After clearing all campaigns on nightmare I understand way more of the mechanics, and I have to give more credit to the underlying systems. the minigun shield in particular is incredibly useful (you can safety blood punch with it launch equipment and the dash attack does possibly unintended amounts of damage), and the rocket launcher ( particularly lock-on rockets) were buffed ENORMOUSLY from the earlier counterpart. The possession buffed super mobs were seemingly incredibly unfair on my first play-through, but with more knowledge of their weaknesses and certain combos they can be dispatched in short order.


I still think the atmosphere took a large hit in the main game, the slayer "removing" the lenses in 2016 still makes me smile, but some of eternal's cut-scenes and stuff makes me cringe a little. I kind of understand the story a bit better now, and see they kind of wanted to pay homage to "evil dead 3" in a weird way as in a modern warrior/survivor being brought into the past. Also they tried to make it more clear in the DLC, but it was kind of hard to understand the makyrs/"angels" motivation even after reading the lore; after some dev commentary it's more obvious they need argent energy since it stops them from getting like, cthulu cancer; this effectively makes them immortal which is essential because they've lost the ability to increase their numbers due to the loss of their leader.
I mean it wouldn't be fair to say the story "sucks", but it does seem like they missed a big opportunity to make an ACTUAL good story; most people thought the doom-slayer was "the betrayer" mentioned in the 2016 lore which would have given the icon of sin fight more significance since it would have been his son (and even more of a motivation to be pissed at the "maykrs"). They could have done something poignant where he hesitates before plunging the crucible in, and possibly for a second before the deed is done the icon shows a small semblance of the humanity he's lost, it kind of gives me some feelings just thinking about it. but no it's just a boss fight and another demon to steamroll.

I still have SOME reservations about the ammo/chainsaw relationship; it still feels like a reload button which was against the design philosophy of the game, and I did REALLY feel that drop off from 60 max shells to 24. but since way more of the weapons are useful in eternal, I had less problems with it this time around. I understand the ammo runes in the original were incredibly overpowered, but they kind of overcompensated I think.

overall I think if you kind of look it at the game for what it turned out to be and try to really understand the mechanics it's just as good as the original on a technical/game-play level and arguably better in some ways. I can totally understand some people not liking it due to how these changes are not seamless from 2016 the same way 2016 almost seamlessly went modern. if you just wanted to continue how you've been playing doom in 2016 or old-school it does "fail" at that admittedly.

so to kind of revisit my score I will give it a 10/10 for an FPS, but only an 8.5/10 for a sequel to the reboot if that makes any sense.