There are spoilers below so avoid this post if you haven't already played these maps.

I had delayed playing the final map because I wanted to ensure that I had enough time to fully appreciate it and I was also hesitant to close the book on Ter Shib. I picked up with a previous save that I had made in vkQuake so I was dealing with some pretty rough frame rates but even if this map was reduced to a slideshow, I would've enjoyed it anyway. The final map combined pretty much everything that I have loved in this entire series.

Coming up the stairs, the Colosseum was a pretty incredible sight at it reminded me of seeing the massive bridge in shib1 for the first time. As I played through the map, I was surprised to find that it was much larger than what I had anticipated since much of it was not immediately visible at the start. I think that I might have broken the flow of the map a bit because I skirted around a ledge in order to reach the area with the smoke/shadow armor (which I immediately lost by grabbing another type of armor), and I was able to get behind the gate without first grabbing the silver key. I guess you expected that players might do this though since I didn't see another way to access this secret area, plus the gate was automatically lowered so that I wasn't trapped.

Coming upon the other main sections of the map was almost as amazing as seeing the Colosseum. The underground area increased the scale of an already enormous map, and it reminded me of discovering the ruins of the ancient underground palace upon which the new one was built in Sands of Time. After traversing rooftops, the flooded chamber, and the catacombs, I was almost starting to worry that the Colosseum wouldn't actually be a part of the map but the way that shib7 played out gave me hope. I knew what was up when I found the catapults. I took my time soaking in the sights once I was launched over. I was a little bummed that the interior wasn't part of the playable area but I understood how it wouldn't have really been possible to work it in due to the insane scale of it. I was still glad that we were afforded a close look and looking down over the town put the distance traveled into perspective since the main area looked tiny from above despite being huge.

The gameplay was solid although the underground miniboss absolutely annihilated me multiple times. I kind of felt like I was cheating by carrying over my items and ammo from the previous maps but I'm starting to play like an old fart so I needed the handicap. I also found that it was possible to skip pretty much the entire map and get to the final boss without collecting the four swords, but of course nobody is going to want to skip over anything. I didn't really want to exit the map after beating the boss but I was happy that you gave it a positive spin via the messages.

As I had mentioned before, Ter Shib screenshots are what finally got me curious about the Quake mapping scene and the actual game itself. I was already amazed by what you had pulled off before I came to understand how difficult it is after trying my hand at mapping. The atmosphere that you created through the scale at which you were working is what I wish I could capture. I didn't intend to write a novel so I'll cut it here but this series was nothing short of amazing and the finale was an incredible way to wrap everything up. Thanks for all of the inspiration and for all of the fun.