AMID EVIL

I really want to like this game as it feels crisp and polished, but it became very quickly stale to me. The combat is very linear and the enemies are mostly the same so it's just killing the same enemies over and over with no difficulty ramping. There's no real incentive to explore the maps other than finding the exit. All of the secrets feel arbitrary and mostly disappointing, but I do admit that finding evil difficulty in the starting hub was neat.

The game starts badly and feels boring, resembling a Serious Sam copy. However, as you progress, the levels become more complex with improved art style and game design. It seems the developers quickly improved and became very skilled during the creation of the game. The final part of the game is amazing, featuring a surreal and fractal-like map design. Overall, I really enjoyed the game and its DLC, and I would recommend it to Quake fans.

I love this game. Plays beautifully, the environments are amazing and the weapons and combat are top notch. 10/10

It's so evil

Hexen if it was good.

A very good "boomer shooter". Each level and chapter manages to stand out in a unique way, with lots of cool enemies and beautiful architecture. The game has seven weapons in total, which is more than enough considering how unique each of them is. Even though you will definitely have your favorites, you will find enemies that are just easier to deal with a specific weapon (so will never just keep using the same weapon).
8/10 - Overall, the game offers more than enough content to justify the price.

⠀

Fun retro FPS, level design is a bit weird sometimes tho

it's insane how visually beautiful this game is, and the gameplay is top tier too

I think I came MAGIC :)

Those dope AF dark sci fi episodes!

relaxing

This game is a pure perfection

X_X

Amid Evil is a great game, so is the DLC. I think the DLC actually has a little bit better level design, which is impressive considering how good the base game is to begin with. The graphics and art style a very good, polished and consistent. The sound and music is also very, very good. I hope this game and its DLC won some awards, and if you like FPS or retro-style FPS this is a must-play.

The weapon selection is great but something I did notice over the course of both the base game and the DLC is that I was incredibly stingy with the final weapon slot (the ribbon thing or the scythe thing in the DLC). I felt like in the DLC I got ammo more often for it, but I just didn't seem to use it or need to use it much. The same with the overkill thing. I would use it occasionally, but not nearly as often as the soul meter would allow me to do. That's probably just me being forgetful. The weapons themselves are unique enough to keep things interesting and I found myself switching between them out of fun. When I got to the end of the DLC all I kept thinking was "I hope they make a full sequel to this".

Amid Evil is a spiritual successor to the OG heretic and hexen where the brutal guns of doom, duke nukem and others were replaced by mystical tools of sorcery that can be even more devastating. I really loved the way that each episode gets better in both design and variety while the awesome visuals are showcased with unique aesthetics that accompany every level. My only critique is that this game lacks the oomph that other modern boomer shooters have like Dusk and Cultic which makes it feel a little bland. Overall, 8.5/10 I would shoot planets from a magical staff again.

I recommend this game.

By far the worst of the new blood triplets. And I don't mean "Its only bad compared to its brothers" I mean its bad even as a standalone.

Amid evil is a game that looks pretty and does as little as possible. To get the praise out of the way, it is a very pretty looking game. It is the most triple A looking retro game I've ever seen, enviroments are pretty, enemies are pretty, weapons are pretty, soundtrack is alright.

The problem is that the game was designed by 3 seperate teams that evidently never communicated with one another. The maps, the enemies and the actual gameplay design in this game is completely discombombobulated resulting in a frustrating experience that never manages to click.

(For reference I beat the game on hard)

The main 3 issues that are the source of all the problems:

1.) Enemies are bullet sponges. MASSIVE fucking bullet sponges. They eat an enormous ammount of damage, often comical ammounts of it. It can take upto 5-10 seconds of sustained fire to kill some enemies. There's no weapon combos or weapon swap techs for taking down enemies fast. The only way to kill enemies is to look at them for 10 seconds straight with your weapon of choice. Also, while the enemies have visual variety, they have ZERO gameplay variety. Play serious sam, ultrakill or doom, and you will have ever enemy attack pattern memorized by the time you beat them. All enemies are here are "generic projectile vomit" or "generic melee run at you".

2.) Maps often place you in tiny arenas, narrow hallways, narrow bridges with no room to dodge or strafe and if you step off them you fall into the void and die instantly. Compounding this issue. Enemies spam a lot. They fire A LOT of projectiles, run super fast, and attack super often.

3.) You don't have a parry, you don't have a double jump, you don't have a dash. You can't even strafe because the maps are not designed for it. You don't have anything. All you can do is walk at a brisp pace. You don't have any mobility or any response to enemies other than looking at them and hoping they run out of health before they reach you or you run out of ammo. Your weapons also have no mechanics. They all do the same thing "Damage in XYZ shape." There's no "Shotgun for kleers, Sniper for biomechs, rocket launcher for bulls", rock paper scissors strategy that games like serious sam have.

And this is what completely kills the game.

The maps are designed for ultrakill, except you don't have any of V1's mobility to navigate around enemies in confined spaces properly.

The enemies are designed for serious sam, except you don't have the space required to properly circle strafe them and focus on dodging because maps are tiny and have instakill gaps everywhere.

Gameplay is designed for fucking doom 1995, except somehow worse. I am not joking when I say that the gameplay here feels like a placeholder. The weapons all suck. They have no punch, no kick, do no damage and aren't satisfying to use, with the maybe exception of the mace. There's no rock paper scissors matching game for weapons to enemies. All weapons just do generic damage in a generic area of effect in a different shape. You use a weapon until you run out of ammo and then swap to the next one.

This game gets a huge pass because its graphics are pretty. Strip away the graphics and there's nothing underneath. Absolutely skip. If you want a classic boomer shooter just buy dusk. Its the same thing but better.

Absolutely amazing game gets better the more you go

Great game!
I'm at the halfway point of the second to last world, but I can already tell you that the game is worth it. While it isn't a ultra-fast hyper violent boomer shooter, as it is closer to Hexen and Heretic, it's level design is still good, the weapons are creative and pretty fun to use, and the enemies can be pretty tough to fight against.
The game might be too easy at times tho, since some weapons are straight up op.
The worlds you traverse are pretty beautiful, their lore is fun to follow, and the beings you meet in every single one of them add on to that. The graphics are stunning and don't try to imitate retro graphics.

My only major complaint is that the game starts getting good way too slow - I personally found the themes of the first couple of worlds pretty boring unfortunately (thought that's subjective), and only later down the line does this game really pick up the pace when it comes to atmosphere. Oh and I can't remember a single song since they're all orchestral or ambient.

But if you're fine with this stuff, and just want to play Quake with magic and insane visuals, totally recommend the buy.

An absolute masterpiece.

To the point
===================
A frantic and fast paced boomshoot with some very unique visuals and presentation. The DLC is a great cherry on top. Totally worth it for genre fans or anyone missing Quake.

+ Cleared on Hard difficulty +

Good Stuff
==================
- The game has a fantastic sense of balance, blending the extremely fast paced combat with lots of ammo and space to maneuver. Even on some of the tighter maps the action never feels hampered by the arenas you are dropped in.

- The difficulty is well balanced. I'd recommend hard but you'll get a generous challenge on normal as well. I will say I never felt completely oppressed by the enemy forces and the situations always felt tough but doable.

- The weapon variety, while not the best, is limited enough to really teach you the ins and outs of every weapon. It would be nice to see a few more in play but what you get is really solid. Special mention to the DLC weapons, the Gauntlets. Holy god these are a ton of fun to use, punching enemies into custard

- The map design is fantastic, truly leaning into the sort of Frank Franzetta, late 80's style fantasy techno aesthetic and some of the more alien worlds, especially near the end of the game, are real visual treats

- The boss fights are a nice break from the action and present pretty substantial challenges of their own, which is notoriously tough in boomer shooters. I'd say there's an issue sometimes with readability since there's so much shit on screen, but, just like the difficulty, it never feels insurmountable.

- The DLC is a great value for what you get and this works well with the game which is fairly long in its own right, taking me about 14 hours to clear.

Bad Stuff
===============
- There are some jumping puzzles using vertical surfaces which just suck out loud. Definitely feels like luck landing these but thankfully, there are only a few of them in the entire game.

- There could stand to be a few more enemies in this game as the variety gets a bit stale after a while. That said it never really hindered my enjoyment and the DLC added a few more enemy types to play with.

Nice wand awesome fireballs
Is that a magic stick or you just happy to see me
I might be out of shells but I'm not out of spells

No minimap, otherwise fun

Didn't really like this one because it got quite repetitive quite fast

Dark souls if it was actually good 10/10

It was fun at first, but got repetetive and boring soon after. Very often i had situations where i didnt know where to go, i had to run around for 20 minutes before looking up a toutorial, and then realizing there is a random button hidden behind a wall. The game isnt very clear about where you have to go next. If you want to play a newblood shooter i'd recommend ultrakill or dusk.

This one… Well, this one I really, really like.

Tired of boring games? Gray and brown games with too similar to previous fps slop ideas you played before? Games with offices, military bases, mines, underground tunnels, destroyed cities copy-pasted over and over till you throw up? Of games with some pew-pew boring, to normal looking guns that shoot pellets and have zero good vibes attached to them? Well look no further, my friend, because I present you with this piece of creative work and passion, called AMID EVIL.

Amid Evil is yet another boomer-shooter throwback build of the renaissance of genre brought to us back from the dead by Doom 2016. This is an FPS game where being fast on feet, fast with decision making and having steady aim is more important than anything else; where you travel through levels filled to the brim with deliberately placed enemies designed to push the player over the edge. The genre that is to this day the cream of the crop of the entire family of FPS games. And this game is the best example of excellent design and ideas.

So, how can you describe this game in one sentence? Someone smarter than me once said: “Imagine Heretic but it's actually good”. Sounds legit, but the more you look, the more you scratch the surface, the bigger differences you can notice. Because yes, this game is more of an homage to old fantasy fps like Heretic or Hexen, where you fight with monsters like Ettins, Minotaurs or mages instead of demons and possessed marine like in Doom. But the core mechanics are here, you collect weapons, mana instead of ammo, armor and you fight in labyrinthine like levels for keys and levers that will enable path forwards. Some people to this day claim that those old games were flawed and inferior to their more grounded or sci-fi oriented counterparts. And frankly, I cannot approve or disprove these sentences, because I never played Heretic or Hexen before. However I played a lot of Amid Evil.

And Amid Evil is so fucking good.

Why? Well, I can pin point three major design principles that make this game awesome: levels design, weapons mechanics and enemies. And we are gonna talk about them to an extent.

When you boot the game for the first time, the first thing that you probably will notice will be colours. I think colours are what defines this game art direction. You don’t see a normal looking brown, greys or even green. Every space, every corner, every floor or wall is plastered with an intense color palette that is almost aggressive when looking. Pink, violet, magenta, red or orange — sometimes I feel overloaded, but never to the point when it was getting annoying or confused; everything was always visible and clear to me… well, aside for darker corners, which was more common in DLC. Like, seriously, there is a torch powerup in the game, why can't we use it more sometimes? But during combat — nah, the game clearly knows when the art style should step down in favor of gameplay elements. There was only one instance — again, in DLC — when I was forced to fight in darkness, and yes, it was a cheap shot, but I can forgive that.

Another important thing about levels is how they are designed. Forget about little levels from Dusk that you can finish in less than ten minutes; forget about cramped, dark and mood levels from Quake. Here we have big, open levels that include indoor and outdoor areas, castles, magical towers, forests, cathedrals or big caves. I love how they all are also vertical in design — features that developers should implement more often. You not only travel forward, but also down and up, climbing and descending, even flying sometimes, fighting around every corner. Thanks to that levels never become stale and boring, because they mix more open space arenas with tight corridors and smaller rooms.

I also want to point out how diverse levels can be. So yeah, you see, there is fantasy and “fantasy”. There are plenty more “grounded” fantasy games and other media — like worlds with grey, stoney castles, horses, knights, mages, dragons, all those tropes commonly known. But there is also fantasy looking more like 80 pulp cinema. So much different, with so much variety and weirdness, that they become more alien-like. Or like an acid trip. This game belongs to the latter category. We have a big-ass tower of sun with unrealistic design, non-euclidean geometry in the void, school of wizardry suspended mid air. I never felt bored when I was playing this game.

Ok, now time for weapons. Aside from two instances, they all shine. If you look at them. you can clearly see they resemble in some way their modern day counterparts. We have Axe for you melee weapon (replaced by gloves of MUDAMUDAMUDA platinum star power in dlc), staff of magic missile working like pistol, saber working like shotgun (with big horizontal projectile instead of pellets), trident is machine gun, Celestial claw — it shoot planets and stars — is a rocket launcher, Ice mace is you super shotgun, and pink ribbon (don’t ask) is you BFG, replaced in dlc by scythe with can tear fabric of reality. But all of them have specific quirks that make them useful in every combat scenario, no matter early or later game. Staff have homing missiles, sabers can hit multiple enemies, trident can overload enemies and shock the closest one, mace can pin them to the wall. On the top of that they all have an alternative mode — which you can enable by collecting enemies' souls. Basically it works like a tome of power in Heretic and Hexen.

One thing I need to mention — a crucial thing. They all have excellent feedback. It's not like in modern military shooters, when you grab some SMG and start spraying, and enemies don’t flinch. No, here we have clearly, through visuals and sound cues, feedback when you hit enemies. They stagger, yell in agony, “bullets” hit them in a satisfying way, there is a good sound response — like with trident or mace — when they get shot. It’s all brilliant — and a necessity, because, aside from trident, all weapons are projectile based. You need little calculation in your head to hit them when you are running and jumping. Thank God, all monsters also have projectile based attacks, so with little focus and training you can dodge them, albeit the learning curve will take some time.

There are two weapons I think devs should improve. Celestial claw — the rocket launcher — should have bigger splash damage. Enemies must be really clumped together to kill more of two with a single shot from these weapons; The “ribbon gun” should be entirely reworked — it has weak feedback and projectiles should be more visible.

Before I start rambling more about enemies, we need to establish one important thing: this game has seven (!) different episodes. Each episode has only three actual levels + one boss fight, but they are not short — each can take from 20 minutes to even half an hour to accomplish. And they are full of enemies; on hard difficulty in some level there is usually between 100 to 200 (!) monsters, not packed in big arenas, but spreaded from start to finish. What is more important — they are tied to episodes. Enemies from first do not ever appear in second or third. This makes them unique and more manageable: you don’t like some type of enemies (like me with shield enemies from sun episode) — do not worry, they will only show up in three levels.

Amid Evil starts out well but doesn't do much with itself after the first couple of levels. It's a very middle of the road boomer shooter.

Weapon variety is lacking; You will see the entire arsenal within 1-2 hours of gameplay and for the remainder of the game you will be stuck with a grand total of 7 weapons. The weapons in general felt unsatisfying to use, as they lack the feel of guns and seemingly the damage too. They also felt very samey, with the decision of what weapon to use often being more of a "what do I feel like using" or "what do I have the most ammo of" situation, rather than a decision based on the current situation and enemy being faced.

Enemies start out very easy but become harder to kill as you advance through the levels, eventually turning into bullet sponges, which exacerbates the problem. Some fights can boil down to holding M1 and standing still for 5 seconds as the enemy gets staggered to death by your shots. I played on hard difficulty with Warrior mode on. I don't think I would've even bothered to finish the game without Warrior mode on, as without it there would be almost no feeling of progression in the game.

Levels look very interesting visually, but tend to be very annoying to traverse. There's too much platforming for my taste and in particular too many segments that consist of narrow platforms that you have to fight on.
They're also absurdly long, with some levels taking 15-30 minutes depending on how quickly you feel like rushing through them or how deeply you want to explore. The moment I saw that some secrets were hidden behind fake walls that were barely distinguishable from real walls and could only be opened by shoving your face into them was the moment I gave up on getting all the secrets, though.

its not dusk or ultrakill good like its not "if this game had a womb i would put babies in it" good but its fun. the best part is that the champion is hot but you dont really get to look at him besides in the results screen but its fine

DUSK was and is still better than this one.

I say that liking this game, but feeling like it's just a little shafted by ending its existence with a bad prequel DLC that's basically an elongated and drawn out extension of the worst level set in the basegame.

Everything but The Forges is fine and enjoyable, there's unique enemies for every level set, the levels themselves are gorgeous and/or interesting, but it's just a tiny bit held down by semi-weird weapons, a gimmicky powerup that can be used wherever, and several levels being too long and too twisty (especially the later/last level set's ones).

Still worth a play if you can stomach all that, though.

What DUSK was to Quake and Blood, AMID EVIL is to Heretic and Hexen. Its platforming sections can be a drag and it doesn't have the depth to keep things interesting throughout all 7 of its episodes, but its creative takes on the standard FPS arsenal, atmospheric levels and soundtrack, and careful blend of retro and modern graphics puts AMID EVIL above the average boomer shooter. DUSK might be the superior game of the two, but this is reliable entertainment and stands out from the usual gunpowder-fueled bloodbaths of the genre.

testosterone fueled magic man kills evil. dlc adds best weapon in the game

89/100

This game is gorgeous. Big Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders vibes. Solid retro shooter with good movement and pew pew.

DLC is pretty good too, a cute little prologue with purpose. Though... there was that one questionable level with momentum movements. But overall good times.

Its great if you want to blast some things with magic weapons because you get a staff that shoots planets.

The endless platforming sections ruin an otherwise good game.

Это не игра, а нечто!
Разработчики совершенно не зря потратили время и силы на свет и RTX, потому что это выглядит бесподобно: совершенно разные пейзажи от высоких башен до космоса
Прибавьте к этому замечательную музыку Эндрю Хульшульта, который сделал для этой игры замечательный саундтрек, подходящий под красоту уровней

Minimalistic story, cool weapons, gorgeous graphics.

It's basically quake with magic

What I have played of this game so far makes it one of the most addictive games I've played in this genre ever! The graphics look fairly dull in the video preview but what that doesn't depict is the atmosphere and the vastness, you will need a good GPU to run this game properly on max settings.

10/10
The characters' premise fits my needs of perspective.
This might not mean anything, and I apologize if this isn't misleading.
I don't leave bad reviews, all efforts are a perfect score.

One of the best boomer shooters out there. The weapons get a bit boring after a while, but the map variety of this game is unheard of

A fun and beautiful looking Boomer shooter. So this game has sat on my steam wishlist for a long time, and after playing many turn-based RPGs recently, I wanted to take a break from that and play a boomer shooter to spice things up, so I finally picked up this game. But what did I think of it?

So Amid Evil is a sort of spiritual sequel to both Hexen and Heretic, in that instead of using guns, you're using a lot of magic medieval style weapons that use mana as their “ammo”. Personally, I have not played Hexen and Heretic yet, but I do plan to eventually, but this was a really cool game to play in the meantime.

First off, the game looks incredible with its visuals as it uses the unreal 4 engine, to recreate its retro graphics, but it takes all that a step further with some fantastic use of color to make the levels drop dead gorgeous to look at. I was taking quite a few screenshots while playing. Especially in the last few episodes that really had some trippy visuals and level design.

The weapon selection is pretty fun and creative like a mace that shoots ice shards when you swing it, that can impale enemies onto walls or a staff that shoots literal planets that it grabs from space and time, and miniaturizes them to make this game's version of a rocket launcher. It’s just that ridiculous and fun! And I found all the weapons to be very fun to use. As you kill enemies, you will pick up souls that will fill your soul meter, and when you activate this your weapons not only do more damage but also use an alternate fire mode, like the one weapon I mentioned firing suns instead of planets.

While most boomer shooters usually use the structure of 3 episodes, with 10 levels each, this game goes for 7 episodes with about 4 levels each. At first I thought this was weird and like the episodes were too short, but I soon realized the intent of it. As each level has its own visual theme and motif, it allows the art direction to shine more and each episode has its own unique set of enemies so you never get tired of one episode or enemy type for too long.

Another highlight is the music by Andrew Hulshult who also composed the music for Dusk, which was very awesome on its own, and he continues that style here. What I like about his music is that he doesn’t go for the typical, bombastic metal tracks that get you pumped to rip and tear, but instead a lot of the tracks are softer and more atmospheric. Some tracks are better than others but overall it's a great OST which I bought and now own on steam.

Some of my negatives are mostly minor but are worth mentioning. Firstly, while the levels can be fun to explore, they all follow the tradition of collecting keys so you can get to the end of the level basically, which is a little boring to me. Like I don’t mind them bringing back an old genre like boomer shooters, but I still have that expectation for them to innovate on things like the mission design. Heck, even games from back then like Quake 2 would often give you different objectives per mission, and it was often more elaborate than just collecting the keycards and getting to the map exit. The other thing is towards the end, the last few episodes feature a lot of platforming which I have just never liked doing in a first person game, since you can’t see your feet half the time, so it’s a lot harder then in a third person game as an example. But every Doom player also plays Super Mario according to statistics lol Okay that last part was a lie, but you get my point. Thankfully this game does feature cheats like being able to fly around the levels and it doesn’t disable achievements or anything, so I used that a lot towards the end.

But overall, this was a fun game and definitely a nice palate cleanser in between other games I’m currently playing. Look forward to playing the DLC next.

i dont have anything sophisticated to say other than this game is very pretty and i love just walking around and admiring the mapping. bless you developers.

Very meaty medieval shooter, the base game is pretty cool with some variation per episode with different enemies and environments. The weapons are also cool and diverse, although I did fumble around a bit with the juggling of the soul powers (temporary super strong alt-fire)

The DLC is truly amazing with great levels, meaty new weapons and some cool setpieces.

Out of the NewBlood FPS trilogy, this is my least favorite, but that doesn't mean I dislike it. I absolutely LOVE this game, but there are a few things holding it back in my opinion. Firstly it's the slowest of the three. The movement itself is great, but it's much slower paced compared to Dusk. The combat is more like Heretic and Hexen instead of DOOM, and that makes it very unique with its weapons. While the weapons are wonderful the lack of hitscan (other than the Voltride) makes a few fights take longer than they should. Other than those two small this game is AWESOME. I still love it to death, it just could be a bit quicker.

ive tried to get through this one a couple times and i honestly can't recommend it. it's not bad. it just doesn't do anything new. If you've played any other boomer shooter you've played this.

Pretty visuals, boring enemies, boring weapons, boring levels.

When the game's BFG equivalent is literally just a BFG reskin, and the solution to every enemy in the game is side strafing... then you know they had nothing new to bring to the genre.

Great graphics with beautiful ray tracing Classic fps action with a magical/otherworldly and sometimes ancient and/or medieval setting. Fun weapons to use and twisted levels to explore. The different difficulty settings are well balanced. A memorable experience over all. And in faithful old-school fashion, manual saving is allowed at any point!

It gets no better. This is what you built your computer for.

You go pew pew and then the thing dies, nice graphics and even cooler atmosphere

I wish more "boomer" shooters would try this hard with their visuals, especially in the last episode Amid Evil proves that you can have a retro aesthetic and still push the bounds