Why I Don't Recommend Insane Ironman Difficulty

[空.明]

Unless you have completed Experienced Ironman and is just looking for a challenge, these are the reasons I do not recommend Insane difficulty if you wish to experience a more true Gears experience:

1. Enemies have way too much HP. This imbalances the weapon damage that has been designed for the game resulting in a situation where you need almost twice the firepower to kill a single foe, meaning rather than overwatch with one guy to kill 1 wretch, you are going to need 2. This greatly limits the tactical options you have as 2 guys will now act largely only as one.

2. Enemies pretty much one shot you in the open or flanked. This makes all healing skills pretty much redundant and useless and is a clear deviation from the design intention of the game.

3. Characters just die without going into down state. This further reduces the Gears gameplay characteristic and removes one of the most important function of the heal grenade. As such, I never actually carry heal grenades in my Insane ironman run through.

4. And because enemies are so deadly, you pretty much cannot perform one of the key tactical attraction of this game, chain executions. Because enemies are so well dug in and so well covered, once you perform an execution, you are pretty much done and most of the time exposing yourself for doom. Basically, you cannot play aggressively (unless you don't mind starting the grind all over again from the tutorial because I only play on Ironman).

Not that it is not playable. I have finished up to rescuing the 2 echo 5 members under Insane Ironman so it can be done but I found that it is much much less fun than doing so in Experienced Ironman.

I personally think Experienced Ironman is the optimized Gears Tactics experience.

[Peste]

Yeah, I stop playin in Insane because number 2. I dont mind being oneshoted, bug i do mind not being able to use part of the mechanics of the game

[Soul Reaper]

could be worse i am stuck on corpser fight and somehow the corpser has become glitched so it does not attack, lose health, or do anything. and since i an on insane ironman i really do not want to restart all over again

[Yellowdragon]

fully agree.

[SchwarzerBonbon]

Originally posted by Peste:

Yeah, I stop playin in Insane because number 2. I dont mind being oneshoted, bug i do mind not being able to use part of the mechanics of the game

Same for me

[Battleseed]

New release, playing on Ironman. Seems smart.

Next time use the honor system and just refuse to savescum. Will still be able to reload if bugs are an issue.

[UnholyDentist]

Healing grenade is pretty much useless on lower difficulties as well, it has very small healing effect, and you have to bring all your soldiers together into 1 spot for that minuscule effect, which is totally disadvantageous during combat, or else just heal 1-2 squad member which is not worth cutting yourself from 1 action point and having a frag grenade (which is much more advantageous and effective tool).

I felt like weapon damage and enemy HP pool was quite imbalanced, I can't just shoot and move, I have to understand skill trees and develop each soldiers towards certain specs in mind that could work and cover other squad member weaknesses or exploit the enemies weaknesses during combat. But that somewhat makes sense, nobody said to play the game on insane for the first time, the highest difficulty usually means you are expert at the game and know what's what.

When I am certain there are no game breaking bugs I will attempt Ironman mode, but the game is too fresh and I don't want to invest time into something that is uncertain that it works as intended yet.

[空.明]

Originally posted by UnholyDentist:

Healing grenade is pretty much useless on lower difficulties as well, it has very small healing effect, and you have to bring all your soldiers together into 1 spot for that minuscule effect, which is totally disadvantageous during combat, or else just heal 1-2 squad member which is not worth cutting yourself from 1 action point and having a frag grenade (which is much more advantageous and effective tool).

I felt like weapon damage and enemy HP pool was quite imbalanced, I can't just shoot and move, I have to understand skill trees and develop each soldiers towards certain specs in mind that could work and cover other squad member weaknesses or exploit the enemies weaknesses during combat. But that somewhat makes sense, nobody said to play the game on insane for the first time, the highest difficulty usually means you are expert at the game and know what's what.

When I am certain there are no game breaking bugs I will attempt Ironman mode, but the game is too fresh and I don't want to invest time into something that is uncertain that it works as intended yet.

I dunno but I play all games on the highest difficulty setting right off the bat. Thats just me loving a challenge. In fact, I am about half way through an Experienced Ironman and totally loving it. I can imagine anything lower than experienced to be too too simple for TBS vets like myself. I would have stuck with Insane if the mechanics were adjusted for that level of difficulty so as not to make intended game mechanics redundant. This is the case for this game and that denies me from fully experiencing the game, hence I gave up on insane and went with Experienced and LOVING IT now esp on Ironman. Yes, not sure what bugs I might run into but I do not full confident I will not exploit and cheat with an honor system. I have no honor and will do anything it takes to win hahahaha

The thing about healing grenade is that at insane, it does nothing even if you stack all your guys together cos as long as they do not have more than max health, they will be one shotted anyways. See the problem? At lower difficulties, sometimes 100 health more can mean surviving the next shot, which I have MANY times in Experienced difficulty. Even though of course i would rather save the grenade for a revive, which, in insane difficulty, doesn't even exist! LOL! There is no down status for your guys in Insane, they just die straight up. See the prob now?

[UnholyDentist]

Originally posted by Pr8Dator:

Originally posted by UnholyDentist:

Healing grenade is pretty much useless on lower difficulties as well, it has very small healing effect, and you have to bring all your soldiers together into 1 spot for that minuscule effect, which is totally disadvantageous during combat, or else just heal 1-2 squad member which is not worth cutting yourself from 1 action point and having a frag grenade (which is much more advantageous and effective tool).

I felt like weapon damage and enemy HP pool was quite imbalanced, I can't just shoot and move, I have to understand skill trees and develop each soldiers towards certain specs in mind that could work and cover other squad member weaknesses or exploit the enemies weaknesses during combat. But that somewhat makes sense, nobody said to play the game on insane for the first time, the highest difficulty usually means you are expert at the game and know what's what.

When I am certain there are no game breaking bugs I will attempt Ironman mode, but the game is too fresh and I don't want to invest time into something that is uncertain that it works as intended yet.

I dunno but I play all games on the highest difficulty setting right off the bat. Thats just me loving a challenge. In fact, I am about half way through an Experienced Ironman and totally loving it. I can imagine anything lower than experienced to be too too simple for TBS vets like myself. I would have stuck with Insane if the mechanics were adjusted for that level of difficulty so as not to make intended game mechanics redundant. This is the case for this game and that denies me from fully experiencing the game, hence I gave up on insane and went with Experienced and LOVING IT now esp on Ironman. Yes, not sure what bugs I might run into but I do not full confident I will not exploit and cheat with an honor system. I have no honor and will do anything it takes to win hahahaha

The thing about healing grenade is that at insane, it does nothing even if you stack all your guys together cos as long as they do not have more than max health, they will be one shotted anyways. See the problem? At lower difficulties, sometimes 100 health more can mean surviving the next shot, which I have MANY times in Experienced difficulty. Even though of course i would rather save the grenade for a revive, which, in insane difficulty, doesn't even exist! LOL! There is no down status for your guys in Insane, they just die straight up. See the prob now?

I played experienced too, I couldn't find the healing effect of the grenade any useful there either, the revive function comes with talent, which is good but tbh, 600 aoe damage from frag grenade can save your from more damage and down statuses than healing grenade ever will, but that's just my opinion. On insane and experienced, the squad lacks of enough damage to hold positions and to stop enemy advance, frag grenades help with that, there is no need to heal or revive if you kill them or disable them first.

I don't say your point aren't valid, it's your perspective. The game doesn't offer second chances on insane, it's part of the design, think of insane as healing/revival doesn't exist so substitute them with other tools at your disposal. You just have to learn more about the behaviour of the enemy, fail a lot of times, then eventually you will be experienced enough to have all the knowledge that you need to beat the enemy without certain functions that lower difficulties offer. The game is meant to be played as you like it, you paid for it after all, it's your money.

[Terroriza]

Originally posted by UnholyDentist:

Healing grenade is pretty much useless on lower difficulties as well, it has very small healing effect, and you have to bring all your soldiers together into 1 spot for that minuscule effect, which is totally disadvantageous during combat, or else just heal 1-2 squad member which is not worth cutting yourself from 1 action point and having a frag grenade (which is much more advantageous and effective tool).

I felt like weapon damage and enemy HP pool was quite imbalanced, I can't just shoot and move, I have to understand skill trees and develop each soldiers towards certain specs in mind that could work and cover other squad member weaknesses or exploit the enemies weaknesses during combat. But that somewhat makes sense, nobody said to play the game on insane for the first time, the highest difficulty usually means you are expert at the game and know what's what.

When I am certain there are no game breaking bugs I will attempt Ironman mode, but the game is too fresh and I don't want to invest time into something that is uncertain that it works as intended yet.

yeah i'm swapping heal grenade for explosive. frags are so op and it's broken af.

[Chris Madison]

Originally posted by Battleseed:

New release, playing on Ironman. Seems smart.

Next time use the honor system and just refuse to savescum. Will still be able to reload if bugs are an issue.

There is no save scumming in gears tactics.

[SerHamlet]

Insane difficulty is still manageable with detailed teamwork. E.g. only use heavy/scout to kill melee enemies.

Sometimes think several minutes to find the best sequence of moves to eliminate enemey threat is really fun.

However, I won’t play on Ironman mode for now, for I know there exists several game breaking bugs.

[Draig]

"Ironman" when all key chars can't be killed and it forces you to restart mission if they do, lol. I'm about 80% through experienced and look forward to Veteran missions.

[UnholyDentist]

Originally posted by Draig:

"Ironman" when all key chars can't be killed and it forces you to restart mission if they do, lol. I'm about 80% through experienced and look forward to Veteran missions.

If you fail the mission you are rekt, save file deleted. At least that's how it was for me.

[空.明]

Originally posted by UnholyDentist:

Originally posted by Draig:

"Ironman" when all key chars can't be killed and it forces you to restart mission if they do, lol. I'm about 80% through experienced and look forward to Veteran missions.

If you fail the mission you are rekt, save file deleted. At least that's how it was for me.

Thats how it is. :) I am almost through Act 1 on Experienced Ironman and really enjoying the experience.

[Xeonzs]

Originally posted by Chris Madison:

Originally posted by Battleseed:

New release, playing on Ironman. Seems smart.

Next time use the honor system and just refuse to savescum. Will still be able to reload if bugs are an issue.

There is no save scumming in gears tactics.

Except you can.... I'm saving mid mission all the time and reload if some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ happens like missing a 95% shot .