Doom Mod Review : DoomRPG + DoomRLA + RLME (Rpg mods for Classic Doom)`

Well I found not just one new mod to play doom with recently, not even 2 but 3!

I've been looking For Doom RPG themed mods that can play original and non mod maps well for years. Found HXRTC and that was fine for a while but what really annoyed me about that was the constant use of Gem Pickups in a non-fantasy setting and the lack of skills and stat point leveling... It just had levelups but had no real stats that you could choose from to level up...

Enter DoomRPG, a mod that fixes a lot of those issues.

The Good:

DoomRPG as the title suggests, is a Doom RPG mod. It allows you to level up by killing enemies, and distribute stat points every levelup.  The stats you get are Strength, Vitality, Regen, Capacity,
Defense, Agility and Luck.

Here is what these stats do:

Strength = Determines how much damage you do with weapons
Vitality = Determines your max health
Regen = Determines how much health you regenerate over time
Capacity = Determines how much you can carry
Defense = Determines your damage resistance
Agility = Determines your movement speed and jump height
Luck = Determines how often you get certain "lucky" to find pickups like credits, ammo, health, etc.

You buy items with credits enemies drop regularly, and that is limited to armor and ammo at lower ranks (there is a rank system like in COD games = higher the rank the more you can buy). Rank increases when you kill a certain amount of enemies, and decreases when you die.

There is also a lot of new features not found in normal doom in DoomRPG such as Skills you can purchase with "modules" (that get given to you when you levelup - you need them to upgrade stats too), and a working skill wheel. It's tricky to learn how to play this mod because skills in this are vital.  You will need your skills to survive, it's not just a case of leveling stats and hoping you will win, if you do that you will die a lot. One skill I HIGHLY recommend is heal.  Even at skill level 1 this can save your life provided you have enough energy to use it (Energy is what skills waste when you use them, you replenish it by finding energy powerups). You can upgrade skills levels as well, and it helps. But each level costs more energy to use than the previous level, so you have to manage it well to survive.

There is also a shield you can use, which is similar to the Mass Effect Shields but has some limitations because it replaces armor and strips you of armor. To use it you must find a capaciter, body and a battery.  Once you equip all three your shield is ready and with one press of the shield key.

DoomRPG is pretty good on it's own but does have some drawbacks. Certain levels are programmed randomly to be radiation infested levels or acid rain filled levels and those mess up your health a lot...
It's almost unfair to deal with these traps so I highly recommend anyone playing these mods to SAVE before exiting a level to savescum around these stupid traps.

But to really play doomRPG well you need to play it with two other mods which I am reviewing here at the same time as DoomRPG...

Enter DoomRL..

DoomRL or Doom Roguelike Arsenal, is weapon mod that is quite fun and very RPG like. It introduces literally hundreds of new guns and they spawn randomly in the place of other weapons or on dead enemies. Both mods work well together but getting them to load together is really hard... See below for more info on that.

Guns range from Shotguns to Automatic single barreled shotguns, to auto double barreled ones (!) and some really overpowered energy weapons, explosive weapons and pistols, yes that's right Pistols!  Pistols in this are not crap, there are some ones that rival the Rocket Launcher in Damage! You have to be VERY lucky to get the top tier weapons at an early level, which is good.

There are 5 playerclasses in this mod. Marine is your basic machinegunner soldier who starts with the chaingun. Each playerclass gets perks.. His perk is he wastes less ammo. The scout is your pistol expert and does 3x-8x damage with pistols as his perk, depending on the fire rate, the slower the fire rate the more damage.  He starts with a basic pistol but it is so much better with him than on other playerclasses.  But once he gets a really strong pistol (handcannon, etc) he can slay strong enemies with a few pistol shots, and that is fun!.  The third playerclass is the technician who is a weapon modding expert... I will get into weapon modding and him a bit later. The next playerclass is the renegade and he is a shotgun expert who does more pellet shots per shotgun blast than other classes as his perk.  The final class is the most OP one, the Deadly Demolitionist! He is an explosives expert and his perk is so OP it's stupid, he is completely IMMUNE to splash damage, even enemies splash damage. That means you can kill enemies at point blank range with rockets using him. But is not a huge issue because being overpowered in this mod is one of it's strengths so...

DoomRL revamps the armor system.  Armor has to be equipped now.  And boots are also available and you need to equip them as well. It's important to have both armor and boots or else you won't get good damage resistance.  Basic armor and weapons in this mod are crap though, so It's best to save up credits to get better armor and boots before later levels anyway. Default Combat armor won't help much unless you are VERY lucky.  There are tons of other pieces of armor available and they are much better than combat armor which in this is basic armor not great armor like it was in normal doom.


The new guns in DoomRL are quite nice but most of the starting weapons from doom are quite useless due to the difficulty of the mods. These mods are HARD AS HELL, and with default stats, you will die a ton in the first map of the wad you are playing. Until you get to level 2 and pump all your points into vitality and defense, you will struggle mightily at LV 1.  (when I mention "LV" from now on I mean character level, not the level you are playing...) Not till you get tons of levelups and put points into the vital skills will it get easier.  For me the vital skills are Vitality, Defense and luck.  Vitality for the max health, Defense to increase your damage resistance early and Luck to try to get better drops and guns in drops. Enemies can do tons of damage, especially harder ones. Don't play these mods with the monster mod in insane maps like hell revealed UNLESS you are a high level character with good armor, and good stats!  You will be ripped to shreds unless you prepare well..

DoomRL balances this difficulty increase well though with the ability to mod weapons. There are mod packs laying around replacing ammo boxes rarely. There are several kinds. Bulk mod packs increase clip size for weapons (there is reloading for weapons in this mod, all guns need to be reloaded), Power mods increase weapon damage and Technical mods increase weapon switch speed, and Agility mods increase weapon accuracy... It helps to mod your guns a lot. But don't mod TOO much... because one feature is absulutely vital to survive this mod, and this feature, Assmemblies, is  the most OP feature in the whole mod.

Assemblies are Super OP weapons made by using specific sets of weapon mods on a specific gun in a certain order.  For instance, if you take a combat shotgun (the Remington that Shotgun Guys Drop) and add a Power mod and  then a technical mod to the shotgun, you turn it into a tactical shotgun, which is a very OP Auto Shotgun.  Take Plasma Rifle and apply a bulk mod and then a power mod to it and you turn it into a High Power Plasma gun, which is the most OP weapon that can be gotten early in the game, and it is a must to survive tougher maps. Take a rocket launcher and apply a Technical Mod, an Agility mod, a power Mod and then another Tech Mod to it and it becomes an Infusion Launcher, a rocket launcher that shoots weak BFG blasts everywhere when it explodes... These assemblies are ABSOLUTELY VITAL for you to survive the mod. You cannot beat it without them, so keep that in mind. I find the default guns you get are crap so by level 2 I usually have at least one of these...

But one issue in  these mods to me needs another mod to correct, the lack of new enemies. Adding in another mod, RLME adds new enemies into the game (but only for medium difficulty and higher), and that is a must for me. Normal doom enemies get boring very quickly...

The OK:

The mod has issues working with Slaughtermaps. I suggest that you change the monster population to 75% or lower when playing them.  That reduces enemy count but gets rid of the annoying "Runaway script" errors that show up.  This is for wads such as Alien Vendetta, Hell Revealed, etc, anything that uses high enemy counts.  For wads that use Extremely High counts such as Sunder, I suggest you skip them because they often have hard as fuck enemy placement in map 1 and surviving map 1 will be so hard that in this mod it won't be worth it. Basically if the first map involves fighting hordes of tough enemies like Hell Knights or worse then you should avoid it in these mods.


The Bad:

These mods are really fun, but issues prevent them from being the best doom mods I have ever played. Number 1, the damage you take is insane, even with medium to high damage resistance. It is almost unfair.  Pinkies and spectres can one hit kill you if you get unlucky. And one feature almost ruins this mod set... Status effects..

Status effects sound good and all, but the sheer lack of a feature to shut them off, is alarming. Status effects include various debuffs that randomly happen when you take damage. Such as blindness (makes you screen go black for a while), Fatigue (makes you move at a slideshow pace for a while), toxicity (makes you take more damage if it gets higher), Radiation (same thing) and more. These status effects are too common, and resisting them is hard. Some are minor, some are not. I can't count the time these came up and I almost died or died, on medium it was a stupid hindrance that I wish wasn't put in this mod.  The ones that really piss me off are fatigue and blindness. HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DODGE AND AIM with them on? You tell me Kyle873! I'm sorry, it's impossible to dodge with High Fatigue put on you and then you die and your Rank drops due to random bullshit like that, that shouldn't be in it at all! I've never played any RPG with features this stupid in my life.  And blindness is almost as stupid. Why the hell it's in there I don't know. How are you supposed to aim and dodge if you can't see! You tell me Kyle873!

That feature almost made this mod unplayable. I tolerate it because the rest of the mods features make the game much easier to enjoy, due to the fact that no one made a good RPG mod for Doom that is this good.  But this one feature.... It almost ruins it...


Another issue with this mod is the damage you take, which is a minor issue because heal helps a ton and so does High Vitality.  But it still is insane that Revenants can do 300 damage on medium...  That should not be in this. This isn't Ghost recon, It's doom. High damage makes no sense in a non realistic shooter.  I think this person tried to make DoomRPG a REALISTIC RPG, which is cool and all, but realistic features, when overused can ruin classic FPS gameplay. These two mods almost overuse these features, such as Reloading weapons, shitty ass weapons being given in level 1, bullshit status effects and high damage being done by medium enemies...   It makes these mods good but not great.

I'm still waiting on a GOOD RPG mod that does not use features like this but puts in good RPG gameplay (aka levelups and other features too)...





These mods however, do not work easily together so You need to do the following...
-Make sure to download Gzdoom 3.0.1.
-Unzip the DoomRPG version that works with the latest DooMRLA, NOT the latest version
to your doom 2 folder.
-Install the DoomRLA, DoomRLA Hud, DoomRLA monster Pack and RLME to the doom2 folder.
-Make a batch file like this...

Gzdoom -file DoomRL.wad DoomRLHud.wad DoomRLMons.wad DoomRPG/DoomRPG DoomRPG/DoomRPG-RLArsenal DoomRPG/DoomRPG-RLMonsters RLME.wad

(use that batch file to load the two mods together).

Review Stats:
Score 8.2/10
Good - Great RPG features. skills, stats, selling system, etc, new enemies, lots of new guns
Bad  - Realism, BS Status effects, super high damage being done by medium enemies on Medium,
Hard to get them working together.