I enjoyed the remaster quite a bit. Had some nice improvements and smoothed out some of the rough edges of the old version.
New enemies were nice and a decent challenge (I played on hard) The spider boss was a surprise and had a suitably sad backstory to go with it, and while a surprise at first, I only needed two deaths to realize if I bunched her and the spiders together I could kite them in circles around the room while blasting them (And pitchforking once I ran out of shells, which was pretty funny actually) I especially liked the Warewolves, and the story hints behind them, the one in the wilderness being the one that infected Steven's kid I presume, hence two warewolves. I do think the church boss could do with being replaced for something a bit more interesting. I guess the sorcerer works in the setting, but I feel it could be better.
Also, as a possible extra boss idea you could expand on the cultist leadership and have either one powerful boss cultist (Their leader) or a group of strong-ish unique cultists scattered about the map, or plop he/she/they in the cultist camp, I mean these guy's were organized enough to take over a city, hence clever/powerful leaders. The ghost enemies were a bit of a surprise, but they made the dark places real scary. Cool effect with the black remnants, too, learning to dodge their projectiles while retaliating to disrupt their rate of fire was quite the fun experience.
A suggestion for a low level stationary enemy I have is for that floor grate near the guillotine, I avoided it at first cause I expected to hear a noise if I stood on it and for tentacles or something to spawn if I stood there too long; hey, maybe it'd make a fun if optional weak early game enemy to add that only shows up if you stand on the grate for a set period of time.
I like the new areas well enough. The Swamp was cool and offered a useful shortcut later on. The cultist camp was mostly just a big gun fight, and the cultists did half the work for me by killing eachother, lol. The reward for going there was okay, but the pendant didn't last long sadly. Certainly enjoyed the dark areas and the dread they inspired (Surprised you didn't include rare boxes of matches or something as an inferior shorter-lived alternative to the illusive lantern.
The improvement to the tent that leads into the other dimension was maybe my favorite part, seeing your character's reflection vanish around corners and getting spooked by it was a stroke of cleverness, so kudos for that; I was half expecting to have to fight a mimic armed with the same weapons as me and with equally fast movement, but luckily that wasn't the case since a battle like that in those confines would've been a nightmare, especially if it was a mimic along with reflections of the player an the mimic.... I'm getting off topic. - also have to split comment due to character limit.
The cistern was interesting, though apart from finding the lantern I felt my explorations down there were, narratively speaking, not all that compelling, or rather non-existent. If a reason to go down there could be worked in to the story. If not that, then perhaps near drains and water sources, toilets and so on, really weak but annoying small enemies could spawn from them occasionally until the cistern is cleared. Or a simpler incentive could be a note about some guy who had a stash of supplies he was hiding and had the key to, but the cultists killed him and dumped him and his key in the sewer, leading to a gross corpse hunt, also making the lantern a happy discovery along the way -- as an added idea, said stash could contain a sort of prelude to the rocket launcher weapon in the form of two or three grenade-type weapons, only found in that stash and nowhere else, or a second melee weapon, inferior to the pitchfork but better than fists after throwing the fork at enemies. Eh just spit-balling ideas.
Moving on, the arena setting for both the hounds and the final boss was an good idea, though I think it worked better for the doggos given how relentlessly on your tail they are, but the big boss was a walk in the park, had a merry old time dancing around him and blasting away, heck I did more damage to myself than he did to me due to the launcher's splash damage. The boss itself is improved attack wise and has some cool effects, but I liked being able to use the entire city as my battlefield against him since it gave it a sense of scope and scale. When I fought him in the old version, ran and hid, I was scared he'd teleport to my location or something. But yeah, he was probably the least intimidating part of the wad.
Overall I enjoyed it more than the original, the weapons felt more useful, not bad balance in ammo and resources, I like the challenge of not being wasteful with ammo and med supplies, I felt the pressure but not too heavily to where I ran out of options. Maybe if I played on Nightmare difficulty that opinion might change, but as it was I did okay with ammo and tactical pitchfork usage (falling off the dock into the water by accident at the very start helped in that regard a little.) Speaking of the dock, Part of me sort of wished for the player to be able to walk back to their boat after the boss fight and roll the credits there, sort of a feeling of closure, like "Well, my work here is done." Even if we don't know why the player visited the city in the first place. But now I'm just nitpicking, and really I'm kinda crap at reviewing, praise and criticism, so meh.
Anyways, I'll leave off here since I've rambled on long enough and the length of this comment is already absurd. Sorry about the wall of text, I got a bit carried away. Thanks for the work put into it, it was pretty damn fun.
I enjoyed the remaster quite a bit. Had some nice improvements and smoothed out some of the rough edges of the old version.
New enemies were nice and a decent challenge (I played on hard) The spider boss was a surprise and had a suitably sad backstory to go with it, and while a surprise at first, I only needed two deaths to realize if I bunched her and the spiders together I could kite them in circles around the room while blasting them (And pitchforking once I ran out of shells, which was pretty funny actually) I especially liked the Warewolves, and the story hints behind them, the one in the wilderness being the one that infected Steven's kid I presume, hence two warewolves. I do think the church boss could do with being replaced for something a bit more interesting. I guess the sorcerer works in the setting, but I feel it could be better.
Also, as a possible extra boss idea you could expand on the cultist leadership and have either one powerful boss cultist (Their leader) or a group of strong-ish unique cultists scattered about the map, or plop he/she/they in the cultist camp, I mean these guy's were organized enough to take over a city, hence clever/powerful leaders. The ghost enemies were a bit of a surprise, but they made the dark places real scary. Cool effect with the black remnants, too, learning to dodge their projectiles while retaliating to disrupt their rate of fire was quite the fun experience.
A suggestion for a low level stationary enemy I have is for that floor grate near the guillotine, I avoided it at first cause I expected to hear a noise if I stood on it and for tentacles or something to spawn if I stood there too long; hey, maybe it'd make a fun if optional weak early game enemy to add that only shows up if you stand on the grate for a set period of time.
I like the new areas well enough. The Swamp was cool and offered a useful shortcut later on. The cultist camp was mostly just a big gun fight, and the cultists did half the work for me by killing eachother, lol. The reward for going there was okay, but the pendant didn't last long sadly. Certainly enjoyed the dark areas and the dread they inspired (Surprised you didn't include rare boxes of matches or something as an inferior shorter-lived alternative to the illusive lantern.
The improvement to the tent that leads into the other dimension was maybe my favorite part, seeing your character's reflection vanish around corners and getting spooked by it was a stroke of cleverness, so kudos for that; I was half expecting to have to fight a mimic armed with the same weapons as me and with equally fast movement, but luckily that wasn't the case since a battle like that in those confines would've been a nightmare, especially if it was a mimic along with reflections of the player an the mimic.... I'm getting off topic. - also have to split comment due to character limit.
The cistern was interesting, though apart from finding the lantern I felt my explorations down there were, narratively speaking, not all that compelling, or rather non-existent. If a reason to go down there could be worked in to the story. If not that, then perhaps near drains and water sources, toilets and so on, really weak but annoying small enemies could spawn from them occasionally until the cistern is cleared. Or a simpler incentive could be a note about some guy who had a stash of supplies he was hiding and had the key to, but the cultists killed him and dumped him and his key in the sewer, leading to a gross corpse hunt, also making the lantern a happy discovery along the way -- as an added idea, said stash could contain a sort of prelude to the rocket launcher weapon in the form of two or three grenade-type weapons, only found in that stash and nowhere else, or a second melee weapon, inferior to the pitchfork but better than fists after throwing the fork at enemies. Eh just spit-balling ideas.
Moving on, the arena setting for both the hounds and the final boss was an good idea, though I think it worked better for the doggos given how relentlessly on your tail they are, but the big boss was a walk in the park, had a merry old time dancing around him and blasting away, heck I did more damage to myself than he did to me due to the launcher's splash damage. The boss itself is improved attack wise and has some cool effects, but I liked being able to use the entire city as my battlefield against him since it gave it a sense of scope and scale. When I fought him in the old version, ran and hid, I was scared he'd teleport to my location or something. But yeah, he was probably the least intimidating part of the wad.
Overall I enjoyed it more than the original, the weapons felt more useful, not bad balance in ammo and resources, I like the challenge of not being wasteful with ammo and med supplies, I felt the pressure but not too heavily to where I ran out of options. Maybe if I played on Nightmare difficulty that opinion might change, but as it was I did okay with ammo and tactical pitchfork usage (falling off the dock into the water by accident at the very start helped in that regard a little.) Speaking of the dock, Part of me sort of wished for the player to be able to walk back to their boat after the boss fight and roll the credits there, sort of a feeling of closure, like "Well, my work here is done." Even if we don't know why the player visited the city in the first place. But now I'm just nitpicking, and really I'm kinda crap at reviewing, praise and criticism, so meh.
Anyways, I'll leave off here since I've rambled on long enough and the length of this comment is already absurd. Sorry about the wall of text, I got a bit carried away. Thanks for the work put into it, it was pretty damn fun.