[Feedback] Very Hard Normal Mode Playthrough

First of all. Thanks devs and publishers you’ve brighten this creepy year for games, you and very few others give hope that not everyone in this industry became a Todd…

There will be spoilers regarding plot and some mechanics that will make it too easy on ya’ :wink: No Iron-Mutant as I don’t like to play iron in games where you have a conditioned chance to hit rather then “fully” random as it sometimes not just luck but rather an order of actions in something turn based, no thank you. Just IMHO, and I’m sure lots think otherwise…

I liked the game and the most disappointing for me was that I did managed to finish it in 20hrs and 'bout an hour looking for last forgotten\missed notes. I want MOAR!!!1111 Though no regrets taken about buying Deluxe :wink:

Stealth mechanics are very nice and refreshing. As well as others you didn’t aim to make lots of new and hard to understand mechanics you just taken all good we know about and make them a real challenge. We have stealth and in this form it’s something new, everything else you are well aware about so if you act stupid you die stupid. I like this!

Plot is just awesome! Story is rich and interesting, game has it’s own but very much into the postapocalyptic genre atmosphere so much that I’d like to find out more about this world and lore last game that inspired me to this led to reading all witcher books. There is a very few side quests to my taste but again give me more, still they give some fresh air and unlike in most late games where it’s just grind for lvl, hell there is even moral choice!:pogchamp:. Side dialogues your characters are having is both hilarious and interesting plot wise if you pay attention. Though I made a very early suggestion that Ingmar is Elder reading the notes, but Plutonia and Sect Psychos was a bit of a twist mb cause I didn’t used psychic mutant like at all :wink:

Now to not good\strange things(as well, I can’t call that bad):

Z300 and Z800 has no loot at all, just nothing no point in killing them. I still did for fun but isn’t Z800 a kind of end game enemy? With no loot? Z900 are easier to kill and they drop 20 of most precious resource.

Sniper weapons besides the top one is crap and sololy cause of damage. You rarely get in encounter where you’d utilize that 20+ range for smaller damage compared to shotgun or machinegun. Maybe it has a point on lower difficulty when you go straight on idk…

Weapon upgrades are a mess, going back and forth to the ark to change mods on silents every med-bot encounter and stealth killing all but one z900 in perma stunlock from silent weapons seems just weird, but still EMP’s are best they have own niche. Knockback is useless as if you’re at high ground you are most probably flanked and enemy won’t fall, if you’re ambushing someone means you’re stealthing them meaning it could alert someone else or you go loud then burning them is preferable(In stealth too as burning applied at the enemy turn start and could kill lone target b4 alert). Burning well I did used it in at the start and to level 30 mostly for that 1 additional burning damage to kill in stealth at 20-30… As when HP pulls grow bigger you barely see any results and it’s not affected by Molotov perk. So at the end I was looking for higher crit damage then anything else.

Now Molotovs… Total crap never used one. At the end it was pain to scroll through them all when refiting other really useful things. Why would I use molotov for even 6 dmg per 3 turns if i can make 8 in 1 by grenade?

And the last but not least one the hardest part of the game is lvl 20-30 when you can’t manage your silent weapons well, you don’t yet have enough perks, characters, items for crit step up you have to polish maps not to miss just one pile of scrap and venture deep in stealth for more then go back and pick encounters you can work on until you’re geared and skilled enough to go.

2 Likes

Very nice critique, I agree with most things you pointed out. Having to go back to the Ark for mods didn’t bother me as much as the whole weapon upgrade issue. Having to upgrade all the silent weapons is a must, but then you’re left trying to figure out if you should hold all your weapon parts for late game or use them for midgame weapons. I wish, when you dismantle weapons, you’d get back closer to what you spent on them to upgrade them to begin with. For instance, upgrading the Boomstick (one of my favorite weapons in game) costs 90 weapon parts, but dismantling a Level 1 = 17 parts, Level 2 = 19 parts and Level 3 = 23 parts. It’s very annoying having to decide to upgrade a weapon early on, but not have enough parts by end game to upgrade the final weapons.

ATTENTION: Spoiler tag does not work.

I politely disagree with few of your criticisms and totally agree to others:

First of all the game in general:
the plot is really nice even if it is very obvious. A really nice conversion from the RPG into a computer game!

stealth mechanics:
very nice for the first playthrough. Question is what to do after as you’re very dependent on stealth action and have nearly no other options (if you play ‘hard’ difficulty)

Molotovs:
same here, never used them.

strange things with spoiler blurr:

no loot for Z800/Z300: agree. There really is no need to kill a Z800 with its Z300 but if you do so you should get a nice reward. Maybe there is no loot because the number of enemies after the Z800 are pretty small.

weapon upgrades:

again I agree. Its nice to get a hotkey for the Arc but it really would be better to change that weapon mods on the fly. Later in the game when the Elder forbids the further investigation of Eden you break roleplay immersion because you are forced to come back to the Arc.

I disagree with the following:
Sniper weapons:

I wouldnt call sniper weapons ‘crap’. You can position two of your mutants with sniper weapons at higher ground and lure the enemies with the third mutant to shoot them. When I try to beat the game without stealth I bet I need to use sniper weapons a lot.

Knockback is pretty great if the enemy hides in cover. You ‘knockback’ him out of the cover so your buddies can shot the enemy in the open.


Mod edit: Fixed spoiler tags. Each individual paragraph must be tagged separately.

I agree. Did much more open fights than suggested by most. Knock back is useful then, if you use a prepositioned sniper.

Edit: played on hard.