Xerania's Fall is the first chapter of the "Xerania Trilogy" made by EZkeel (Xerania, Invasion and Legacy). EZkeel is one of the older and classic custom mappers from the Unreal/UT99 community, he has a long history of making custom maps for both games (and he even made some maps for UT2003), his multiplayer levels are very entertaining and interesting, I remember he made an Assault map for UT99 and it's pretty cool. However his SP maps are more controversial, because making a SP map is not only much more difficult than making a DM map, but also because the gameplay needs to be designed in a completely different way compared to DM. This is as far as I know the first SP map that EZkeel ever made and for being someone's first SP map, it isn't that bad at all.
Level geometry is very basic, but considering that this map was made in 1998 it's pretty good (this era of custom maps didn't had levels with the best geometry). This map is one of the oldest custom SP maps for Unreal and because of that I have a lot of respect for it, because mappers back then didn't had all the tutorials that you can find today in the internet, also mappers haven't perfected their skills at this point, so being a custom mapper was way more difficult back then. One type of brush that leaves much to be desired is the terrain, it's made of cubes and strange cones/pyramids , but again I don't blame EZkeel for this since the terrain of the original Unreal was made in a different application than the Unreal Editor and also the community had no idea how to make terrain back then until UT99 came along. Lighting is decent with some interesting colors from time to time, but there are many areas that are either too dark or they lack variety when it comes to color. The skybox steals the show in my opinion, the contrast of colors is really nice.
Sound design is ok, ambient sounds are used frequently in the map (but the map could have used more dynamic ambient sounds), this map uses new sounds like the ones used by the final boss and of course the new voice lines, which by the way were recorded by EZkeel's wife, this is a recurring thing that EZkeel does. Music is a mixed bag, while the choice of songs is good, the execution of them is quite poor because of how the music transitions were made. However this map gets a lot of points for using Newmca16, a song that was left unused in the original Unreal, a song that is associated with old classic SP maps.
Gameplay is sloppy, the basics of going from place to place killing enemies and activating buttons is still there but the problem is the level design. The map doesn't do a good job at telling you what to do and sometimes the things you have to do are more complicated than they should. There are many moments were you enter a room with a locked door/teleporter and you have to find a way to open it, however the map isn't design so the sequence of events have a nice flow, so even if you know what to do, going from point A to B feels unnatural. One of the gimmicks of this map is the elevator at the center of the tower, however EZkeel probably wanted to make an elevator that goes to different floors depending on what button you push, something that the original movers can't do, therefore EZkeel replaced the majority of the elevator's functions with teleporters, unfortunately the teleporters can cause a lot of gameplay problems when you fight enemies. The section where you have to enter different portals to destroy the green diamond cores is a nice change of pace, the different settings and challenges are great, I wish that all this areas had different skyboxes, but that can only be achieved with a custom script. The final boss is weird, I like the gimmick of the fight but the problem is that the fight can be very unfair depending on the amount of armor and health you have when you start the fight, you are forced to take damage and this can be a big problem if you don't have enough health to protect you, this problem is even worse if you play this map with the new difficulties from the 227 patch. However you can kill the final boss by shooting him, so there's that

.
Issues I found :
- If you don't get the translator at the beginning of the map, the sequence of events won't start, which means you are stuck until you grab this item.
- A little nitpick : the player starts are floating.
- Some of the Alarm Points at the start of the map are floating, which breaks pathnodes.
- This level has extra player starts for Coop but besides that there isn't any Coop filtering, there isn't difficulty filtering either.
- There's a funny texture misalignment in the button that activates the crusher at the start of the map.
- When you go to the past that area still has a Lava Zone even though it's never used.
- If you take the lift that takes you in a ride to see the entire tower from outside, you can jump to the top of the tower, but if you do this you can't come back.
- The floor that has the Nali imprisoned has gates that can be destroyed, however you need to use a powerful attack to destroy them, so if you use a weak attack this can mislead you into thinking that the gate cannot be destroyed.
- Some translator messages don't deactivate after completing an objective.
- During the section where you have to go to different portals, the game doesn't give you a visual clue to tell you what portal you already visited.
- After destroying one of the green cores asteroids start to fall from the sky, however this asteroids can only hurt human players, which doesn't make sense.
- The Exploding Wall actors have collision turned on. The same goes for the Creature Factories.
- There are some movers that activate once that use Return When Encroached.
- You can take the exit before destroying the green core in the area with the caves and water.
- There are fan decorations in this map, this actor can be destroyed if you shoot it, but the map did not take that into account.
- In the area where you have to open the door with the shape of a head there's an area with a slime zone, a little brutal for an area you can easily fall into.
- There are translator messages coming from books, but those books can be pushed.
- You can avoid fighting the Titan and go straight to the exit, I don't think this was intended.
- Some lights are out of bounds.
- The Warlord spawns with state Attacking, which means he will most likely move away and there's a chance you won't even fight him.
- The final teleporter takes you to the final cutscene of Unreal, which was very common back in the day but it still doesn't make sense.
- This map has more than one LevelInfo, which is not normal since each level should have only one.
- This map has multiple SkyZoneInfos in the same spot.
- There are multiple LavaZones in the same zone.
Somewhere in Nevada...