Combat Veteran on very hard is horribly designed, change my mind

[beez-one]

I'm fighting with item swapping more than with actual boss.
Also good luck if you trying it only with lethal weapons and without hematogrenades. Easily one clip for one soldier with that lvl 1 Assrifle they give you. Shotgun is a little better choice.

[beez-one]

Nah, desu befo disonoru!

[Scrundle]

I'd have to agree, the game seems well balanced for Very Hard until Combat Veteran, at which point it suddenly takes the majority of a magazine to remove one soldier. As you said, you spend the fight constantly swapping and dropping weapons.

I did drop the difficulty myself just to see what the difference was like and, yeah it's ridiculous. You can just face-tank them and mow everything down without any worry, you'll be madly sprinting after Combat Veteran when he retreats instead of using that precious time to hunt for supplies. You absolutely bully him.
My advice if anyone is finding that part frustrating is to just turn the difficulty down, it's a very short section and if it isn't fun for you then just get through it and turn the difficulty back to Very Hard. If it isn't fun, why are you doing it?

[Lord Of Dorkness]

I managed to do it... first fight with him at least, but yeah~, it took a LOT of retries. And I died so many times to that 'rip the gun out of its package' animation alone it was almost funny.

The hand-guns were just downright useless, too.

Oh, and you don't get anything aside from bragging rights and personal pride for doing so, so I'd definitively throw a vote in on just turning the difficulty down for those fights.

[beez-one]

I'm kind of dissapointed to see these kind of cheap bullet sponging enemies in the such unusually designed game.

[kliggr]

I can confirm playing on the hardest difficulty aswell. Saw a yt video because my first thought was that I was doing it wrong. But on that video which was clearly on easy you just can rush b and down ALL 4 soldiers including the Veteran with one clip. r i d i c u l o u s.

I got the best result on downing the single soldier with the shotgun. You only need 4 SHOTS per soldier lol. When you are able to get near to the veteran change to the rifle and if you have luck you can stagger him 3-4 times by firing 3-4 bullets at a time.

On the hardest difficulty I manage to get to the 3rd phase but always got oneshotted. It is mildly infuriating.

[sumolagann]

Thought I was doing the battle wrong because it took so much, tied him up, beat him up, shot at him over and over again and it finally cleared lol, cleared it then crashed, just downed difficulty for that repeat battle, did rest on very hard. Made sure I loaded up on guns for any combat after that.

[mello]

That section of the game reminded me of Ubisoft's the Division with the bullet spongey enemies lol.

[ZCaliber]

Beat him on VH last night. Yeah, took a LOT of tries. But towards the end I realized you needed to use hit and run tactics. Sneak up on him, shoot him until you run outta bullets or he retreats. If he doesn't retreat, GTFO ASAP and hide until he calls off his goons.

Definitely the better option since you die QUICK once he summons his re-enforcements.

[7zH]

Very hard is not exactly any harder than the other settings, it just takes a bit longer since the bosses have more hp. That being said, mechanic-wise, all the boss fights were a joke, even more so for the hardcore European Extreme MGS fanbase. I would go as far as to say they were actually pathetic in some aspects.
I cant fathom how Hideo replicated a boss fight from a previous MGS game, while downgrading it so much that you can just mash a button on Very hard and barely get hit in the process.

[Calibre]

my only tip is leave a weapon on the tool rack & break a weapon out of a case from your backpack that way you can quick switch to the tool rack without having to break a weapon out of another case when in a tight bind eg. it really is hard when in confined area's like trenches with the 3pp camera being janky for sure. the other thing that grinds my gears is picking up trash just after you've dropped it when in a tight bind.. grrrr from a fellow very hard setting player.

[mrred]

Oh yes Combat Veteran on Very Hard made me tear my hair out...It takes an entire magazine from the assault rifle to down a single enemy and 7 out of 8 shells from the shotgun. Sad too since combat with the MULEs and the like is very balanced imo.

[Hatless]

only the first encounter is difficult due to the player lacking good weapons, the rest is really fair game imo