The biggest flaw of this game

[Cursed Life]

Is that after the middle of the game it becomes too easy (playing on hard). Once you have a leveled team and good weapons fully upgraded, you can easily clear every map without even getting injured. This makes it useless to hire legendary mercenaries, use "tactical" grenades or even use elaborate strategies, and because of this the game becomes boring.

Hope this will be fixed in JA4!

[arjensmit79]

I think you are supposed to make it hard for yourself by using the extra options in the game start menu and/or setting yourself limits like not using any training, limiting yourself to 1 a number of guys etc.

But generally you are right yes. Its easy and hard at the same time. Easy because indeed you can clean every map without taking damage rather easilly when you know what to do. And hard because the game throws one big ass surprise attack on you. I too think it could be a bit better balanced if that surprise attack wasn't as devestating and the overal game was more difficult. But i only played my first playtrough on easy so far. Now about to try and get those iron man and lone wolf achievements.

[cockadoodledoo]

Originally posted by Cursed Life:

Is that after the middle of the game it becomes too easy (playing on hard). Once you have a leveled team and good weapons fully upgraded, you can easily clear every map without even getting injured. This makes it useless to hire legendary mercenaries, use "tactical" grenades or even use elaborate strategies, and because of this the game becomes boring.

Hope this will be fixed in JA4!

Have you played on Mission Impossible, with following options active:
- forgiving mode off
- under the weather
- no active pause
- dead is dead
- lethal weapons
- ammo scacity
- bobby pays
- body count
- hard lessons
- heavy wounds

If not, let's talk again after this. If you still find it too easy then, there are always mods.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3385452379

I think the biggest Improvement to the game would be a smarter AI !
That being said, you should consider this mod as well:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3411008594&searchtext=Rato+Ai

[Ax4711]

With Rato's on default settings the AI is much stronger, and stealth sniping is much harder too. This setup is actually a list of mods including Tons of Guns and Components.

[BastardSword]

I get that they didn't have the resources to make a second map for the world flip, but I find that when it happens you can basically finish the game right away because you don't really need to do anything other than take over the three "boss" sectors. They really should have made it more like the first part of the game where you have to scrounge for resources and mercs and barely be able to take over sectors. As it is you can just sit around in the before world flip section forever training mercs and blocking the raid party spam from A20 until you have so much money that it doesn't matter how much you're losing after the world flip.

Not really sure what they could have done, but a bunch of tough high difficulty enemy units doesn't really do it. You can just go around them, or defeat them one by one easily enough especially because once the white armor guys take over sectors they just sit there. The army units do move around from the outposts but they are much easier, so if you want you can easily take over all the outposts and mines and control the whole map again very easily.

[MacKaris]

Yeah, basically the pacing of the game is just off. It starts off well balanced, you have to use some consideration on how to use you funds, and you have that one team of mercs and you have to try and make the best use of it. However, once you control 3 or 4 mines for even a few days, you'll have so much money all the sudden that you can easily afford three full squads of mercs, especially if you hire the cheaper ones, and basically it makes almost any battle just trivial if you attack with 2 or 3 squads simultaneously. I guess the military invasion, i.e. 'world flip' is supposed to address that, but like BastardSword said, especially if you knew not to step into the trap immediately and instead postponed it for a while, you'll probably have so much money you don't have to change anything until you can grab 2-3 mines back. Also if you know about the world flip, then you will have trained a full militia in all the places where you can possibly train it, and even though they probably can't defend against the military or the "private composer army", they can soften them up, sometimes quite considerably, making it easier to retake those squares.

[Noobiecanoobie]

Play the way you want.
When you start out, it feels tough with six mercs laiden with weapons.
When you've learned the game, you can win with one merc holding a knife.

[Ax4711]

Originally posted by Noobiecanoobie:

When you've learned the game, you can win with one merc holding a knife.

I watched this letsplay too, very interesting indeed. He didn't even use bandages for the most part. Makes it clear that the default JA3 setup is kindergarten easy mode with plenty of ways to cheese the system.

If you rather like this game for challenging and interesting battles, try out Rato's overhaul mod.

[cockadoodledoo]

Originally posted by Ax4711:

If you rather like this game for challenging and interesting battles, try out Rato's overhaul mod.

I have not seen this particular Playthrough, but to be fair most of them are on easy mode. Easy Mode is cheese, but Mission Impossible with no Forgiving mode and no saving, less ammo, more enemies and all other difficulty settings cranked up can be somewhat difficcult. Pair this this Rato's new AI and it feels like a different game.
For the extra challenge pick just one Merc and dont go Melee...

[Ax4711]

Well I have set Rato's AI enemies one notch down so they don't always shoot perfectly. The game is thankfully very well moddable and you can find the setting that's right for you.

[cockadoodledoo]

Originally posted by Ax4711:

Well I have set Rato's AI enemies one notch down so they don't always shoot perfectly. The game is thankfully very well moddable and you can find the setting that's right for you.

Agreed thats the beauty of the game, we can adjust our experience to our needs!

[Amadeus]

Originally posted by cockadoodledoo:

Have you played on Mission Impossible, with following options active:
- forgiving mode off
- under the weather
- no active pause
- dead is dead
- lethal weapons
- ammo scacity
- bobby pays
- body count
- hard lessons
- heavy wounds

If not, let's talk again after this. If you still find it too easy then, there are always mods.

Yes, I have and that is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough. Unfortunately, the tasks get easier towards the end and that could certainly be fixed with SMALL additional settings.

The mods all have one problem: they change the game far too much and in the wrong direction. When turn-based combat starts immediately in the sector and every shot can be a fatal hit, the character of the game is lost. I would like to use skill to determine when the battle starts. What I would want to change would be minor tweaks. For example:

- Visibility and audibility, but only by a few tiles
- Rain and darkness should be a bit clearer. So far there is a barely noticeable difference between day and night
- Enemy armour; on Ernie Island enemies should get no armour and later consistently better to 50% - 60% armour (bulletproof vests).
- Weapons; if I can constantly modernise my weapons, why shouldn't the enemy get slightly better weapons.
- Slightly better skills for the enemies in mid and end game
- Slightly more enemies in the individual sectors
- Looting is too productive in my opinion, a little less

Unfortunately I haven't found any mods for small changes.

[cockadoodledoo]

Originally posted by Amadeus:

Yes, I have and that is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough. Unfortunately, the tasks get easier towards the end and that could certainly be fixed with SMALL additional settings.

The mods all have one problem: they change the game far too much and in the wrong direction. When turn-based combat starts immediately in the sector and every shot can be a fatal hit, the character of the game is lost. I would like to use skill to determine when the battle starts. What I would want to change would be minor tweaks. For example:

- Visibility and audibility, but only by a few tiles
- Rain and darkness should be a bit clearer. So far there is a barely noticeable difference between day and night
- Enemy armour; on Ernie Island enemies should get no armour and later consistently better to 50% - 60% armour (bulletproof vests).
- Weapons; if I can constantly modernise my weapons, why shouldn't the enemy get slightly better weapons.
- Slightly better skills for the enemies in mid and end game
- Slightly more enemies in the individual sectors
- Looting is too productive in my opinion, a little less

Unfortunately I haven't found any mods for small changes.

Well for my mod i tried to limit is mostly to game constants. Besides it is doable, yea one initial shot can kill your merc, but usually when they catch you off guard. But that is the thing, its not for everyone, I just modded what I felt was missing. So I guess your best bet is to get that damn editor fired up.