Hmm, this will be interesting. MAP02 of Doom II is definitely a memorable level in lots of ways. It's got neat little waterway systems, introduces the barrel, super shotgun, shotgun guy, and demon, and is quite cramped in layout. It tends to get some flak for that last reason, particularly for players on Nightmare. It's also got strange music that seems odd for the game and the level, and is almost always seen after beating a single level PWAD, but that's besides the point.
So Underhalls in layout is much smaller than Entryway before it (we're talking like overall space here, Entryway should be much faster to go through due to what you can do to just hit the exit, but the optional areas give it more size). It's an interesting challenge to go from the somewhat small hallway in Entryway to the much smaller waterway hallways in Underhalls, especially when you factor the hitscanner usage. But these halls are small in length too, connecting the hub area which you start out in with three other areas, the super shotgun room, the red key area, and the area with barrels. It's quite interesting how the barrel and red key areas only connect once you finally use that red key to enter the canal on the left side, as well as the blue doors that connect back to the canal from the barrel area. Small as they are, these things basically change up the dynamic well for the second level in the game.
The way you're introduced to the new stuff, well, it's done rather casually. The shotgun guy first appears in the second room*, as a slightly more challenging zombie, but not so challenging as to ease you in to what to expect later. The next shotgun guy encounter, not counting the one behind the red bars, is behind a little alcove in the first canal, which could surprise unwary players. The red key area is rife with these guys inside the main building, a good chunk are in the secret megaarmor room that even includes a teleporter to the starting point. It's interesting how these particular shotgun guys can just sort of casually enter the teleporter and alarm players who use the teleporter as a shortcut back once they finish with the red key area.
The super shotgun room is interesting as despite being small, it's quite interestingly guarded. One shotgun guy sees you but the four zombiemen are busy looking at the walls. For fun, you'd get them to infight there. Then you have two more shotgun guys and more zombiemen before the big prize. The incredibly fun SSG finds its uses in this level, although the single shotgun may be more useful for when you're dealing with single enemies. Players on ITYTD/HNTR won't experience it, but there will be two demons in the level, one in a monster closet after the red key and another in the barrel area. These things have more health, more speed, but only a melee attack, but hey, that new SSG should be taking them out in a single blow at close range. Good practice and will remain good practice for levels to come.
Then there's the barrel area. The way the barrel gets introduced is a hallmark to the ferocity of barrels in general, which is better than the barrels just sort of littered around episode 1 in the original Doom. While they're shown in more-or-less spontaneous locations in the original Doom, Underhalls introduces it in a way players can more easily understand, assuming of course they don't know about it already. So there's this shotgun guy just sort of stuck to a wall without moving. You can kill him but there's the barrel nearby. What if you shoot the barrel? Yeah, he explodes into giblets. And this is what you see in the areas where the blue key is. You actually want to shoot all these barrels to maximize the damage done to the enemies down there. Of course, due to the cramped spaces it requires you to step back and snipe them, but doing this is nice and easy and makes this part of the level somewhat fun in terms of how to use them. Remarkable.
A short, quaint level. However, it is deceptive in difficulty. Underhalls is often considered a nasty level on Nightmare, as fast-shooting hitscanners who respawn are aplenty and this time the compact space of the map works against you as you try to speed through it all. There's not a whole lot of records of this being done on Nightmare for that matter. It's even more egregious as I remember a famous video on how this was one of the last maps done in the UV-Pacifist style (the other being MAP30 which I'm sure is impossible without TAS). Again, the compact spacing, not to mention the barrels and hitscanners, work against you for the challenge of simply not shooting, but surprisingly this STILL can be done. Never gonna try it myself, but man, for self-imposed challenges, no one expects the SECOND LEVEL of Doom II to be one of the more challenging levels out there! That's a true testament to this level's legacy. And that's not even getting into all the levels inspired by Underhalls compact layout. Temple of the Lizardmen 3, Plutonia 1024, and several other wads which pay lots of homage to Underhalls definitely mean it's got its legacy going for it well.
*Interestingly, this very first shotgun guy encounter is somehow also famous for the "sleeping sergaent" issue. Enter the second room but instead of killing the zombiemen to the sides (which will wake up the shotgun guy), go straight to him and he won't actively attack.
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