izigame.me

I... I simply could not recommend this. If you want to understand the story, at least play it on Im too Young to Die as even one step up is just painful. It basically removes what makes the first game fun and became an absolute slog. Each level also felt like it was developed by a different team. I'll get into that in a moment, but first let me list the pros and cons
Pros
- They introduce some new environmental hazards, they're nice and spice up gameplay and do make it feel more challenging in a good way. Things like fog, gas, and hostile explosives, though these are notable only found in one of the three levels
- A pickup that fully refills your armor, a bar that, I feel, really had little use as it was such a pain to refill in the original due to flame belch's cool down, meaning you can go into fights better prepared. However once again it was only really used in the second level, and I found I was usually at or near full armor when I found these
- It has, actually, fairly decent level aesthetic and all but the first level feel unique and intresting
- 3 new slayer skins that actually slap and are really nice to look at, not too gaudy and not too minor
- Marauders are more utilized and feel more significant, being mixed in with other enemies to make it feel more intense and like the fight is more meaningful
- Fodder zombies RESPAWN, meaning you aren't just stuck with two uses of either armor, ammo, or health for the intense 1 on 1 fights, which for better or worse this DLC has a LOT of
- Enviormental hazards like electricity get used more and the arenas change as you fight making it feel more alive
Cons
- Many mechanics like healing, ammo, armor all have changed and give you no tutorial
- Even on medium it is BRUTAL, and they give you almost no time to breath and recover your ammo and bars. This makes the game actually draining, I felt tired after playing
- New demons are... uninspired to say the least. All of it is just reused assets. They added a new turret thats simply annoying with only being able to be damaged by the precision bolt mod reused from the big brain boss's eyeballs, Not offensive, but not interesting. A Specter vesion of the Whiplash, which is annoying, but not the biggest sin. The Blood Maykr, a stronger Maykr drone that is like a mini version of the Kahn Maykr, used poorly but actually a really cool and solid design and concept and who is weak in the same way as the drone, headshots when shields are down, It puts out high damage with decent mobility but if you can bait out its charge attacks by making distance its no issue. Finally there is the spirit. Oh the spirit! The spirit is a... enemy. Its basically a living buff token that will posses a demon and buff the fuck out of them, and when that demon dies the spirit will come out and be stunned before it begins to channel it inhabit a diffrent demon, usually aiming for a heavy or super heavy, though it will go for a fodder if it has no other options. When its out its vulnerable to the microwave beam and only the microwave beam. Doesn't sound so bad? WRONG. This thing is a fucking menace. I can not begin to describe how infuriating it is to fight one of these guys. It cranks their tankiness, speed, evasiveness, and damage up to not just 11 but 22, and fighting them is not just a 'skill issue', even on an imp, the second or third weakest demon in the game, it can survive two point blank meatshots from the Super Shotgun. And usually a spirit will spawn on one of three things, a Hellknight, a Archanoid, or a maurader. Though they can also spawn on Tyrants too making them nigh unkillable able to eat multiple BFG shots to the face from long range. Again, not so bad but youll hear why this is aweful later.
- Levels are long, and I mean LONNNNGGGGGGGGG. The first level took me about and hour and a half over 2 days to beat
- Slayer gates are a slog and I recommend dropping your difficulty and blowing through them before raising it again as otherwise your gonna be bashing your head against a wall, as doing things like fighting 2 doom hunters and a spirit boosted maurader is a bitch.
- Arenas are now aweful, being tight, claustrophobic, and giving you little mobility. Rather than open large arenas like the first game it is incredibly cramped and forces your flow of movement. The final boss suffers from this a lot by giving you no room to breath in the arena period, but then makes it even tighter with area hazards, and aggressive enemies, and very little supplies
- Continuing the above point youd think this would mean less enemies? Nope! They throw tons of not only enemies, but large and movement based enemies like Doom Hunters, Pinkies, Barons, Hell Knights, and Tyrants into these itty bitty arenas and this will lead to you being cornered and dying unfairly because there simply isn't space
-Enemy Spam. Enemies hold little value to a fight anymore as theyre basically chucked at you en mass. Youre just walking down a hall and- Oop! Two Barons! Oh how about a tyrant too? There was a mini arena where, I kid you not, they put in Two Tyrants, one of which is spirit boosted making it nigh invincible, a Doom Hunter, a marauder, a pinky, and two makyr angles or whatever the fuck they are. And they give you near no breathing room to do this with two pillars as your only cover and a wide open walkway and center platform as your only options to move, no vertical mobility. There's a room that's literally about 12 pinkies all in a cult circle ready to bum rush you
- Arenas take longer too as they require you to kill every enemy and instead of 1 or 2 waves, or 1 long progressive waves, they often send 3 or 4 separate waves at you, this includes slayergates which also suffer from ALL the same issues listed above
- Demon combinations. I know that I talked about enemy spam before but demon combinations are a bit different. One of the great things about the main game is that demons always played off each other, and the arena, never letting you feel overwhelmed or too pressured, but still making it challenging. Here that's thrown out the window. With the rampant demon spam and dev's need to make it feel artificially difficult, a lot of this synergy that made the main game fun is lost by sending heavy and super heavy demons that dont pair well together. Slight spoiler but if you've read this far well might as well keep going, but in the final boss of the DLC he has 5 phases, 2 of which you have to fight 2 spirit boosted demons. The first one is a Mancubus and a Hell knight, probably the... least offensive of the two, but is insanely difficult due to the poor design of the level. If you focus down the hell knight the mancubus, while eating up a lot of damage, becomes much easier due to it having too little mobility to keep up even when spirit boosted. The second though is... well its a dread knight and a pain elemental both spirit boosted, and theres a respawning Blood Maykr. All while the boss spams projectiles AND spawns the electirc eyeballs to restrict your movement. Well together this makes a very unfun fight as non of the demons play well off each other. The Pain elemental floats above the arena meaning it always has line of sight on you, makes sense to target it first? Nope! The dread knight is so absurdly fast it will near instantly cross the arena and start pounding you and making more AOE damage. Manage to get away from both of them? The Blood Maykr will snipe you or just spam bullets with the boss, something he can do with his sheilds up because **You cant get far enough to bait out his attacks**. I get his point of being there, hes supposed to be an ammo refill like the drones in the Kahn Maykr fight, but hes too powerful to fill that role. It felt like they thought they didnt get enough use of the demon so they decided to use it in this final fight. Anyways back to the fight, if you want to use the zombies as health, armor, or ammo, get ready to get hit. Out of space, Ill respond more below