v1rus
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2008
- Messages
- 2,258
I played the game on Ultra Hard from the start, it was great. It inevitably became piss easy about 2/3’s in, but before that it was hard and I had to think about which fights I started and how. Killing my first Thundermaw with my crappy weapons on Ultra Hard felt like an actual achievement in comparison with the pathetic stuff most games dish out these days
It also had the atmospheric effect of making huge ass Dino robots feel threatening instead of like loot piñatas
Ultra Hard is the definitive way to play this game, yes, I fully agree. But it also increases the shopping prices to an amount that doesnt seem worthwhile on basic NG. I completely 100% the game, and even with buying stuff on very hard (literally, switch before approaching the vendor, buy stuff, back to ultra hard) i barely managed to get them all.
The question is, what do you prefer? I enjoyed the combat system a lot, but versatility of different weapons helped with it, even if you really need just a single good weapon, max two (theres that sniping bow for dmg, and pick another weapon to exploit weak spots). I feel the game would become more way more tedious if I wasnt using some sub-optimal weapons for fun points from time to time.
Imho, its a weird situation - the combat system did wonders for me, requiring LOTS tactics and planning, but there was literally no encounter design, which was felt, a lot. (Except for hunting lodges, and i loved those). The thing is - AFAIK, Ultra Hard was added post release, and was meant for NG+ only runs - and very hard aint particularly hard, thus there always that strange idea of "the game was not meant to be played like this" haunting me during my play-through. Dont get me wrong - I fully recommend playing the game on Ultra Hard, because there is quality to be found among bad decisions the devs made, but in a way, "you arent playing the game as it was designed to be played" by playing Ultra Hard on NG. Which did wonders for me, I did "a bad, unintended thing", to make myself enjoy what was offered more.
The question now is, what do you prefer in further tailoring the difficulty to your tastes - some fun gadgets to mess around with, causing some additional challenge due to their unoptimization, or going through a even rougher patch, before picking the BIS, where the game difficulty relatively decreases (Its a question how much the patch is rougher tho - prices are like four or five times bigger on Ultra Hard - meaning that instead of buying all 5 weapons offered, you buy just the BIS one, and while you lack some versatility that could be warranted from time to time, the BIS weapon is what you could use to effectively kill 90% of enemies.). I preferred the previous option, i just loved messing with slingshots and flamethrowers and whatnot, even tho it would probably be more efficient just to snipe the robo with that hyper dmg bow. You seem to prefer the other option, which is perfectly fine, and respectable.
Out of curiosity, how much side content did you do? Did the robos start with evolution?