A retro-styled, first-person shooter with gothic imagery, published in tandem by 3D Realms and Fulqrum, in which you start off a game by being transported to a wicked land via a mysterious boat. The fact there are two games by the same publishing duo coming out just a few weeks away from each other is downright bizarre. A while back, I tackled Graven, a quasi-love letter to Hexen and Heretic, and was just… whelmed. Not underwhelmed, not overwhelmed, just “whelmed”. I played it, saw some interesting points in it, didn’t like others, and then moved on to another game. With Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, their latest outing, my feelings are pretty similar. I played it, liked some elements, disliked others, and want to move on to another game without feeling amazed or insulted. Take it as you will.

First impressions weren’t really good, to be honest. Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is clearly a homage to the original Quake (it even runs on the same engine), with its techno-horror imagery clashing with Gothic elements, but here’s the thing about its source of inspiration: we played it for the gameplay. Ask most Quake fans, they have no damn clue of what the games are all about. Boot them up, pick a level, blow enemies to smithereens. Wrath did not read the memo, instead trying to force to pay attention to some generic story about you being the chosen one destined to save a wicked land from some evil entity through walls of text, with no voice acting. Oh, and a mandatory tutorial.

A mandatory tutorial on a freaking retro shooter? This was quite baffling to see. Don’t the developers know who their core audience is? We’ve been playing the same kind of first-person shooters since the Clinton administration. There is no need for a long and boring tutorial to explain us how the mechanics work, only for it not to include actual gunplay tutorial, just a melee one. Things improved upon completing this waste of time. I was finally free to blow monsters up with actual guns in a retro-styled environment. You know, what we’re here for.

I jumped into a level, picked up a revolver, a shotgun, and started shooting. Now this is more like it. Even though Wrath: Aeon of Ruin’s tutorial made it look like it was going to be yet another Graven, the rest of the experience was a back-to-basics, hardcore shooter. Gory, violent, challenging. The shotgun packed a punch, the fang launcher was basically Quake‘s nailgun, and so on. That was exactly what I wanted from a game blessed by 3D Realms’ logo, but sadly, it didn’t take long for even more issues to suddenly show up.

For starters, the presentation did not impress me. It might be an overwhelming saturation of the retro shooter genre (as previously mentioned, there was another game by the same publisher released a mere month ago), or it might actually be a lack of differentiation between being completely retro and being retro but acknowledging the importance of quality of life enhancements implemented over the years. This game is way too dark, to an annoying degree. The kind of dark you need to increase your screen’s brightness settings in order to actually see what the hell is going on. Doom 64 sends its regards. The default setting upon booting Wrath up for the first time is also odd, with the game initially being set to 720p, windowed, with some ugly fonts and enhancements turned off.

Between the dark visuals, repetitive asset usage, and really underwhelming soundtrack, which was way too calm and not-metal for such a neanderthal-esque shooter, I was not impressed with the game’s overall presentation, even if I have to acknowledge that yes, it does look like something which could have been released back in the 90s. Mostly because it was coded with an engine from the 90s, but I digress. That alone wouldn’t have been enough of an issue to disappoint me, though.

What killed my enjoyment was the game’s level design. Simply put, I don’t think it was up to the standards of some other retro shooters released over the years. What’s worse, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin took so long to get out of Early Access, that its first batch of levels feels even more dated in comparison to those. It’s a neverending gauntlet of narrow corridor with unfair enemy placement, followed by big arena with excessive enemy placement, followed by narrow corridor with unfair enemy placement, followed by big arena with excessive enemy placement, and so on.

The amount of unfair difficulty spikes in Wrath: Aeon of Ruin was insane. Whilst I did enjoy its manual checkpoint placement system (if you had the resources to summon the checkpoint, that is), I don’t think that was enough to warrant the sheer amount of foes sucker punching your frail body to oblivion from out of nowhere. Doubly so when you just randomly die due to not even being to see what was in front of you due to the dark visuals. Which is a shame, as the combat itself, when it works, is excellent, as previously mentioned.

Despite featuring some interesting ideas, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin suffers from an uneven pace, excessively dark (and repetitive) visuals, and some poor level design. The excessive emphasis on storytelling was also a bummer, as this is not particularly what a retro shooter enthusiast is looking for in a game. Whilst blowing demons up with a loud shotgun was indeed fun, there are countless other shooters which allow you to do the same thing, but on a more polished foundation.

Graphics: 7.0 Excessively dark, making some areas way too annoying to traverse. As for the rest, it succeeds at emulating the look and feel of a Quake II engine game from back in the day.	Gameplay: 8.0 All you need to do is tinker a bit with the camera sensitivity, as the default setting is far from ideal. The rest of the gameplay is as good as what you would expect from a retro shooter running at a ludicrous framerate. The level design wasn’t very impressive, though.
Sound: 5.5 The ambient soundtrack doesn’t fit in with the otherwise fast-paced and adrenaline-filled gameplay loop. It should have been a lot more aggressive.	Fun Factor: 6.0 Unevenly paced. Due to some less than ideal level design, it featured some annoying difficulty spikes. The excessive emphasis on storytelling was also a bummer, as this is not particularly what a retro shooter enthusiast is looking for in a game.
Final Verdict: 6.5

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Wrath: Aeon of Ruin was provided by the publisher.