Ritual

A solid vanilla episode with a consistent vibe, plenty of secrets, and a very natural mix of classic brushwork and modern mapping techniques. Very cool vibes. Encounters in the later maps get a rouch repetitive, with the abundance of hknights to chew through. Ammo only got low a couple times, and overall had a good balance.

The layouts of the later levels didn't feature enough setpieces or memorable atriums to get a clear sense of space, but I was never totally lost in terms of progression. There was also some new monsters, an open door, or something to lead in the right direction.

Pretty impressive! Will keep my eye out for more from this author.

Ritual is a really well designed vanilla episode with focus more on style and details. Detailing is impressive considering it is respecting limits. Gameplay is alright with decent attempt filling empty space with patrolling monsters.

I've got my stream vod up where I share more points on specific moments, but I think my main gripe is just the overall difficulty being really easy even on hard difficulty. Encounters are undercooked. You are resource limited, running around with green armor or no armor at all most of the time, yet, you are never really forced into tough fights. Hard difficulty is dubbed as for Quake masters, but I can assure you can play it on hard if you can get through original campaign on hard which is much more challenging.

Some maps you can completely break with Quake movement, but that is more fun to see rather than being a huge problem. Everyone agrees that you shouldn't just rocket jump everywhere, but you can just use some ramps and air strafing in clever ways as well.

Episode has some funny jokes and cool secret hunting. Exploration was fun overall. How you obtain the end can be quite punishing, maybe it should be considered just as another secret level. Concept is neat though.

Plays well on modern sourceports, my choice being IronWail.

Great maps, soundtrack.

Excellent set of maps.
Love it.
Recommend it.

Not really much to add I think the below reviews sum up what I think, but yeah... amazing episode, really balanced with extremely interesting level design. Soundtrack was awesome too! Five stars!

Not much to add to the other glowing reviews. I played it on the original Winquake executable with a CRT monitor set to 320x200 resolution for that authentic old school look and feel from my childhood.

The episode felt like quintessential Quake, as if this is how Quake should have looked and played back in 1996, but id software didn't know what does and does not work in Quake. Such knowledge could pretty much only be accumulated over the decades of Quake mapping experience, which has been distilled into a near perfect episode in Ritual.

I liked pretty much all the levels. Ammo wasn't really scarce, but more so health, which often kept me on the verge of death making the game feel nice and tense. The tension was ever more heightened by the awesome soundtrack. The atmosphere in the cold, dark and hostile environs was so oppressive and lonely. Great stuff! Even with the low polycounts the levels were quite the marvels to behold. Just shows how a good sense of style triumphs over high-end graphics.

I think I died on the Fiendish Hatred (ze1m3s), the Hypogeum (ze1m6) and Fallen Star (ze1end). The deaths on the two latter maps were more on me getting impatient and not being on the right mindset to play, but I think ze1m3s had a place where I felt I was unfairly mobbed from multiple directions (while picking up the SNG).

A few visual glitches occurred on Winquake, such as platforms that were supposed to cover over sections of water, were transparent. But it hardly matters over the fact that there's an actual modern episode playable over the original executables, which is awesome!

A couple of nitpicks: While the secrets (found all of them eventually) were mostly fun to find and nicely hinted, I wasn't a big fan of the "find the red shootable button or touchplate in an obscure cranny" ones, which have always been a pet-peeve of mine. In addition, there were a few very minor misaligned textures in hardly noticeable places.

All in all, at the time of writing this review, my gut tells me to rate Ritual 97/100, which translates to 4.85/5. Awesome work, guys!

Really enjoyed the pack. Some killer maps while keeping to the vanilla limits so they aren't overly long or crazy. New soundtrack was nice as well. I liked how there was a bit of an implied story/prpgression to the pack as opposed to just a random set of maps to play through. Really well done!

Really enjoyed it! Thank you for making it.

Perfectlly balance gameplay, really good design and layout, great time of gaming.
Episode that I like to play trough, thank you very much for this release

Bravo, bravo, bravo. Very challenging levels almost to the point of getting lost but not quite. Brilliant design and the gameplay ramps up perfectly, lets you breath while keeping you alert. What a great episode and the secrets are also superb.
Played it twice now and the last time I found all the secret levels.

as a Normal Skill connoisseur, this was an amazing challenge! specially for the secrets, leaving the first map with 0/5 secrets was crushing! but got better as it went on! found 3 secret maps which were satisfying as hell.
This is truly a great vanilla episode!

Thanks to Shadesmaster for posting it on youtube! otherwise I'd have most likely missed it or forgot I have an account here hehe.

Idk what this clip is supposed to convay, but i felt like a world record trying this for 10 minutes till it worked LOL

Just wanted to add that it doesn't let me change resolution in Quakespasm under Linux for some strange reason. This is the first time (after having played almost every mod out there) I encounter such issue.
Anyway, great gameplay and cool maps. Really enjoyed this one!

Nothing to add that wasn't written before. Great. Thank you for hours of fun.

Loved this mapset!!!! Zothique and Sock have outdone themselves, and The Inhuman Hosts' music was awesome-sauce! had that retro feel, but detailing was way better. Gameplay, pinnacle of less is more.

Gameplay of the whole mapset - including secret levels - is here! I only couldn't find one of those dang crypts, tho!

Ritual was a great time, particularly once it starts getting past the sewer bases and into the otherworld maps. It captures the feeling of the original campaigns perfectly, and has fantastic atmosphere, which the soundtrack only helps - it reminded me a bit of Immorpher's work with SMEJ. Some of the secrets were perhaps a bit odd, but that doesn't really matter much, and some were quite good, offering multiple routes to get to them throughout the map/subtly guiding the player. It was also cool to see a remake of a scourge of armagon map in here too - I don't run into that very often.

Not much to add. Excellent work. Worth the time playing this episode.
Thank you to all involved!

This is absolutely excellent.

With all the new mods and bells and whistles, it is easy to forget what can be done with 'Vanilla' Quake. But here is a wonderful demonstration.

This magnificent map pack is damn close to perfect.

...There is only one small fly in the ointment: i absolutely hate "GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR" ! Sock, how could you do it? Corrupt an innocent young mapper to use... this?

Aaargh!

Apart from that... bloody well done! Thanks for Your effort, and thanks for sharing!

...I have to go secret hunting now...

Wonderful Vanilla Action..

this episode is one of the best I've ever played, it was awesome! please more !

No lits and still looks awesome! Used this settings to make it look more like DOSQuake in Ironwail (res 640x480 because I can't set lower):