Trying to play the game with hard difficulty and saving only when I need to leave the PC. I'll post more after uni. I think about 8 restarts speaks for itself .

So the hard difficulty means that I have only $25k to spend on mercs. So far i have tried two/three different combos but the team of Helmut and Igor has given the best results. After hiring them I have only 1400$ left so I cant really get more mercs or good weapons. Now the downside of this team is that they cant use medkits. Basic bandages require 40 medical skill but Helmut has only 22 and Igor doesn't even have that. What they can use are syringes/stimpacks but they are limited to 4 uses per day or they will damage the merc even more and eventually kill him.

So far the first mission (a must do map), which takes about 45 minutes to complete when playing it safe and getting some melee kills in to save ammo, I can handle just fine with limited damage to mercs. The first town, lets call it mission 2, is no brain surgery either but after this, sh*t hits the fan. The closest areas have limited amount of buildings and lots of open terrain which is very bad for my crappy weapons.

Helmut has quite high accuracy for a low cost merc, so he usually does the overwatch. Igor has less accuracy but can sneak better, so he goes for the close kills. Helmut brings a 9mm MP5K sub-machine gun to the party and Igor a 5,45mm russian compact rifle. Helmut has a light flak jacket, igor has russian accent and a knife .

Now from the first map, right next to the starting point there's a tower, I get one silencer which makes taking out enemies easier. And Igor gets a shotgun from one of the houses. There's also a .45 USP in one of the houses which takes the place of Helmuts SMG. USP has higher damage and Armor Penetration. Also Igor gets one flak jacket from another house. So by the end of the first mission I'm quite well equipped to tackle housed areas but not so good on open terrain.

The closest town (mission 2) offers little in the way of gear, one barracuda revolver and some looted but damaged pistols. I sell those to merchants for cash. Now after mission 2 I get the notification that DLC weapon has arrived which is a 5,56mm SCAR assault rifle. I get that and sell excess items.

And now i've had my ass handed to me oh so many times. I Cant afford long range rifles and with only two shooters i'm seriously out gunned and skilled. I tried to clear the closest operating mine (story), i was properly lynched. I tried to take a water tower, same result. Now im thinking of taking a second city because it offers cover but the amount of baddies clocks in at 21+. So with my two dudes, who cant even properly heal themselves, that would be quite a feat.

Also when either of them dies, it's pretty much game over. One merc just doesn't have the fire power.

So this morning I decided to assault a hideout with 11 enemies, and its back to square one again.

So I completed mission 1 and 2 again and got butchered while trying to assault a farm. Turns out the hillbillies were all packing heavy kevlar. I did like 5 damage per shot while they ripped me apart like a paper towel .

I'm no longer restarting from the beginning since at this pace I'll be done with the game by Christmas 2025 . I need more practices before I can go ahead with this plan.

Is the game any good P-man?

So i switched to normal difficulty and so far I've had to reload three times. First was purely my bad, I attacked a location with no cover and the enemies burst fired my squad to death, after all they do out number my squad by a lot. The second reload was the "cant take the shot" bug, basically it means that for some silly reason my mercs scream cant take the shot even when they have quite clear line of sight. Its a bug that's been with the game from the start. And today came the third time when enemies killed my scout through solid object and then swarmed the team like 10+ to 4 and since they now use machine guns which are obviously bugged when they always hit even when shot from the hip i had no choice but to load once more.

They can now also hear silenced weapons from miles away, through walls etc. So the late game is mostly turtle fight, either finding a roof where they run to their deaths or some solid cover I can use to pop two shots and then lie down again.

some gripes:

- no suppressing fire feature
- sometimes line of sight is wrongly blocked
- camera angle too restrictive (trouble determining line of sight)
- no combat controls like sidestep, take cover, etc

Looks like a solid party there. The sights, there are two classes so to speak, there are the ones which increase accuracy and then there's the ones which reduce aiming time. So if you have a merc with fairly high accuracy, above 80s, then he would benefit from faster firing and keeping that enemy dancing to the rhythm of led.

Well im now on my 5th load. Got wiped out again thanks to the enemies insane sight/hearing radius.

And 6th Load. Cant make the shot bug again. Its unbelievable that they cant make the clearest shot, its fucking ridiculous, nothing but air blocking the shot.

Was over run in Meduna city. There are like 60 enemies and well there were just too many to handle. 7th load.

8th. I fucked up

I gave the game up and uninstalled it.

I started again with a mod that added more guns and items, which made it much more interesting. I formed a kick ass squad of 6 assault rifle experts, 5 with a G11 (if i remember correctly) and 1 with an AK47 (until I found another G11). They could chew through anything. But I gave up cos I didn't feel there was a point anymore with the game. I was stomping around and at the time time trying to resupply my folks with 3 other mercs on logistics duty. I also had a team of 3 machine gun experts on guard duty so my 6-man team could happily attack without worrying about defence.

The game is just lacking too many key features in too many key areas.

2/5.

Completed my run. Finished at 11 loads. The enemies on the final map are super accurate while in standing position and bursting my squad to death.