WRATH: Aeon of Ruin

Wrath is fine, but the missed potential sure stings.
Let's start with the positives: the game, which runs on a source port of Quake, looks great and the enemies are also nicely animated.
The weapons feels good and satisfying to use. I especially like the shotgun, which sounds punchy and is powerful, and the Ruination Blade whose secondary is a dash that obliterates most enemies.
...Ok, let's talk about the levels now: Wrath has a total of 15 levels and 3 bosses across 3 hubs. It doesn't seem much, but those levels are long and chock-full of enemies, even reaching over 500 monsters in one case.
The problem is that the enemy roster isn't really big at 15 monsters, and you encounter more than half of them in the first hub. It can get boring if you're doing long play sessions.
The first hub also likes to have big, open areas in its levels, something that the other hubs seems to do less, preferring closed enviroments more. The levels themselves are fine, although the instakill pits of the third hub can get annoying.
Then there's the save system: you get an autosave at the start of a level, one-use shrines throughout each level and Soul Tethers, which are consumable quicksaves.
It may seem intimidating, but the whole system is kinda pointless on Normal and Easy: I admit I was a bit stingy with them, but I finished the game with 46 Tethers left even after I ramped up their usage in the third hub.
Hard and Outlander difficulty limit the amount you can carry, so maybe they have more sense there.
There are also Artifacts, active consumables with different effects ranging from a projectile shield, gaining health from killing enemies, making enemies infight and more. You can hold 9 of each item, a cap I reached easily since I didn't use them much even if they're useful.
Long story short, I still had fun with Wrath despite its shortcomings, but playing it piecemeal definitely helps things.

Do try and abstain as much as you can from that blue tint of the "Positive Review" icon. My impressions of this game are effectively very mixed even if, all in all, this is some solid boomshoot.

It's not that there are many levels here, there are about 15, but each one is absolutely HUGE. I'm talking about 45 minutes up to one entire hour to beat and this without attempting 100% secret hunting. Thing is, my playthrough has been made across an entire year or two because I always reached a point where either by frustration over getting lost or just pure saturation, that I simply left the game and never really felt like playing again for a couple months. I know this sounds awful but the levels are effectively decently made and they look stunning.
There is simply too much of it. Every time, I felt like the level I was in was going on for way too long. By the third act, you start getting some instakill floors bringing along the annoyance of redoing a chunk of a level because you forgot to quicksave (with an absolutely redundant "quicksaves-as-resource" mechanic I might add) before slipping into a pit of lava. It's game that might be easy to like at the start, if you are a fan of the genre, but you'll come out the other end almost exhausted. If I had to take a guess, I'd say the non-linear hub design played against it as they clearly weren't able to design proper progression for the many ways people would play through each Act of the game.

With all this said, I can't help but appreciate what the game does have going on for it. Once again, the levels look stunning, the overall mood is very ethereal in contrast to the carnage happening onscreen (a great part due to Andrew Hulshult flexing his ambient muscle). The arsenal is quite interesting and varied, even if familiar, with weapons helping sell the satisfaction that the limited effects and enemy animations can't really do. It's an undeniably well-produced shooter.

Just a shame that this just feels way too bloated. Too much of an okay thing.

Old fashioned meatgrinder. For what its worth it its very nicely done but with one caveat: its trying to be hard in wrong ways. Even on normal difficulty sometimes there are just to much of cheap blunder. They throw at you unreasonable enemie waves in small rooms and you have to dodge that. Not a great sign for my taste actually. It would have helped if we had more enemie variety for sure. There are some great enemie choices that tries to grab you by surprise. I was very entertained by one specific one that keeps exploding and you need to navigate through out your lean lanes to avoid damage. Weapons have great feel and shotgun never disappoints.

Never before have I been so baffled by the steam review section, when I saw the recent reviews were mixed I had to write this.
This game has got to be one of the best old-school shooters I've ever played, from the gunplay to the exploration this game repeatedly surpassed my expectations. The art-style and level aesthetics are beautiful, the weapons all feel great and all have their uses. The enemy design in both a visual and in a gameplay sense is fantastic and the item system (Which is almost identical to the Quake 2 remaster) is implemented perfectly, with most if not all of the items being useful. While it is slower than most modern boomer shooters it isn't really trying to be an ultra fast movement shooter like Turbo Overkill, I'd say it has a similar pace to Quake 2.
This game easily stands tall with other modern boomer shooters like Dusk, Turbo Overkill and Incision. If you like old-school shooters but want a more methodical, moodier shooter than most offerings nowadays this game is PERFECT

It's really great game, but very hard and quite long, it has three worlds that you go through, unlocking each one after completing the previous, the maps are huge and level design is complicated though.
i completed the game at 29 hours.
The game is very similar and faithful to Quake, even using the same engine.
The only negative part I didn't like was the save system and the somewhat weird menu, but that's a minor issue. Overall, the game is still very good.
There are two types of saving: one where you collect Soul Tethers (skulls) to save at any moment, and another that acts as a checkpoint when you reach a shrine, which looks like a small temple.
There's also an option to enable infinite saves, meaning you can save anytime without having to deal with the game's tougher save system.
That's it.

-UPDATED REVIEW-
Solid boomer built on a modified Quake engine.
The devs added a launcher that borked it on the Deck, where you'd have to hunt down the exe in desktop mode and add it as a non-Steam game.
That's since been 'fixed', but the game still requires proton fixes to boot, which I feel doesn't qualify it for "Verfied" status.
Nonetheless, I do recommend the game.
I just hope they get their act together with this kinda stuff because the fans never react positively.

TL;DR:
It's like Quake, Turok and Painkiller had threesome and came one awesome baby.
Question: Did you play Quake? If yes, you should play this too. Also, did you play Turok and Painkiller? Well guess what? play this too!
It's a classic boomer shooter, reminisce of that good ol'classic 90s design like Quake. It has a fun a gunplay and the levels are massive! After killing an enemy you might take a joy out of walking on the whole level.
That's the pros. As for the cons, well, it's a bit repetitive after 5hrs and some enemy placement in every levels is very frustrating. Like when you already had the advantage to take on the Giant-headed HERETIC, there's another a$$h0le showing up ambushing you. Like that sh!t is so unfair, that the Danish be like "Nah, just skill issue". F@#K your skill issue, you bollocks! This isn't bloody Dark Souls, you pr!ck.
I don't get that philosophy. Maybe the dev designed this for hardcore players, which yeah, sure. But for it being so damn repetitive, is just inconsistent!
9/10 would recommend.
Purchasing Tips:
The Keys is much more cheaper than the Steam Store, just saying... See here for yerself.