The question in not, how to make a terrain as good, as in Daemonica that used
Models,
The questions is, what looks good, it not too much of work (fits project plan)
and renderes in the required speed.

Using Models gives next to the advantages also big drawbacks,
like the consumption of texturespace and the Massive Modelling work,
and not to forget the need for c_move and c_trace, plus
the problems with entity-shadows.