Every fight is a puzzle. You have a huge toolkit and the game makes you use all of it constantly. Flamethrower for armor, chainsaw for ammo, glory kills for health, grenades for crowd control. Way more demanding than DOOM 2016.
Enemies force you to stay in that rhythm. Marauders punish you for focusing on one thing, Carcasses block off parts of the arena, and buff totems make everything frantic. Way harder than DOOM 2016, but once you get the cycle down it clicks. Resource management becomes second nature, and the way everything flows together creates a satisfying rhythm.
Movement got a huge upgrade. Double dash, meat hook swings, bounce pads. It all changes how you approach every fight. The platforming sections between arenas are divisive, but I liked them as breathers between the chaos. Sentinel Crystal upgrades and runes let you tweak your build a bit without breaking the balance.
The campaign is louder and weirder than 2016. Space priests, demon operas, lore tablets with metal lyrics. There’s more story than before but it stays out of the way. The lore is there if you want it, but the action is still the focus.
The game has more varied environments and bigger set pieces than 2016. The soundtrack keeps the intensity ramping up. Switch performance holds at 30fps but uses dynamic resolution scaling, so it can look muddy during intense combat.
This is way faster and harder than 2016. Not for everyone, but if you’re willing to learn the systems it can be very rewarding. Personally, I much prefered 2016’s flow and pace, but I do see why a lot of people love this game.