slimgrin said:
Wow, you thought it was harder than Hard Reset? I'm playing on hard now and I'd wager medium is more difficult in HR because your crowd control options are not as powerful as the Katana and demon powers in SW. Until you hit that chap. 16 arena fight, that was where I put it on easy. Huge difficulty spike there. Kinda agree about the boss fights. They are basically endurance runs, very epic and cool but not much strategy. On this run I'm using Katana a lot more and it's the best in any FP game I've played. So brutal and responsive. Mixing up powers with combos is crazy fun.
The Katana kinda makes things easy, if you're going guns only and ignoring environmental damage you're going to get your ass kicked. First thing I did was max the Katana skill tree, the skill that allows you to steal Health with every Ki blow is amazingly OP.
As to why it was harder, the enemies in this game are of a bigger variety, and they are very responsive too. They can be bullet spongy If you don't hit them in the right parts, Hard Reset didn't have that. Like that giant, you want to take his arms first, or that undead summoning enemy, you also want to take his arms... More so, they've got special abilities like shield, and that fire wave. Hard Reset only had rockets. And precisely because you can inflict a lot of environmental damage, you need to be careful not to be caught in it too, so you need to plan it a little. A lot of things explode, I didn't notice all of them until Chapter 4, in Hard Reset they are very noticeable because there isn't such variety.
And Chapter 16 arena last stage would be fine without the Manticore. This guy is fast, and hits like a truck - plus, you already got all those teleporting withces so it's hard to get the backstab at the Manticore. I think you need some luck there.
As to my build:
Katana Mastery all the way.
Health - all three upgrades.
Drain Soul - turns out to be a waste but I also think it's bugged because I wasn't able to move.
Health Kit upgrade - only one.
Enemey ghosts appear 20% more, and more clearly - two upgrades.
Stamina regen - two upgrades.
Stamina upgrade - one upgrade.
Lesser demon damage upgrade - two upgrades.
Higher demon damage upgrade - two upgrades.
RAGE - only one upgrade, turns out to be a waste because I barely fell to 30 Health.
Fire resistant - dunno how useful it was, took it near the end.
Demons powers:
Protection all the way. This power is almost as OP as Quen.
Restoration all the way.
Flux - half way, turns out to be a waste. The power that knocks enemies down is much more powerful, I think it's called Shockwave.
Guns:
Uzi all the way.
Revolver all the way.
Rocket Launcher - secondary fire mode, three rockets at once.
I thought the rest of the guns were too slow. I wasted a lot of money on the first boss battle, I didn't know the things that fell from the sky were ammo halfway through the battle. Sticky Bombs on the crossbow might be worth it If you've got enough.
Must agree about the artstyle on the levels, but I thought the flashbacks and weapon design was fucking badass.
The final boss was probably the easiest of them all though because the full sword actually heals you with each hit.
Also, the voice acting was great. Lo Wang VA sounds like he had a fun time.
"Make peace before I cut you to pieces!" - Lo Wang.
BTW, you should check out Mark of the Ninja. Excellent plot.
