After 5 years I asked myself, was it worth the wait? The answer is yes, yes it was.

This is a soft recommendation. There are parts of this game that are really good. There are a lot of cool levels, fun weapons and cool looking enemies that are satisfying to gib. I think Wrath's main problems are related to pacing and level design. A lot of really good shooters will have breaks in the action where you can explore and take in the atmosphere. Or maybe solve a puzzle, or have a tense horror section in the dark. Anything to slow the game down and give the player a chance to catch their breath.

Wrath is not like that. Every level is at 100% intensity all the time. Something is always charging at you, or teleporting behind you, or ambushing you from a cliff. This intensity is stretched out over it's enormous hour long levels, and it just gets exhausting after a while. This game has 19 credited level designers, long time quake modders and veterans of Arcane Dimensions. All skilled and experienced designers in their own right, but the end product is unfortunately less than the sum of it's parts. It's a real shame. This game clearly had a troubled development cycle, and my heart goes out to everyone who worked on it.

I have other gripes. There is a real lack of enemy variety. The bosses have long invincibility phases. The music by Hulshult is mostly droning ambiance and not as memorable as his other work. But what really hurts Wrath is there are so many games out now that are just better. The retro FPS market is rapidly approaching total saturation, and there isn't much room for games that are just okay.

Hoping the Devs's are going to finish this , if not we are all suckers for paying into it...

Literally my only issue is that they took away the Quake 1 air strafing and it's enough to make me not want to play the game. I don't care if you can go fast with the sword, all you do is press a button and then it goes fast.

The air mobility is what made Quake 1 combat feel smooth and when you used the mobility as means to traverse around the levels fast, that's what felt truly satisfying and rewarding. Speed gained by pressing a button is boring. Please bring air strafing back!

EDIT 12/19/2019: Ok, they added air strafing. Game is literal perfection now, go get it.

It's Quake. Do you like Quake? Of course you do. Look at you, you boomer, you disgust me. Buy the game.

A fantastic throwback shooter created by talented Quake modders and published by 3D Realms. What's not to like?

Pros:

• Runs on the Quake engine and looks great.
  
• Weapons are fun to use.
  
• Fast gameplay.
  
• Fantastic level design.

Cons:

• Hard mode is still too easy.
  
• Not all that much content in EA, but that's a given.
  
• You might not like throwback shooters.

Full video review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9o3QTGSbOg

the game beat the development hell allegations. it's actually great!

TLDR; I recommend the game, it is actually good but 3DR need to do better soon.

Finally beaten the game post Early Access, was it worth the wait? Maybe not but for all intent and purposes this is a good game, it's well polished and I had a lot of fun. However the lack of enemies varieties after Episode 1 is really felt(a whole 3 new enemies are introduced after episode 1) so my suggestion is to not marathon this game in one sitting.

That being said after this and Graven I will never support any future 3DRealm early access releases.

I did a quick test on the current version of the game to have some comparison when the full version is released later this month, and I decided to leave a comment about a small piece of the available content.

Given all the caveats, I'd say I quite liked what I saw.

I believe that among all the new classics inspired by old shooters, Wrath is the one that best revives and expands the most atmospheric aspects of Quake's main campaign.

In a strange way, it's like a proposition of the ideal Quake sequel. A kind of spiritual successor, which adds a handful of new mechanics and a renewed sense of spectacle, but retains the core of the original experience, with the same feeling of movement, the same gameplay cadence and the same versatile combat dynamics.

We have an interesting gallery of absurd and ridiculous weapons to deal with enemies with cool and cohesive designs, and huge stages, which appear to have a competent design and a fantastic presentation, drenched in a hypnotic atmosphere, strengthened by a dark environmental soundtrack.

It is obvious that there is still a certain lack of elegance and polish in the general aspects. From the interface elements, the distribution of resources, the balancing of difficulties, to the lack of synergy between enemy positioning and level design. The game still needs some adjustments to be really good and replayable.

And it's exactly these types of things that I hope to see resolved in 1.0.

Furthermore, and this is perhaps my biggest fear, is that the large size of the stages means that there is a strong possibility that the game will run out of variety very quickly. And as a result, it can be exhausting and tedious.

I only played one entire level. In a calm, methodical way, killing almost 400 enemies and exploring all the secrets. This took me about an hour (Which is the average for all levels). In that same round, I found 5 of the 6 weapons available and faced, i believe, 8 or 9 enemies, out of a gallery of 10 or 11.

The truth is that it was possible to get tired and worn out in the second stage.

As this is a game with roots in classic designs, I think it's unlikely that the developers will modify the game at each stage in any creative way in order to maintain the freshness of the experience. They are betting on the solidity of the game's core. And this kind of game design is simple and doesn't usually get much more complex beyond what you see in the first few minutes, so...

Yes, it could be a problem. I would hate to see a game like this get killed simply because the developers went too far.

Anyway, Wrath is what I would like Quake 2 to be, if Quake 2 came out today.

I didn't wait for years for the game to be released and I had no expectations other than that it would be an incomplete version of the product. So the fact that it's not the most explosive and well-finished thing at the moment doesn't bother me. It's at least a promising foundation.

---

Post-launch comments:

The difficulty appears to have been substantially improved. The game is much better balanced.

Weapons seem to deal the appropriate amount of damage now.

We have new weapons too, of course.

And a narrative? Hmm.

The jump received a significant buffer, basically making bunnyhopping much more fluid and accessible.

You can jump around like an idiot now, optimally, without fear of being obliterated.

I replayed the level I had played the first time and, as far as I could tell, the number of enemies seems to have increased due to larger invasions, better distributed and communicated along the way.

That lack of synergy i mentioned before? I think they fixed it.

Save items seem more frequent and if that's not enough, there is an option to enable infinite saves.

Furthermore, the game seemed better to me, but nothing drastically different from my first visit. My fears remain the same, so I'm going to keep playing to see how successful the developers have been.

It looks like a solid buy now.

---

After finishing the first hub and facing the first boss:

I must say that these first stages have an incredible design. They are large and very open, but you barely feel the time pass while playing because they don't seem stretched in unnecessary ways.

There is a strange predisposition to spawn enemies too far away from you, but each space is purposeful and fits perfectly into the whole in an intuitive way.

Overall, the pacing of exploration and combat (AND resource balancing) is impeccable.

The only “problem” I saw was precisely the lack of variety that I mentioned before. Since you can do the hub levels in any order you choose, there isn't much room for a gradual escalation of threats. You find almost all enemies and weapons in the first stage and the rest is practically the same in all the others.

Which doesn't mean it bothered me (as I thought it would), since everything is very solid. But it's something to point out, since the levels are so big.

The first boss was interesting in visual concept, but the fight was as expected: It's just a damage sponge. It's ok, I just missed more intense music.

If you're even remotely fan of the old doom/quake stuff give this a shot