Picture this: You're 7 years old. Your mom brings a bunch of CD's she bought at a dollar store from one town over. They're shareware discs that came out before you were even born. Most of them are games you've already played; Doom, Quake, Heretic, etc. There's one game you haven't seen before. It's got some lady holding a guy by the shirt and shooting somebody else on the CD. You put it in your old ass Windows 98 computer and what follows is the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane experience you've ever had. You're going 250 miles per hour while amazing synth music blasts your ears, some guy you think is dead gets back up and shoots you, you hit him with a bazooka and gore flies all over the place. Two days later the CD breaks. You can't remember what the game was called because you're 7 years old and you're stupid (like every other 7 year old). You forget about it. It becomes a dream, a vague memory of something your mind probably fabricated on one of the days you didn't take your Adderall.

Years later you see some YouTuber who plays terrible first person shooter games named Civvie11 do a review of a game he actually likes called Rise of The Triad. That sounds kind of familia- ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. THAT'S THE GAME. IT'S RISE OF THE TRIAD, OH MY GOD.

You see it's on sale on GOG for 75 cents and not only that but there's like ten times the amount of content there was in that shareware demo you played years earlier. You're in awe, you've been in an erect state for six hours straight, you have to go to the hospital for ischemic priapism. They drain blood from your massive throbbing ♥♥♥♥ with a needle. You're traumatized. Rise of The Triad nearly killed you because it made you so hard.

Some years after that there's a remastered re-release of Rise of The Triad with even more bonus content and quality of life features added in. You're getting aroused again. It's raining and dark outside. You live on the edge of town, ten hours from the nearest hospital.

I'll start with this:
Nightdive did a good job remastering this, with a whole new episode, a map editor, and more. Absolutely nothing negative to say on that front. They are an extremely talented team and deserve all the praise on this venture as possible. If you have played Rise of the Triad and liked it before playing this remaster, more power to you and this is easily the best way to play the game. However , this review is coming from the perspective of somebody whose first time playing this game has been this remaster, Ludicrous Edition. So be warned.
(Swear that I ain't fishing for clowns with this, hear me out lmao)
{Also ignore the 0.6 hours on record thing it hasn't logged half of my time)

I waited to play the OG Rise of the Triad because of the numerous terrible community source ports that leave much to be desired, and I never wanted to bother trying it out in DOSbox, that ain't happening 💀. I was pretty hyped to play this because of how much I'd heard content creators like Civvie 11, among others, gas this game up like it's on par with Doom or something and, needless to say, I was disappointed once I actually got my hands on it. While on the surface, hearing of multiple playable characters with different stats, dog mode, and all this game's funky gimmicks sounded appealing, in function, I don't care for most of it, and the level design is extremely dated.

The weapon balancing in this game is, frankly, some of the poorest I've seen from such a constantly talked about boomer shooter like this. You pick up some dual pistols at the start of the game? Look ma, RotT did dual-wielding the same day as Marathon!!! Yeah, too bad it's terrible. The pistols take forever to down the weakest enemies in the game and immediately become obsolete the second you pick up the MP40, which itself should be cool in theory. Infinite ammo automatic weapon, dope. Yes, dope indeed, but like said, only in theory. Besides the gun sounding weak, enemies take forever to go down with this weapon as well. Not AS long as the dual-wielded pistols, but combat with the proper guns in this FPS game is tedious. As monotonous as it comes.
Ok, surely the rest of the weapons make up for this paltry showing? Nope, not even remotely in my opinion. The rest of the weapons besides the Excalibat (which is already pretty worthless in this game) are all some form or variation of explosive. They can all just fill in for each other really, I can't think of a single scenario where I thought "Man I could really use this other explosive weapon rn." They're all functionally pretty close and it doesn't make a difference which one you happen to have on you. They're all more or less effective against the damage-sponge enemies this game throws your way and are good for crowd control but that's the most I can give it. Can't say I really like this arsenal over anything any of its competitors were doing around the same time. Hell, even on the same day.
It also has a weapon limit which is stinky, f*ck that amirite?

This is where things really get bad. The weapon-balancing stuff I mentioned, I can take all that, but it's that in combination with the dated level design here that really gets to me and urges me to recommend against buying this game if you've never bothered with it before. Never since Hexen have I played a damn game so hellbent on getting me lost. Maps in Rise of the Triad are ginormous but also limited as it comes. Because this game uses an upgraded version of the Wolfenstein 3D engine, height variation in this game is more an illusion than it is a true property of the levels. GADs are strewn about the levels to create janky, unfun platforming challenges on occasions, and layouts are so labyrinthian that a minotaur would get PTSD and clinical depression trying to navigate most of RotT.
It's not so bad in the expanded levels they added in the remaster because those are made by masters of this craft like DuskDev, who also come at it with something of a modern perspective, but the base game is still an absolute lost cause for me.
Idk, levels here just feel too big for their own good and like how people that don't play boomer shooters stereotype boomer shooter levels to be designed like. Maze-like, hard to navigate because almost everything looks the same, likely completely unknown secrets because of how obscure they'd have to be in mazes as large as these, so on so forth.
Maybe it's worth it for workshop/mod content, but with only good community maps cannot a good game make.
Extreme RotT is terrible and about as fun as having your d*ck stapled to a freeway with a semi-truck running it over over and over again. Do not play it.

Nightive did a great job remastering a very mediocre, dated FPS that contains odd balancing choices and unfun level design. If you already liked it, can't recommend RotT: Ludicrous Edition enough. If ya haven't played it before, stay away for your own sake and play something else instead.

Welcome to the game that just doesn't care. It's violent, it's an FPS, it's from the mid-90s, it has blood, it has guts, it's obviously a Doom/Wolfenstein clone. We kids knew it from the beginning, when this little 90s gem was a mere cheap shareware on the shelf. Doom clones were abound, but this one just didn't care. It gets to the point rather nicely, complete with missile launchers and meat grinder levels. It doesn't even bother with demons or clever artsy fartsy level design. There's just infinite bullet ammo and Nazi-look alike enemies. They even added eyeballs and ludicrous gibs to the blood and guts department of video gaming. Not to mention this one literally has your almost-a-Nazi enemies begging for mercy just before playing dead only to suddenly rise back up and go at you again. The trampoline effect was cool until Duke Nukem and Quake arrived and you can even take mushrooms and play a tall moaning god....
The dual pistols were an old obsession of mine when I was about 14-15 years old. It wasn't until the complete Rise of the Triad edition was released on IBM compatible 3 1/2 disks that I played the other missions beyond the shareware version. There are so many hilariously ludicrous features to this game. Sometimes after a particularly brutal take-down there will be a voice taunting you, almost moaning in a ghostly manner...."you.....suuuucckkk!"..... In this game you can't even exit properly without some tongue-in-cheek reference to violence and death. 'tis so cool to be playing this lil' ultra-violent, vulgar, rebellious, an' impertinent lil' twerp once again!
One last note however, I never imagined myself playing this game with a full-mouse-view feature. This game was released before I started using a mouse-keyboard combo and held it's own for a long time in my world. It just feels so weird using a mouse with this game and some of the appeal is lost in time....

Its Rise of the Triad, mostly as you remember it, but with enough QoL improvements, and new content, to make it worth the asking price. The presentation, aside from running in widescreen, is more or less intact in that the graphics haven't been retouched or upscaled. Stuff that was cut from the original release, like more guard types, including female counterparts have been added back in. You have a choice in how you want the game to sound as well, with OPL-emulated Adlib-style music, General Midi or the soundtrack from the 2013 remake of the original game.

Very fun, great shooter.