ThunderSaucepan

The introduction of an energy draining aspect for the basic "lightning bolt" attack in the second game made a huge difference. It made early game much more of a chore at certain areas because a lot of the missions took place in parts of the map that had blackouts, so replenishing became an issue. You could mitigate this by abusing the glitch wherein using Bio-Leech on an enemy renders you practically invincible (if you die during it, you get knocked off and your health is replenished), but again that's an opportuinistic mechanic. And draining from cars left you wide open. With IF1, the infinite lightning bolt meant that you could run into powerless areas and grind to your heart's content to get a leg up. And you didn't have to deal with attack helicopters or minigunners, only turret trucks that were easily dealt with from cover. The second game also half-assed the inclusion of a new melee system, because beyond the basic hits and special attack, there wasn't much else to it. Yet it forced a lot of encounters prioritizing melee, particularly with the Corrupted enemies, who were exceptionally resilient to your powers and also often too fast to land a hit in the heat of combat a lot of times. Not to mention that the camera during melee tends to spaz out because of the way it's designed to pan over Cole and his target when you use the Amp, so if there are any structures near you, it gets jittery. What was the absolute worst thing they introduced though is the new physics system wherein you can be knocked over by just about any attack. You get swiped by a swamp monster? You get knocked onto your back. You get tackled by a Ravager? On your ass you go. You get hit by a stray rocket from a militiaman or an ice shard barrage from a Vermaak 88 member? You get knocked back. And the camera would often focus in on you as you get knocked back, so you not only are made vulnerable, but you temporarily lose situational awareness. It was a nightmare to fight the Behemoth boss for this reason, because the boss could knock you over with its breath attack and its minions could do the same with basic melee, so you had to fight high ground quick (of which there was little) or constantly strafe and alternate between aiming and meleeing. Overall though, yeah the game is pretty easy and still one of my favorites. I made that post coming off the aforementioned Behemoth fight and was playing on PS Now so there was also lag involved, thus I was feeling a little salty. But I'd still rank as the hardest relative to the other installments. As for the IF1 final boss, yeah Kessler can be a pain, but you get a wide open battlefield and he mostly moves slowly with the occasional flashstep, so you can wear him down with your basic R1 attack gradually. Don't think it's a good idea to spam rockets or the lightning storm attack when he takes a knee though. He'll recover too quick for you to capitlize on their damage.

I may be misremembering, but I don't think the previous game forces you into as many fights in tight, enclosed spaces as this one does. That has definitely been a sizable portion of the difficulty for me thus far (playing mostly on Give Me No Mercy). On the other, the enemies don't seem to hit as hard as they did in the last game, though again, I may be misremembering since it's been a minute since I played it.

Anyone know of a quest that will reward me a bomb recipe to pop the Bombardier trophy? I transferred a completed NG save over in which I acquired every single bomb formula available and there doesn't seem to be any quests that give me an extra bomb recipe. Tons of quests that give me extra potion formulae, though.

I actually rather liked Gwent, and plus I've already done complete runs whilst hunting down all the cards on PS4 + PC. It's no problem to me.

Planning to play it on PS5 soon. Having no autopop isn't too bad if there's NG+. Wish I could say the same about Cyberpunk and AC Valhalla, which, despite having the same gear complexity and depth don't have their own NG+ for some reason.

They'd be sooooo much more enjoyable if there hadn't been some drooling reprobates on the dev team that decided that heaps of armored enemies with incendiary rounds and dozens of guys with flamethrowers constitute a fun challenge. But that's Ubi for you.

Huh, thanks for bringing this up, because I legitimately thought that I was the only one who's had this issue recently. I saw all the patch notes that stated that it was fixed a while back and nobody on the game's official Discord server had it. I even messaged the devs on their site and they said that it's working for everyone last time they checked, so I thought I was going crazy because my progress has been stuck on 3/5 for the longest time now, and I must have done fifteen assignments since it hit 3/5.

Got this game in the mail earlier today and platinumed it just now (took me 5 hours including two crashes/freezes, time spent idling, and a shower lol). Easy plat, but it's frustrating. Hard mode is hard because it basically feels as if it is RNG based. It's RNG whether or not your teammates will distract enemies for you, or if they'll even bother shooting enemies while you distract them (necessary for a specific enemy that can ONLY be killed by shooting its back - go figure), whether or not a certain enemy type will casually stroll over to you and punch you through cover (which is an instant kill btw), whether or not enemies will remain static or flank you, or even whether or not your AI teammates will even bother showing up when you advance to the next section. Vehicular sections were abysmal.

I wouldn't say that it's the worst, but it's certainly up there. Honesty, after having played just 3 of Avalanche's offerings (JC3 and 4, Mad Max), I'm of the opinion that they are one of the most incompetent game development studios ever. JC3 was horribly optimized, full of bugs, had awful forced online features, was full of artificial difficulty, and had the most boring story missions ever. Not to mention the bugged out challenges that were never fixed despite multiple dev team members being shown clear proof of them on sites like Reddit and whatnot. JC4 is all that, with even more bugs and an inferior setting, and, after playing the Los Demonios DLC, I'm convinced that they either exclusively hire unmotivated interns or they have an IQ limit on their candidates. And the whole debacle with the Mad Max server trophy still not being fixed even though they said they would fix it, in addition to that game being pretty shoddy in general.

inFAMOUS, Prototype, and Assassin's Creed IV. inFAMOUS is memorable because it's one of the first games with trophies I played, is probably my favorite of all time, and because those last few Blast Shards were so well hidden, I had to print out maps and circle each one I picked up to clean them up. Prototype had the exact same issue, in addition to ballbusting challenges and Hard Mode being mandatory. And ACIV had those damn multiplayer trophies that took a lot of coordination with 3 other players to finally do. Took me 2 years to get around to that one. It's the trophy hunting equivalent of finally getting that pesky piece of meat or popcorn kernel out of your teeth.

You sorta left out how Shiva uses Frost Familiars to make herself impervious to fire damage after a certain point. Specifically after about 25% or so of her health is depleted.

I managed to do it! But believe me, my sphincter was clenched hard enough to crack diamond the whole time lol

Yeah I'm currently in the Cenote about to attempt the chase sequence...If the grappling hook fails me here, I'm not touching this game for another four months