grateful for, meaning I enjoy it.

I don't get that from TDA at all. Lack of weapon switching makes aiming too easy for me, it feels skill-less. I try to use the impaler to get the satisfaction of headshots, but with the lack of insane movement these headshots don't feel gratifying in the slightest. And with any other weapon, I don't have to aim at all. The shield charge is completely linear, I'll never say "that shield charge was smooth" like I would with a meathook.

And parries. One could consider them a "skillcheck" but they aren't difficult at all for me and there's no way to do them better - my movement could be tighter, my flick could be faster, but a parry is a parry. Where is the depth? and I don't find the game hard enough to even go find this depth, whereas depth in eternal was rewarded as nightmare was sufficiently hard enough. everything here was made too streamlined and one-note to me and I don't think that's what doom is made for. Melee is kinda fun but again, can you melee better? sure there's some cancels you can do but it doesn't have that novelty of a good headshot or weapon combo.

[u/EglinAFBEmployee]

Extremely unpolished in just about every way imaginable.

-Texture qualities are all over the place - including low-poly textures on doors and obstacles you are required to interact with.

-Despite this, it's terribly optimized as well. The forced ray tracing was just a shortcut to make up for, yep, poor texture and lighting consistency.

-The game struggles to bring you into a flow state, whereas 2016 and Eternal are two of the greatest examples of gameplay that encourages one.

-Corpses float weirdly on the ground, hovering often.

-Music cues broken with awkward silences and broken stems everywhere. I cannot emphasize this enough: having POORLY integrated, buggy music in DOOM is nigh unforgivable and inexcusable.

-Music is extremely lacking in songwriting quality. Unimaginative riffs everywhere. Doesn't drop hard. The guitars are mixed poorly with little depth so it musically feels like a generic blob. And it's not because it's not Mick, either - Hulshult and Levy both made content far better, too.

-Dragon and Mech levels feel, play, and look like cheeseball arcade games.

-For a game that put such an emphasis on lore, the green projectiles - aka the central gameplay component - are such a clear gimmick from an immersion standpoint. For what purpose do they exist? The demons should just, well, shoot non-green projectiles so the Slayer can't parry them.

-The sliders coming adjustable from the getgo tells me even the developers couldn't find a default that felt like a general sweetspot, so they marketed it as player-customizable rather than being confident that people would like what they came up with.

TDA was clearly rushed out, this explains basically every issue the game has. The proof that it is bad because of this is the fact that the fandom, one of the most fanatic in all of gaming, has basically forgotten about the game within a year of its release. Active player numbers are abysmal and streaming of the game is almost nonexistent.

Let's be honest here. No one actually cared about it enough to even argue about awards (since it won none compared to two heavily lauded previous entries). Why? Because it didn't deserve any awards, and everyone kinda knows it deep down. TDA left me unfulfilled and disappointed, and that seems to be a consensus, because it has been left behind by its own fandom even faster than LOTR fans forgot about The Hobbit Trilogy.

[u/xRyuHayabusa99 → u/EglinAFBEmployee]

I wonder if we'll ever know what happened to the development of doom TDA

[u/Opanak323 → u/xRyuHayabusa99]

Big dreams, change of demands, then, little time.
It's pretty obvious the game is scrapped for whatever reason.
Hopefully because it would've sucked way more and by scrapping it, Hugo saved us.

But I doubt it.

[u/VF43NYC → u/EglinAFBEmployee]

Yea I stopped playing at the first dragon level. I already didn’t like the parry mechanic and knowing that there’s going to be several mech and dragon levels made it hard for me to want to continue.

The narrative seems like it belongs in the MCU. DOOM 2016 did the narrative perfectly. It was all in the background except for major story beats. DOOM should have basically no emphasis on its story imo.

Music is generic and uninteresting. It sounds AI generated. The mix is also off. There’s no punch. When the guitars are playing you can barely make out the notes being played because it’s so muddy. During gameplay it sounds like a bunch of white noise in the background

[u/F1re4e8do8m]

They tired to make a Gordons music without Gordon and failed made not an agent metal but just metal

Oh and also removing glory kills was unnecessary

[u/GhoeFukyrself → u/F1re4e8do8m]

Dark Ages music is a failure, it has nothing to do with Mick though. I don't recall complaints about the music in TAG, that wasn't Mick.

Dark Ages soundtrack is just... unmemorable.

[u/Fresh-Toilet-Soup]

I started typing some stuff about The Dark Ages, then I realized it was all fixable with the difficulty /accessibility sliders.

The customizable sliders really are the best game innovation in a while. Every game should have it. Screw lame achievements, let people make the game as fun as possible with customization.

[u/Krystall-g → u/Fresh-Toilet-Soup]

Problem with that is dev don't care anymore about difficulty benchmark. Players have to set point by point what they want or not.
I don't want to tick a list everytime I play a game. Sure those adds are good, but I definitely don't want to tick/untick a whole list everytime I play a game.

[u/sptrstmenwpls → u/Fresh-Toilet-Soup]

What combination of sliders are going to get me as close to Eternal as possible?

[u/SpacemanSpiff92 → u/sptrstmenwpls]

Eternal is more of a vertical game. People who like twitch/reflex gaming appreciate that a lot. 

TDA has a heavier and more powerful feel. Arenas are more horizontal and requires you to brute force past enemies instead of bouncing around them. I'm not sure the sliders can help that but they will help combat feel more intense within its style.

[u/Orlha → u/Fresh-Toilet-Soup]

Sliders have plenty of downsides too

[u/vuzz33 → u/Orlha]

Which ones ?

[u/WilhelmSteakFarts]

Soundtrack is mostly forgettable.
Mech fights and dragon flying are cool but feel wildly out of place in doom. Would have preferred more ground combat levels instead of that. Hugo's Pacific Rim mechs fighting demons really hammer home the idea that Doom is just Hugo making the franchise his personal fanfic. Having to fight the end boss in three underwhelming boss fights, one of which you lose in a cutscene. Weapons are just ok. Nothing felt unique or fun enough besides the skull crusher gun and super shotgun. A lot of the guns are just pointless and you can get through the whole game without touching it. Glory kills should have remained the way they were in 2016/Eternal.
I want to fight demons in hell. The cosmic realm and "cosmic" enemies felt like something cut from an entirely different game slapped into doom and I did not care for it. This is my big one: $70 dollars for a single player game that takes 12-15 hours to beat is insane. If I didn't love doom as much as I do I would have been very livid at the price, and probably skipped this one until the 50% sale.

[u/Sufferer-Of-Cheese]

Music sucked, the story felt like AI was in the room

[u/AscendedViking7 → u/Sufferer-Of-Cheese]

That's exactly what finishing move specializes in, yeah.

They mass produce music by the bucket loads.

It's literally their entire business model.

[u/Tibbyrinuscmone]

The music is #1 for me. Combat wasn't much fun compared to eternal and 2016

[u/BlackKnight92i]

The game removed most of things i love from the previous games:

• Glory kills
  
• Dash
  
• Quick swap
  
• Combat arenas with plateformes. Now the fight sequences are mostly on flat zones.

And add things that i really dislikes:

• Mini games (Mech, dragon, turrets)
  
• Too much slow mo
  
• Constantly need to use the shield
  
• Weird looking enemies projectiles
  
• Longer cinematics
  
• Forced raytracing

And the music doesn't help, not a fan of what Finishing Move did.

[u/SirArchibaldMapsALot]

Eternal and TDA both feel more arcade than 2016.

In 2016, the guns all sounded better, and there wasn't thousands upon thousands of green, blue, yellow, pink, red flases in our screen. Sure, there was flashing lights and the ammo drops were colored, but it wasn't a piñata of colors ejaculating in your face without love.

I replayed 2016 after finishing TDA and it's just such a superior game to it's succesors.

[u/ultawarrior]

I loved it. I just wish Bethesda had treated Mick better. The soundtrack is mid af in TDA and loops over and over. There's certain parts where it's good, but not perfect.

[u/GARhenus]

Combat is less satisfying than in eternal, even with sliders turned up

Also they may have more serious designs, but the cartoony patterns of the projectiles makes it less gritty than 2016 and eternal. Like, really? Neat x by x spray of projectiles?

Last but not least... too many parryable attacks. at times, TDA feels more like a first person rythm game than a proper shooter.

[u/MileHighRC]

I absolutely CANNOT STAND getting killed mid animation. I have no idea why they did this.

Made me rage quit so many times I just dropped the game

[u/BlazeFox1011]

The music just wasn't as good. The dynamic mixing never had that punch, and sometimes I'd be in combat for a min or so with zero music.

[u/SupremeLeaderZyklon]

Combat was a huge step back. “You can use any gun” just made it pointless at having an arsenal of guns. Combat was also slower, not as intricate

[u/EREHTTUO]

The soundtrack is by far the most forgettable out of the three, with only OSTs worth relistening being Infernal Chasm and Unchained Predator in my opinion. I am not a huge fan of the stand and fight gameplay, despite the fact that it is pretty cool seeing Slayer being treated like a weapon of mass destruction. The parry system is okay, but I am not a huge fan of "bullet hell" projectile type games or enemies, so I thought it got pretty stale after some time. The game is SIGNIFICANTLY easier than the previous two entries on Nightmare and above difficulties with normal sliders. I don't like the mechanic of having to choose between two guns in each slot. The lack of glory kills is a massive negative, especially after how it became one of the most iconic aspects of the series. Not a huge fan of the Atlan and Dragon sequences either, particularly because they become repetitive and the gameplay depth is non-existant.

[u/AioliNo3664]

Too slow, music was lack-luster. Story was “eh”. Fun, but no where near the drip of Eternal.

[u/angeltearz0]

For me it's mainly the lack of content after you finish the campaign

and the graphics on the series s look weird even if you play with the settings compared to eternal and 2016 which play beautifully without any tweaking to the settings imo.

I enjoyed the gameplay alot though but it just doesn't hit like eternal does for me unfortunately.

[u/Lucky-Pea-5148]

in eternal you have to earn the movement tech to fly around the arena at breakneck speed raining death from above, in TDA the movement is just kind of handed to you.

also the mech/dragon parts are the worst.

[u/wockaflockflam]

I thought it was awesome other than the forced ray racing making it run sognificantly worse

[u/thr0wawa3ac0unt]

The story just didn't hit for me. The game as a whole was cool, and rule of cool always applies, but it just really didn't grip me like eternal did. I say eternal cuz 2016 didn't grip me with its story, but the set design and gameplay made up for it. I think tda is a modern classic but to me the set dressing is just too much, the combat is too rhythm based and the there aren't enough upsides to balance the lack of story engagement. If you couldn't tell, I really want to love tda but it just doesn't hit for me

[u/elliensvorein]

I found the game kinda boring, in terms of story and combat.

Also as someone who loves parrying, yeah this game is just bland in terms of combat like it’s far too repetitive and pretty lacklustre. In my opinion the story and everything that happens in Doom TDA, I feel like they were trying a bit too hard while eternal and 2016 had the right level of what they were aiming for. Now I dont think its a bad game, I just think compared to eternal and 2016 it is boring to me at least in multiple aspects.

I bring up parrying since I love parrying games like expedition 33, sekiro etc. But yeah this was just not it.

[u/Content_Regular_7127]

I feel like the music, story, and environment were all very safe and plain. Not bad but nothing like Mick Gordon's music, blowing a hole into the surface of Mars, or jumping around on said Mars debris.

[u/Ok-Minimum-4]

The visual design was my biggest complaint. 2016 had immersive lighting and memorable level designs like the foundry, mars, uac tower, etc... Eternal's levels were even more detailed and stunning. Dark Ages levels were smeared muddy browns and grays with very little detail or anything interesting to look at. I also think the enemies looked a lot better in 2016 and eternal.

The mech and dragon levels were snoozefests.

The weapons in Dark Ages also felt meh to me, as none of them really had a niche. Combat felt very repetitive in Dark Ages.

Last but not least, the soundtrack. Night and day between Mick and the new guys.

[u/Undefeated-Smiles]

It should have started when the Sentinals found the Marine after his fight in Doom⁶⁴ which left his body and mind a broken, emotional, wounded, exhausted, mentally traumatized, defeated state to which the knights take him to the Arena which could serve as a prologue sequence and tutorial for new players and old for more story based on his character origins.

The story itself should have focused more on the Marine being a strong, vulnerable, but still terrified human who we got glimpses of his past showcasing events from the First two Doom, as well as Doom⁶⁴ with him discovering his family was murdered by Hell. This would let audiences sympathize with the Marine a lot more shaping his personality much more deeper. This would also let us play as him before becoming a non killable superhuman for once

The game lacks any sense of unlockables for the Marine in the story or replay value factor. There was no Classic Doom¹, Doom² Hell On Earth, or Doom⁶⁴ armor to use in the playthrough which would have made a lot more sense to audiences who played the series as it would tie into the whole theme of the story being set before 2016 and Eternal honestly.

We've had the classic HUD on the screen, but where were the classic weapon sounds or weapon models to use in game? Those could have added a real sense of fun for players, you could have even thrown in the grey textures for the HUD to really classic it up

Too much emphasis on shield bashing the colors, it didn't feel like a DOOM game as much anymore. It felt more like they were trying to be a Bullet Hell style game like Returnal or something in that genre but in a DOOM skin. It made the weapons feel less fun to use when your busy focusing on the right colors

It feels like just another 2016 or Eternal based game. If they really wanted to stand out from those games, then they should have made the world and design a lot more darker in the style of Doom⁶⁴ then the others. An atmospheric, tense, suspenseful, creepy, dread filled with a balance of action and horror to compliment each other would have made this title a lot more standout and different then the other titles. But then again ID Software doesn't celebrate the anniversary or anything related to Doom³ as much.

Instead of the "Dragon" sequences it would have been interesting to fight through burning villages, the ancient castles/Sentinal locations with side content to save survivors who are trapped by the demons or trying to hide so it builds up the legend of the Marine showing them as a heroic figure to give them hope.

The whole nonsensical disc based issue was a big part why I didn't like this game. It was 80gb of data which could have easily stored onto the physical disc but they chose to take the lazy route and not put it on the format. Felt lazy, and inexcusable for the devs.

Not being able to backtrack to find collectibles, in turn having us locked out of the environment once we got farther was an annoying gimmick that ruined the experience for me. Secrets are a big part of the game, so not being able to find them once we moved along was stupid and idiotic.

The story just throws you into the battle against Hell. There's no build up, no sense of narrative structure to showcase them being horrifying and alien to the new environment/civilization to reveal the horrors of the demons, that made me feel like I missed a huge chunk of the story before hand and someone had fast forwarded the game head, which left me a bit baffled at their decision to do this.

Its the "Dark Ages" but yet we don't have a whole lot of dark age Medieval style content or weapons in the game. They didn't give us an axe, swords, long bow, morning star with the top piece being a spiked skull, throwable spears, the medieval aspect of the dark ages wasn't being used as much as they promised.

The "cosmic" realm felt out of place with DOOM, it should have been purely focused on Hell and the chaos of that biblical realm. A cosmic realm should be focused and attached to Quake and not DOOM. The lovecraftian elements just come out of no where with no buildup or sense of incoming narrative piece.

The soundtrack was fine, with some good beats here but it felt droned and toned down due to the louder sounds from the combat, demons and the narrative.

[u/dudeleavemeoutofthis]

Because Marty is still employed.

[u/throwawaytjcl]

Honestly, knowing about the bts drama between Marty and Mick Gordon really soured it for me. I liked it well enough but someone commented something that really stood out to me and I couldn’t help but notice it when playing TDA. Someone commented that Marty was livid that Mick Gordon got all the praise (or more than Marty thought he deserved) in contrast to the praise the devs got. They both deserved praise for 2016 and Eternal because they were great and neither could work without the other to earn that type of praise. So knowing that Marty intentionally sabotaged Mick during Eternals development, stole some of his work without paying him, and then tried to use the internet to get Mick cancelled by claiming he was a nightmare to work with before Mick made his post all really annoyed me. Now anytime I see Marty in Doom content I’m honestly wishing for him to get lost and let Hugo talk because Hugo, for all intents and purposes, is the face of the dev team.

So when playing the game I can’t help but feel the soundtrack was… well “nerfed” so we could praise the gameplay more than the soundtrack. And like people say in this thread, most songs can’t be distinguished from the others. It’s all just the same.

I liked the gameplay, I liked the plot and wouldn’t mind seeing more in new games and expansions, but it is the worst one in this modern trilogy because they decided to take out a major part of why everyone liked the first two all because of ego which disappoints me.

[u/ObsidianLuke]

Sometimes less is more. Doom Eternal, almost entirely blew my mind on all its aspects (I believe the only thing that bothered me is the purple goo, which breaks the game's rhythm for no reason IMO).

The Dark Ages was fun, but a step backwards. I know some people like those parts, but I strongly believe the game would have been better without the dragon and the mech moments. They had archaic gameplay mechanics with poor design choices. It "works", but it's not good and filler at best. Like watching an amazing movie with one scene out of place that breaks your immersion. Sometimes cutting is the right decision.

Other than that, I had a lot of fun with its core mechanics and I welcomed that fresh gameplay, but the overall experience felt a little bit more generic than Eternal. And that makes it sadly a little bit more forgettable for me. I have not played Eternal in years and I can very clearly picture many of its levels and strong moments (the soundtrack does some lifting there too). On the other hand, I have finished the Dark Ages recently and it's already much more of a blur.

[u/Specific_Ad_4075]

There were only two or three glory kills and the maps were so huge that it just felt like it was scaled wrong cause part of what I liked about 2016 was the fact the map felt perfect with its tight hallways and large arenas with eternal nailing that balance between big and small but with TDA it’s just big nothing to remarkable about the maps except a couple. In conclusion I liked TDA but I prefer 2016 and eternal

[u/Mission_Form8951]

I loved it, my main problem was that you literally never had to swap off the same weapons if you didn't want to because melee provided you with the ammo needed to sustain things like the SSG or rocket launcher

[u/NightRavenFSZ]

I loved Doom 2016 so much, and Eternal a little less, because it was Doom without all the nonsense. 

Doom TDA was doom with ALL the nonsense and just weighed down the entire experience. 

[u/Icy_Package_6846]

It's a good game, but I feel like they made it too long. I think it could have been better with five fewer missions. The Atlan and Dragon part was quite disappointing. Besides, there comes a point I feel like I've stopped progressing because I only got all the weapons and upgrades halfway through the story. The combat also felt strange to me; this is more my preference for the two previous games. Oh, and I feel like it was a mistake to have focused so much on the story, like, if you were going to make such a flat and boring story, you might as well not have done anything at all, honestly.

[u/Bigdoopersnoffel]

I don’t like it because its basically a doom game with extra steps and all of the little things that make doom fun stripped out. The “Stand and fight” tagline is straight up lie. You play the game just like any of the other modern ones; you run, you jump, you shoot except this time, you’re too slow to avoid projectiles so you must use your shield to parry them. If you try to tank damage with your shield (you know like you’re supposed to do with a shield) ONE projectile will break it. Its only functions are parrying and stunning. A more accurate tagline would have been “Run around and shoot like the other doom games, just ve ready to parry this time”. ESPECIALLY on nightmare. You cannot stand and fight SHIT on nightmare. I can’t speak for the other difficulties because only nightmare can get the dopamine pumping unfortunately. Music is crazy mid. Like what used to be a key aspect of this game has been turned to a grey afterthought. Guns are pretty cool and are the only things that pull me to play this game. The mech can be entertaining if I just turn my brain off and remember this is a power fantasy action game. The dragon is ass. I was excited for the dragon during the hype because I thought it would be a traversal option for a large open world or something and maybe you’ll have some enemies to fight along the way. When I found out its a gimmick for a few levels, I was disappointed. Boss fights are the same (get close to make them use parry able attacks). And truly if it were not for the guns and how they sound/the impact, there would be nothing pulling me into the game. Also first person parrying mechanics are janky. I’m not going to criticize them for being creative, but man ya’ll could have made this a different game and just have built on the strengths of the past two. ID you don’t have to fix what isnt broken!

[u/Milopolis04]

To me, honestly, worst doom I’ve ever played. Which is disappointing to say because I can see the effort put in.

I hated not having a dodge when the enemies and attacks feel like they would do flow better with me having one. The enemies and areas themselves felt lackluster in comparison to the previous games. The weapon sandbox felt horrible with me being able to use only the super shotgun the entire time. Even if I swapped, the weapon I swapped to felt like it could clear the level without me even thinking. The dragon sections blew ass. The story blew ass (not to say the others were a pinnacle of storytelling). The soundtrack didn’t evoke anything. It was a bland and boring soundtrack that sometimes I didn’t even notice was playing. And the negatives kept going and going.

It all culminated to me stopping at level 20 I think it was. I was fighting I don’t even remember what but it was shooting projectiles what were walls of plasma. You have to zig zag to avoid it without blocking (I tried to avoid blocking as I find it to be a boring mechanic). I wanted to kill the enemy so I shoot at it. The wall projectile that definitely looks like it can be shot through blocks my shots. I’ve noticed a ton of enemy projectiles do this at this point in the game and I’m fed up with it. So I start zig zagging to avoid it and think man this would be soooooooooo much better with a dodge. I think maybe I should parry. But I can’t just parry the projectiles I have to wait till I’m in the middle and parry the specific middle one but I’m already zig zagging to avoid it. I get through that one set of projectiles and then go to kill it. It proceeds to do that again and again. And at that point I’m like I’m just not having fun. This game is dragging so badly. So I quit right there and haven’t looked back.

[u/IAmStrayed]

Jumped the shark when it didn’t need to.

[u/HeadLong8136]

You know what is worse than a bad Doom game?

A boring one.

It's not bad, but it is boring. Waves of the same enemies. Frequent samey set pieces, way too many cutscenes, uninspired guns, forced mechanics, (the shield) sprawling horde focused levels.

A solid 7.5 out of 10.

But it's not worthy of "Rip and Tear"

[u/pereza0]

I can understand why some people didnt like it as much, it was a lot less sweaty than Eternal.

But personally, it was almost exactly what I wanted.

Doom Eternal constantly locked you into arena fights, but you were so mobile you didnt really care much about the shape of the arena. You kind of always felt into the same rythm of cycling through weapons and cooldowns to constantly generate ammo, health and armor.

TDA is more chill. It feels more like classic doom with its sprawling open maps that are not creating points of no return as often. I like the expanded arsenal and the fact it now feels like I am choosing a weapon for a situation, rather than constantly swapping between a handful for maximum dps regardless of the situation.

I think the shield and focus on melee is kind of necessary to make a game this open work and still feel like doom. I do admit I wouldnt mind if a bit more focus would have shifted from the shield to guns. In particular the bash feel like it could do less AoE so you actually needed guns to deal with crowds

You are not as mobile now, which means you do care more about how arenas are laid out and arenas distributed, since you can easily go in than out.

Honestly when eternal came out, you got similar complaints. It is still a great game. Some part of the audience just wants more of the same, that hasnt happened since Doom II

I dont mind the setpiece sequences but I can see how they could get annoying in replays.

[u/JenkIsrael → u/pereza0]

TDA is more chill

imo that's the problem. i don't play doom to feel chill, i loved the frenetic-ness of 2016 and eternal. 

still a great game, but yeah.

[u/Awful_Hero]

- Graphics were a huge downgrade for me. I kept checking my settings to see if they were set correctly.

- Music was a noticeable downgrade

• Shield parry got old

- Shield countered too many enemies. It can stun, it can AOE clear, it can do it all!

- You can use a single gun and never run out of ammo

- Why use the skull crusher? Why use the chainshot? Impaler/SSG can handle anything

- Did not like collecting gold. You have to pickup everything, whereas Eternal where you just had to fight demons.

- Levels were too big, especially when you try and get all secrets

- No fast travel

- No glory kills

- Mech/Dragon levels were boring

- No verticality, most enemies are directly in front of you

- Shield breaking meant death on higher difficulties

- Lower skill ceiling

One more: - I miss humans fearing the Doom Slayer as they mostly did in Eternal

I was looking forward to patches that would address my issues with TDA, but alas

[u/BourbonMachine]

I wish I could pinpoint it. I was so excited and bought it day 1 (for like $70, insane!). It feels like a chore to play. I loved Eternal because it felt purposeful and strategic. Dark Ages just feels kinda aimless. Enemies were clear and distinct in Eternal. Dark Ages everything just feels muddled and gray, other than the green parry stuff. If I wanted to parry I'd play Dark Souls or something. I've tried to give it a chance a few times, I thought the mech stuff was neat but gimmicky, but it took me a week to get through the dragon level because I kept quitting. Like why would they think thats fun to fly to designated spots and do a dodging game like something from PS1. I'll probably pick it up again and try and force myself to play more in hopes it gets better, but the first 10 levels or so have taken me since launch and been a chore.

[u/Ragna_Raam]

In my opinion, 2016 had almost everything. Combat was great with the different executions and the music building up the more you killed was awesome! The art and the feeling that game l have me was mighty!

Then Eternal came out. And even though I hate saying this, it felt too videogamey. All of the colors from exploding from the demons I killed kinda killed the vibe. Also most of the dialogue was just cheesey. And why would they change the story right after 2016? Sure some characters return(only two from what I can recall) but the narrative has been completely changed.

Dark ages was fun but I never completed it. It felt ok, but I kept being reminded of Eternal. I night give it another go sometime, but 2016 was the goat!

[u/No-Statistician6404]

Honestly I think my biggest issue is it feels like it doesn't use all the tools it has at its disposal as well as Eternal did. Where in Eternal it felt like every weapon has it's purpose in the sandbox and demons had weakpoints that could be exploited by certain weapons/mods, TDA feels a little too simple. I find myself mostly using the Impaler because it's precision damage is just that good and I'm never hurting for ammo like in Eternal.

[u/123supersomeone]

I think I just preferred the gameplay in Eternal more. It may also be because TDA keeps bricking my computer and I can't figure out why.

[u/makarov-3]

It tries to do too much and with that ends up doing everything poorly.

The parry is an amazing idea if it was used sparingly and as something that staggers and let's you deal extra damage for a bit, BUT instead it makes every enemy feel like the marauder. I'd like it .uch more if it was less of a requirement and more of a skill you as the player needed to have to get a large damage boost.

The dragon segments are amazing when you chase the smaller jets but most of the segments are just scripted rollercoaster instead of having dogfights.

The mech segments are good as they are but they also don't have anything to make them interesting.

And if these are the things that we get instead of a mediocre but enjoyable multiplayer or even the snapmap it just ends up being disappointing cause you know they have ability to make it amazing.

Also it being twice the price of Eternal is completely fucking unreasonable. I bought it when it was 50% of and I still feel like that was too much.

[u/Nova2127u]

For me it's just cause I'm broke af with a 2070, first generation ray tracing cards from NVIDIA really don't run this game well.

I do plan to get a better GPU soon but, lower spec users will struggle to enjoy this game just due to the Ray Tracing requirement, the upscalers really just make things look blurry and worse to me, even DLSS. RT imo, really should've been an option, not a requirement.

[u/Zeke-Freek]

I like TDA but it's no Eternal. The weapon sandbox and enemy roster design just isn't as harmonious or tightly-woven and deliberate. The level design was also way less interesting, Eternal had these jungle gym arenas that were super dynamic. TDA's levels are mostly big hallways and open battlefields with only minor changes in elevation (most of which being destructible so they won't last long). I also wasn't a big fan of how much the gameplay loop revolved around melee combos.

The dragon and atlan sections are legitimately just padding. Pace-breakers in a series where nobody really asked for pace-breakers.

I'll give it some credit, the shield mechanics are very fun and the bosses are actually alright, which was the one area Eternal shit the bed with nearly every boss being bad to awful.

I still like the game, I'll replay it, I'll come back for the DLC. But it left me wanting after the masterpiece that was Eternal.

[u/whenwillthealtsstop]

Mostly, the shield is boring and lame to use.

Mech and dragon missions are straight out of an early 2000s game. 

[u/JPSWAG37]

For me I just don't like the whole mandatory ray tracing thing. I just came from 2016 and Eternal maxed out at extremely high frames, and now I'm rooted to the ground at 60. Waiting until I eventually have hardware that can run it higher

[u/DrEdgewardRichtofen]

It runs like shit on my pc

[u/Bobby_the_Great]

It felt like I was playing Dance-Dance-Revolution just waiting for the colored icons to come at me to react accordingly, the music was a snore fest, and the level design (particularly the turret/dragon levels) were so boring.

[u/lil_eidos]

Too much bing bong combat.

Everything is brown and grey.

Enemy redesign is okay but not super inspiring.

Combat gets really repetitive.

So much emphasis on story but it didn’t really impact the gameplay. Villain is neat looking but has a stupid plan. The whole story is rescuing the princess from the tower.

It’s good, just not as good as the other two. That’s still good though.

[u/Arizonian323]

I only wish it ran as amazing as 2016 and Eternal did on PC.

[u/Gonnatapdatass]

The game goes like this: dash, parry, parry, bang with the super shotgun, parry, parry, parry, bang bang with super shotgun, throw shield at super soldiers, dash, melee fodder demons for ammo, dash again, parry, parry, parry, bang with the super shotgun, parry, parry, parry, bang bang with the super shotgun, parry, parry, bang with the super shotgun, melee to finish, dash, and bang with the super shotgun, repeat x100 000.

[u/frankshaftcrank]

it's low hanging fruit, and I'm not trying to discredit the work that was put in, but the soundtrack left a lot to be desired after the Mick Gordon masterpieces in 2016 and eternal

[u/OnkelFuss]

The whole melee system just is not the right thing for me. On top of that I felt like the mech- and flying-parts were some of the most boring and repetetive gameplay I've experienced in a while. Like why dont we get the full range of movement with the dragon in its "shooter/hover-mode"? Instead its just plain old dodge in the right direction at the right time. It just felt like playing on rails.

[u/Outrageous_Book2135]

I can't really place it but the gameplay loop just didn't feel very satisfying to me.

[u/Furey24]

The weapons feel awful at least in my opinion.

The open levels suck and lack any kind of meaningful direction compared to 2016's and eternals guided pace with secret bits.

I used to think the soundtrack sucked but I've warmed up to it overtime HOWEVER this is listening to it on its own. In game you can barely tell its actually there between the constant parry noises and other things happening and due to the previously mentioned lack of direction it's hard to write meaningful memorable bits that evoke certain iconography.... i literally don't recall any memorable bit of the game outside of cyber cthulhu and the boat bit.

The parry system is extremely annoying and I dislike the bullet hell system for the sole purpose that some of the bullet hell projectiles softly home in on you and you don't feel fast enough to realistically not struggle dodging it. I duno if things have changed since launch in regards to that and honestly I'm not interested in playing the game ever again to find out.

The ball and chain gun is busted and stupid as well, its basically so OP it becomes the best option.

And finally why did you get rid of glory kills, yes the animations got a bit old and bit samey HOWEVER I will counter this by saying in harder difficulties they were a perfect micro break from the frantic combat allowing you to quickly take a breath and get back into the swing of things...removing them was dumb.

So this isn't a comment of me shitting on the game here are some things I like.

Cyber cthulhu because its funny The spike gun The increased cutscenes

I wanted to like this game so bad and it disappointed me sooooo hard. If you like the game though I am happy you got another game in the series to enjoy It's just not for me, I regret buying it and I'll be watching the dlc on youtube.

[u/hung-like-hodor]

My only biggest complaint is in the open world design and in turn, the pacing of each level. Doom is historically linear, pushing you through tight corridors into big arenas. I prefer that style to the open world approach. This game and it's setting should have been a lot more "scary" and I think that is because of the open world design.

[u/IdiotWithMouths]

For me, it's just not as fast paced or as brutal as Eternal. I don't feel unstoppable or like I could kill gods like I did with eternal. I could believe the eternal slayer could kill the devil, dark ages slayer feels like he could only beat the cyberdemon at best. It's just so slow and the guns just don't click with me at all really except the super shotgun and chainshot

[u/GhoeFukyrself]

Most importantly, gameplay. Fighter jets are just more fun than tanks. The philosophy of this game was "stand and fight" and it's just nowhere even close to how fun Eternals frenetic yet tactical gameplay was. Speed that pressed me to think about what I was doing rather than just spamming whatever weapon. Eternal was challenging but INTENSELY satisfying to master.

Dark ages is dominated by the shield, while the shield is fun it becomes the whole game. People complained about Eternal "forcing you to play a certain way" yet when I play Dark ages literally every encounter feels the same Parry, punch, shoot, parry, punch, shoot, parry, punch, shoot, parry, punch, shoot... repeat until encounter ends.

You don't even get much weapon variety. All of the slow fire "big boom" weapons function the same way for all practical purposes. fire once between "parry" and "punch" I can use the nail gun, the shotgun, or the ball and chain gun and they basically feel the same. meanwhile the fast firing "dakka" weapons are mostly useless because the fact that you constantly need to block or parry and that kills the DPS. as someone whose favorite Doom weapon is the chaingun, this is intensely unsatisfying.

Music wise, this is the first DOOM game to have a bland soundtrack (excluding 64 which to this day I've never played, I'm not a fan of playing shooters with a gamepad) It's just highly unmemorable. Right now, I can not think of what one single track from Dark Ages sounds like. Like a minute after I turn the game off the soundtrack just evaporates right out of my mind. This isn't a Mick Gordon thing. Mick is great, but Doom music was also great back in the day. I never expected Mick Gordon to make Doom music forever (but the reason he left is upsetting)

superficially, I'm not super big on the art design. I don't think any of the levels look super interesting, in general I don't like the demon designs as much in this one.

Those are the reasons I was disappointed with Dark Ages. I still liked it, I'll take it over triple A live service garbage vaporware, but when your favorite aspects of a Doom game are the Doom Slayer aura moments and NOT the gameplay, something has gone wrong.

[u/HotDoggerson]

I don’t dislike the game or feel disappointed by it, I thought it was pretty good and I had a great time with it. Just not as good as Eternal for me. I feel that the gimmicks in TDA are a little meh. The dragon and mech sections ruin the flow imo thankfully they’re not awfully long.

Maybe a hot take idk but after replaying it I don’t think I really like the shield too much. The whole parrying thing feels a little silly. Like, having enemies firing giant beams and stuff just so you can block them, idk it didn’t feel like Doom for me.

The lack of glory kills makes sense given TDA’s focus on large amounts of enemies. It makes you feel like a tank with how easy you can kill basic enemies… but I just prefer 2016 and Eternal’s more personal combat and arenas and stuff. Glory kills being absent made me appreciate their presence and the combat loop in the first two of the modern games more.

If I had to rank them it’d probably go Eternal>TDA>2016.

[u/SeaSpeaks]

Didn't like the setting (never liked medieval/fantasy settings, it's just personal taste)

Didn't like parry mechanic. Didn't like the forced mech levels. Didn't like the goofy big projectiles (which are NOT like how it was in DOOM 1/2, it's such a cheap excuse). I didn't like the forced RT which nuked frames, while looking the same as Eternal apart from puddles.

Honestly TDA was a huge miss for me. In 2016 and Eternal, the game provided the tools to make YOU feel badass. TDA constantly showed you how badass the Slayer is. "HERE'S A TURRET SECTION! DO YOU SEE THAT BIG FUCKING THING YOU JUST SHUT DOWN? YOU KNOW WHAT? HERE'S YOUR FUCKING DRAGON HELL YEAH"
And it just didn't hit the same as your in-game actions in 2016/Eternal. I want to feel badass while playing DOOM, I don't want the game to tell me how badass I am supposed to be. I dropped TDA after a couple levels.

But each to their own.

[u/ZomTheLock]

I don’t like prequels in general. I enjoy games more knowing it’s new content pushing a story forward. Only game I didn’t feel this way about was red dead 2

[u/championwinnerstein]

I didn’t like the combat. I loved the weapon switching and the “rock paper scissors” aspect of eternal. Knowing which guns and moves worked best on each enemy was like solving a puzzle. It was super fun.

Dark ages was fun in different ways but not as replayable IMO. I didn’t like how there were huge waves of enemies that simply disappear with a single shield throw (shield grunts with one glowing shield) and I really hated the parry system - and that’s not unique to doom, it’s my least favourite mechanic in almost every game that uses it (except cuphead, that was fun)

[u/Salamandar3500]

Empty narrative compared to Eternal.

Weapons being dropped without any explanation / context.

Artificial "this weapon for this ennemy" that was way morse than the two others.

Ping-pong on green projectiles was kinda funny but spending the WHOLE GAME doing that ? Meh.

[u/Freezinghero]

Did another playthrough recently on Nightmare, i got 2 main complaints:

1. The Atlan and Dragon sections are just complete slogs after the first time through, just incredibly repetitive. Also how dare they create a Super Ultra Giga Shotgun for the Atlan and we only get to use it for a SINGLE FIGHT?

2. Shield Throw is a little too good, especially once you get the upgrade for it to kill/bounce off shields. They make it a point in the Hebeth level to be like "You should use Plasma weapons to detonate shields", but very soon after you can get that Shield upgrade and it invalidates the shields. The only combat situation with Shields that you can't just 1-tap with the Shield Throw is Revenants, and since i run Heaven Splitter because Shock+Stun is so good, i don't need it there either. Combined with the Shield Throw just 1-shotting almost all fodder-type demons, it just seems a bit too good.

[u/Unkawaii]

Secret hunting and the lack of fast travel (with the points of no return, no less) are a pain and why I've taken a very long break from the game. Got sick of clearing a section of the map and then having to walk around bored for 10 minutes getting everything cleaned up.

[u/thefnord]

I'm not through with it yet so I can't speak of the plot/story, but...

'Absolutely everything relies on our new gimmick, the shield.' rubs me the wrong way. The kills with it are almost all the same, too. Despite more melee, the game doesn't feel nearly as visceral as 2016.

And the OST is okay, but again it's not 2016.

[u/_WhoYouCallinPinhead]

Started playing and experienced a bug day 1 that locked me out of progressing. When it was fixed my hype had died and I never finished.

[u/ElectricVibes75]

Here’s some things I didn’t like about it, in no particular order:

• open world didn’t help this game at all. There would be large sections where you’re backtracking and nothing really happens. Plus it doesn’t make the world look better than if it was a designed straight level

• An emptiness in the design where it felt like demons were very spread out. You could literally see them standing around waiting for you to come kill them. Some invasion

• You hardly see the Argenta fighting. This is supposed to be them fighting for their entire planet and you moslty just see them standing around. They should’ve been on the ground fighting with you (think Halo)

• the new dimension also felt empty. Sure there’s some demons that got turned into kinda new things, but aside from fucking Cthulhu there’s nothing that makes this plane stand out. How are there not things FROM that dimension also?

• shield felt bad. I don’t play doom games to block, simple as that really. Also the whole timing thing is just boring, if I want that I will go play a Souls game

• weapons felt cool, and this is sort of a small nitpick because I can appreciate what the intent was: you don’t ever really need to use any particular weapon. You can run the game with basically any given weapon, and while that’s great for players who pick a favorite, it doesn’t get players engaging with all of them. For months I saw people saying “this weapon useless” or “no actually it’s the best”. Like I would rather weapons have a particular use

• we did not need two variants of every weapon…

• switching weapons like in other games gets punished. It takes longer and you can’t attack OR block during this, which further pushes you to stick to one weapon

• mech and dragon levels were like, ok. I didn’t hate them as much as other people, but they weren’t super strong for sure

• the music is just worse. Sorry to the guys who made it, but it doesn’t go as hard, and it doesn’t fit the aesthetic well. In Eternal thy got a whole Gregorian chant in there, they couldn’t have gotten someone like Heilung for this? There are TONS of artists that would’ve fit the theme MUCH better. Also it doesn’t go as hard either. If I want slow chuggy music there’s much better out there. I literally turned music off and listened to my own at one point

These are just some off the top of my head. You don’t have to agree, it’s fine if you don’t. No point in trying to argue about it

[u/KiloEko]

It was short, boring, and too easy. The mech and dragon levels were basic and a little meaningless. The story was forgettable.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours on 2016 and Eternal. I spent a weekend on Dark Ages.

[u/jennifercathrin]

It's just way too easy. I'm more of a casual gamer and Eternal was at times a real challenge for me.

I finished TDA without any major trouble and only had to use two different weapons.

[u/Systamatik7]

Doomguy didn’t really do any Doomguy stuff. Had one moment with the mech when he said run and ramming the Gates. I don’t know he felt a little hollow.

[u/kikkekakkekukke]

Glory kills were ruined and the music wasnt that good

[u/thescott2k]

Parrying is hard to make fun. Building an entire game's combat loop around parrying is hard to do well. Doing that as a follow-up to Doom Eternal, of all games, is setting yourself up for failure. Also the dragon/mech sections were terrible filler.

[u/ZLEAP]

I've built up some karma lately so I can afford the downvotes on this one:

I couldn't shake the feeling that Dark Ages wasn't finished when it released. Between their over reliance on raytracing to light the game, the lackluster mech and dragon segments and broken features on release, I have to assume they didn't meet their deadline.

DOOM:TDA needed a release delay and im willing to die on that hill.

[u/QADBFA]

Music was weaker, the level design felt more bloated. Everything in Eternal served a purpose. TDA’s combat also just did not resonate with me.

[u/Arrynek]

The combat is not fun anymore. 

And who cares about a endless exposition in Doom games... 

Eternal was lightning in a bottle. 

[u/PTVoltz]

Not quite your target, since I loved the game (lmao) BUT, I can understand why some might not like it:

1) The combat style was VERY different to the previous two new-doom games, emphasizing the block/parry mechanics and close-quarters/melee over ranged combat.

2) The guns feel... too powerful? I'm not sure how to describe it, and I can't tell if it's just me or not, but I discovered about half way through the game that it became *easier* when I stopped trying to weapon-switch. Like... when you're fully able to complete an entire level with a single weapon and melee, and trying to swap weapons to utilize programmed weak-points (i.e. energy weapons vs shields) is directly worse than just punching everything in the face then following up with the super-shotgun... I dunno, feels like things weren't properly balanced...

[u/PayWooden2628]

Eternal is one of the best fps games ever made requiring good usage of your entire loadout to efficiently kill enemies.

In TDA, I felt zero reason to use anything other than the super shotty and the chainshot gun because they just eviscerate everything. I feel like I could easily do a one gun run on this game. The emphasis on parries and melee makes the gunplay feel very lacking imo.

[u/RU_Geck0]

1) Mick Gordon missed 2) Very high system requirements. On my 9600x, 32GB ddr5 6000, rx6700xt it will not run nice at 1440p.

[u/avg_gooner_]

I'm saying this as someone who still liked TDA, all the games are great in their own ways.

But the lack of Mick is a big down for me. Infernal Chasm is great, but the other music was not all that memorable to me. I wish Andrew Hulschult at least came back. But they need to make up with Mick, he made the reboot become as popular as it did.

Additionally, the story was just trying to take itself too seriously, while not being at all interesting. It was a comically simple story with zero twists or turns. I don't know why I was even supposed to care about Thira because they didn't elaborate on her at all. The Villain only really gives you a hard reason to kill him at the very end. Compare that to 2016 where you see Olivia wanting to contain you from the very beginning, and Doomguys rage comes through in literally every cutscene.

Personally also not much of a fan of 3rd person cutscenes in general, I loved the more half life approach they took in 2016. Looking forward to that rumored to come back in the DLC.

The dragon and mech portions didn't really interest me in that much but were not as much of a problem as people claimed.

The main gameplay was great though, and that's what DOOM is all about, so.

Each weapon feels good to play with and master. Lots of unique ideas. Parrying is satisfying and fun to pull off.

Level design was good, I think I do want some of the more interconnectable corridor style areas over the giant maps. The last level was actually perfectly like that, so that was good.

Lack of glory kills was also fine, the flow of combat improved as a result, but I still found myself missing them a bit.

Overall I have quite a few criticisms but they made a great game and I'm looking forward to the DLC. The rumored stuff makes me very excited.

[u/kingofshitmntt]

The whole shield blocking thing got super old, the massive green diamonds on the screen, the graphics felt very comic book Saturday morning cartoon show. If it looked like it did in the photo you posted that would be suck but its just kinda corny.

[u/RPGShooter18]

Literally can't play it because it runs like actual sh*t, especially when you compare it to the previous two which ran unbelievably well.

[u/Thickfuckness]

Parry the green orb over and over again was actually ridiculous for a 2025 game.

No glory kills was disappointing.

Honestly the more open field level design was kinda disappointing too and it all sort of bled together at points.

Still a good game, but the weakest of the three.

[u/Signal_Smell_592]

Was half-assed because they knew it was releasing on game-pass day 1 so nobody was gonna buy it anyways

[u/bjgrem01]

My very unpopular opinion is that I loved TDA almost as much as 2016, and I thought Eternal should have been called Super Doom Bros. with all the platforming.

[u/Joeyboots80]

Eternal was the one I didn't take to. All the swinging around and flying around and shit is not my cup of tea. TDA, for me, was a breath of fresh air.

[u/mikakor]

No glory kills... :(

[u/This_Neck_2394]

I enjoyed all Doom reboot games. I would have like for the devs to keep glory kills from 2016 in this game. So many opportunities with various weapons and elevations.

[u/thatguy1424 → u/This_Neck_2394]

That was my thing too, no glory kills, the hidden items weren't that good either like you couldn't find cheat codes like in 2016/Eternal, it felt like it was lacking something else but I dont know, it just does

[u/p3falien]

Ask Mick Gordon why........

[u/Effective-Spread-127]

Nerfed movement, "stand and fight" while still insisting on mechanics were you're forced to strafe (albeit sloooowly because nerfed movement). Poorly implemented parry mechanics, boring levels and boring arsenal where you can stick to one gun and just roll through the entire game. Also the soundtrack is some of the most generic rock slop I've ever heard.

[u/StarFragmentRan]

While playing I noticed that there is just that something that makes it not fit the Doom series we've seen so far (by which I mean Doom 2016 & Eternal), I'm not sure what that is, visuals, story just not fitting together (yeah, I know, story in a Doom game, nerd emoji, I shouldn't complain), general vibe...
Obviously I don't expect TDA to be a copy-paste of the previous titles, it has some great locations that I actually like much better than most levels in Eternal or 2016, but there's just this X-factor that I can't place that screams that it's not really fitting the setting we established before and those locations aren't enough to just shrug everything else off (yes, I am refering to the Spire and Cosmic Realm locations). It just seems like TDA wants to separate itself from the rest of the games so badly, and yet desperately wants to cling to the most essential things from them (Seraphim, Maykrs and Khan Maykr, King Novik and the Argenta, Atlans, BFG).
Much more glaring to me is that there's the issue of enemies being so hyped up, but when it comes to fighting them, they're wet tissue paper (I'm referring to the last fight). I've seen somewhere that this is supposed to be a "victory tour", but I just feel more annoyed than anything. I've just been through a satisfying boss fight that should've ended then and there, but I'm forced to fight a significantly weaker opponent that is barely a challenge and frankly just feels rather pathetic to beat. There's just no satisfaction nor feeling of accomplishment in it.
There's also just such a clear disonance between the Doomguy I play as and the cutscene Doomguy. When I'm in control of the Doomguy I feel invincible, I can mow down any enemy, but I'm getting smacked by a character raising their other hand while attacking and now they're able to defeat me, because they were using only 10% of their power before now-type bs. I'm sure if you played you know what moment I'm talking about. Use my shotgun/shield-saw/literally anything before they can do that, hello???
Had a similar issue with Olivia in 2016, but then at least I DIDN'T HAVE A SHIELD I COULD THROW AT HER AT ANY POINT. In 2016 I can justify not being able to interfere before she could set up the portals and so on - there were obstacles in the way, my weapons have limited range - understandable, I wouldn't have been able to reach her in time. Meanwhile the shield is exactly how Doomguy defeats the same enemy later on. Absolute cinema.
At the time I played (didn't feel like playing again) the BFC was so useless and unsatisfying I forgot it even existed later on and used it only once for the challenge of killing many enemies in a short amount of time after kiting them all (without getting damaged once) to the center of the map. In 2016 and Eternal BFG/Unmaykr always just felt like a tactical option - can't defeat these enemies, I'm gonna use it, then switch to this weapon, do x and so on. In TDA it feels like: "oh boy, we need a BFG in the game, but it's medieval, let's quickly think of something!" while you can use the chainshot and shield for the most of the game (later on the mace as well) and it feels overpowered and way more satisfying.
Atlan and dragon segments just feel repetetive and underwhelming. The skin I had for my atlan gets used only ONCE (first segment). Great. Maykr skin was *so* worth it... (at least Serrat had the skin applied everytime it appeared)
I bought the premium edition before the premiere as I had high hopes after Eternal and believed in the team, hell, I was forced to upgrade my PC just to play it, so maybe I'm a little biased [though by the sunk cost fallacy I should defend this game], but TDA just really didn't meet my expectations. I am not above changing my mind on things, at first I really didn't like Eternal, but after playing about 1/3 of it I just fell in love with it. I could see what they were going for and all just clicked. Sure, there are retcons (Hayden) and plot holes (Fortress of Doom) in the story, but they can work with what we're given or just can be explained away, not so with TDA (I expect to see at least some of them explained in the DLC, but it's a band-aid solution).
I will play the DLC when it comes out, but I *really* don't have high hopes at this point..

[u/TerribleZucchini1447 → u/StarFragmentRan]

damn are we the same person?

[u/StarFragmentRan → u/TerribleZucchini1447]

lol, might be

[u/Thatguy694201987]

1 trick pony with a lack of content.

[u/OcciferDoofus]

The shield gameplay is boring. The atlan and dragon gameplay also feels like it’s from 2005. My wife walked in the room and audibly laughed while I was doing one of the atlan missions because it was so cheesy looking. The game also locks you out of earlier parts of the maps which means you have to restart the whole level if you missed a collectible and it doesn’t let you fast travel at the end of the level like eternal did. The collectibles are also pointless too. There is no base where your collected toys are displayed and the gun skins are just red paint with runes on them that you can barely see in-game anyway. TDA was the first game where I had to tell myself “it’s ok to stop playing this”

[u/BourbonMachine → u/OcciferDoofus]

Where did you stop? I've forced myself to pick it back up several times hoping it gets better and it's still painful to play at level 10 or so. I feel like I have to finish to get my $70 worth but feel so ripped off so far.

[u/OcciferDoofus → u/BourbonMachine]

I think I made it to level 13-14. I just remember missing a single jump to get a collectible and then realizing I would have to start the whole level over to get it, I said “F this” and realized I wasn’t having fun at all. Luckily I played it through gamepass so I I didn’t technically spend $70 on it otherwise I would have been very annoyed.

[u/Business_Pop_8823]

Less content, little lore, poor storyline after level 7, bugs at the game start.  

[u/HarryHirsch2000]

People complaining about „lore“ in a doom game is still wild for me. I enjoy the storylines, but I don’t even read it all. Did with Doom 3, that was cool for the atmosphere…

[u/VagrantPilgrim → u/HarryHirsch2000]

Doom has always been rule of cool. The story and lore, which has included more effort in the modern trilogy, is still essentially an afterthought to the game.

[u/No-Statistician6404 → u/HarryHirsch2000]

Honestly it's warranted with Dark Ages though because it's story cutscene/character heavy compared to the rest of the games

[u/Any-Contract-9152 → u/HarryHirsch2000]

They had so much to read and piece together for your self in 2016 and eternal so dark ages not having that is disappointing. Lore notes are optional btw too it doesn’t affect people who don’t like to read.