Thank god this game doesn't have maze level design, I hate that shit.
As opposed to a bunch of arenas stringed together by mundane platforming sections or linear hallways...
I was planning on finishing the campaign first before giving my thoughts, but I'm finding it harder and harder to even find the drive to continue playing. Eternal somehow manages to feel both overdesigned and underdesigned at the same time.
That is, the devs probably spent so much resources on "perfecting" their idea of good combat they forgot to actually bother designing levels around it. NuDoom 2016 was far from perfect, but at least it had some levels strewn about that encouraged exploration and had competently hidden secrets. The vast majority of Eternal's secrets can be found by doing a sweep of the arena you just fought in, punching some cracked walls and dashing to ledges. Then there's the platforming sections which are clearly just mundane filler because Id had no clue how to string their arena encounters together, and hey what's more arcadey than platforming right?! It all feels so incredibly lazy.
I had fun with the combat at first until the novelty wore off and it became apparent that the game expects you to follow a strict set of rules, and if you dare deviate from them you'll very likely end up eating shit. Then there's also the stupid gimmicks like sticky nades being a OHK on Cacos, thus invalidating any other means to take them down. I'm currently at Taras Nabad and combat has become a serious drag. Every encounter has started feeling the same, because they always progress the exact same way due to the game expecting you to play in a very specific way. Maybe it's better on difficulties lower than Nightmare, but so far I've been very disappointed.
Also, before I'm accused of trying to be contrarian or just hating it for the sake of it, I went into this with a decent sizing of optimism. Just look at my earlier posts.