Hard Mode, Enemy AI & No More I-Frames (Mini Review)

[Leonesaurus]

Has anyone tried beating the hidden hard difficulty mode yet?

I'm in the process of trying to beat it myself, and irregardless of this post, I will beat this before the main game releases. However, two things became very clear to me about this remake that I didn't notice on my first and subsequent normal playthroughs. The enemy AI is very, very, very aggressive and they have little to no downtime in between attacks. I think part of this may have to do with the new knife mechanics and the fact you can move and shoot now, among other factors.

It doesn't feel fair and balanced like the original game was in that regard for a few reasons. I want to hold judgement until I beat the main game and 100% it, but I'm just wondering what others feel after playing the demo overall, specifically after playing the hard mode several times? Does everyone else feel it's pretty much perfectly tuned, or does anyone else feel the AI is a little ridiculous in the fact you can get hit, then while you're in the recovery animation get immediately hit by another melee attack?

Normal difficulty is much better tuned to perfection for the game's mechanics and overall flow, since you can at least land a shot or two to trigger melee attacks, but on the harder difficulty, it'll sometimes take 4-5 shots just to trigger the same thing on one enemy all the while dealing with an encroaching swarm surrounding you that is simultaneously throwing out attacks, grabs and weapon throws.

I understand the main game will help with this by giving you more weapons and the ability to upgrade them with ammo crafting, but it seems over-tuned on the harder difficulty. If the knife had no durability mechanic, this would help more with enemies using weapons, but bare-handed enemies would still highlight this issue since you can't parry a grapple attack or a punch. You can stab them if you want, but wouldn't a bullet just be better in that scenario?

I've seen one particular Ganado punch me in the head while running diagonal to him, and then immediately trigger a grab attack right after connecting his punch. This is problematic especially when other Ganado can now chase from behind and tag-team with grapples resulting in you getting impaled as you're being held. Chainsaw is an instant-kill in this scenario, per usual.

Again, I'm creating this post just to highlight some potential issues with the game that I've noticed after my time with the demo. Curious if anyone else feels anything similar after tackling hard mode.

The part that blew my mind is that when you climb ladders now, you can be attacked and will fail the climb animation. I'm not kidding. Leon feeling so slow when all the Ganado feel like they equally keep up with him makes this worse. By the time you reach a ladder or a window to interact with to escape, there's a swarm building up around you.

A quarter into the climbing animation any hit that connects with you from an enemy will deal damage and make you fall down. On professional, you're finished. Taking ladders now is not the safe move as it was in prior games. And trust me, I remember a lot of ladders being in this game. Mercenaries in particular is going to be a lot harder if this enemy AI stays this jacked in the future content coming our way.

This game on professional is going to be rough, but again, at least in the main game you'll have more weapons and upgrades like you would in the original RE4. I just don't know how fun and balanced it's going to be when it feels like BS right now in the early-game with this demo exclusive difficulty. But again, this difficulty is still using the main games rules, mechanics and AI.

I've just never seen any mainline or spin-off RE game introduce these new rules, whereas before it used to be a safe series of I-frame animations that bought you some time to get away from the enemy and re-engage. We'll see how the full release handles this, but it's a little worrying seeing how it's handled in the demo. The normal difficulty experience felt amazing in comparison and didn't bother me at all. That's why I came here to see what others thought.

Anyway, back to hard mode.

[Leonesaurus]

DemoNeZz eredeti hozzászólása:

Leonesaurus eredeti hozzászólása:

I cheated a little a finally decided to watch a Youtube video showing a clear. What you have to do is kill the chainsaw guy using 3 grenades, all your shotgun shells, and light him up with your handgun/TMP. The important thing to take away here is after you do successfully kill him you HAVE TO pick up his dropped item, which is money, for the bell to chime.

You don't have to kill anyone else besides him. 1 grenade is on a ledge to your right when you first enter the village, behind that house. The second is past the cow shack, inside a bedroom you can jump into. The 3rd grenade is upstairs next to the shotgun. I don't think any other grenades are on the map, but I could be wrong. RNG may play into what items you get also sometimes.

Well, it's definetly not about picking up pesetas from Super Salvador, it's still timer thing or kill count. I killed him rather quickly and looted 10000 in the first 2 minutes

It's only a time check after you kill Salvador. I ran around the village 8+ times before I knew you had to kill him and the bell never tolled. Once I killed Salvador with all my grenades and ammo and looted him the bell tolled maybe 2 mins or less later.

I only killed 4 enemies in my 10min Extreme Mode run and Salvador was one of them. For anyone attempting this, just kill Salvador with everything you can find and survive a couple mins by kiting the Ganados around as best you can. Maybe kill one or two while waiting just to be safe.

[DemoNeZz]

Leonesaurus eredeti hozzászólása:

It's only a time check after you kill Salvador. I ran around the village 8+ times before I knew you had to kill him and the bell never tolled. Once I killed Salvador with all my grenades and ammo and looted him the bell tolled maybe 2 mins or less later.

I only killed 4 enemies in my 10min Extreme Mode run and Salvador was one of them.

OK, I get it. It's a different situation than normal mode. Now I'm more interested about kill count working or not. I killed 3 Ganados before village gate, 1 Super Salvador and 11 other Ganados in the village. As far as I remember 12 enemies is not enough for the bell.

[Xengre]

The i-frames issue, imo, isn't an issue. Its to avoid ladder cycling exploitation and you can usually take an alternate safer route. Its a bit annoying because they can throw weapons, but only very slightly. I don't think it will have much of an impact on difficulty so much as you just have to slightly adjust route/planning when dealing with enemies to avoid using them in some cases.

The bigger issue I saw, rather than the ladder, was vaulting and indoor traversal. For instance, I was running around the house with the locked draw near the back and had a heard following me. I tried to move to the window to jump into the house with the drawer. Two enemies ran through the door opposite of my side of the house and up to the window as I ran to the window and began the animation. Typical expectation is either 1) it doesn't let you even try to jump through at all or 2) you knock them back a bit when going through the window. What actually happened was my character tried to go through and repeatedly glitched failing to pass through after a single button press attempt. It got stuck in an automated loop for a good several seconds (possibly as long as freaking 8-10 seconds) which let the heard behind me heavily group up on me (oddly no one swung during the climbing through window animation). Eventually it failed to climb through and ejected me back into the grouped up next to me crowd... Big no no. Fortunately, that time by some divine grace I dodged the one enemy who swung immediately and got out without taking any dmg however this could mean that due to sheer RNG of pathing of mobs you can't see on the other side of structures and stuff, esp if they move faster at harder difficulties, routes involving frequent or even any use of vaulting could be a huge no go due to being extremely high risk.

It doesn't end there, though. I'm sure some people have noticed but if you vault into a building and want to exit the opposite side if enemies due to pathing/spawning are at the opposite and open the door there isn't any way to nudge them out to get past. You have to either kill or stagger them and if there are multiple it becomes higher risk. This means to use this route you must 1) have enough ammo 2) must expend enough ammo 3) must not be reloading or using this route to reload but already loaded with enough ammo #1 & 2 and 4) hope RNG favors staggering in less hits than more ideally. Otherwise, it can become an additional death trap or injury situation. Factor this with the prior point about vaulting risks and... this could be an issue that actually requires patching otherwise it will be too risky to go outside > In > outside in certain structures with certain routes (ex outside window > inside > door exit) in the game and primarily only used for specific routes like outside door > inside > window exit which is less risky due to open space and less blocking. Otherwise its just another factor to consider like ladders but more severe and frequent.

I did notice issues with the barehanded grapples could be a problem at release if they're not better tuned. It wasn't a huge issue over the brief period of the demo but is kind of a clear problem that could get annoying at higher difficulties over the course of a full lengthy game and also prove to be a real nuisance to no hit / speed runs.

Another issue I realized is stealth killing, while cool, is mostly pointless and a big negative at times. The issue will mainly depend on how much the utilize infinite spawning in the full game. In the village you don't actually reduce mob count for the showdown by stealth killing some early because they infinitely spawn by jumping over the village edge fences. Thus you're wasting knife durability doing stealth kills that don't help with this. So then it comes down to two considerations. 1) Stealth kill opens safer route traversal for sneaking around to loot before the village (or full game showdown events like in the village) which can be nice but also pointless because you can largely as easily grab stuff as you run and its faster. 2) Knife is more valuable for using as a defensive tool, especially in showdowns with bosses and such. Ultimately, I think it will depend on how they handle mob availability such as infinite spawning or not and how easily acquired new knives are. If they're easy enough to get its acceptable. If they're not then it actually may totally not be worth it. For dealing with non-event encounters as you explore unless they start putting tons of mobs in a given spot its usually not going to be worth bothering to stealth as killing them is simply more efficient use of time and resources, esp with the promotion of melee AoE attacks. If harder difficulties are like the chainsaw mode in the demo, though, then no matter how easy knives are to get stealth will not be viable. Stealth does an immense amount of durability dmg during stealth or attacks when they're down (more on that in a moment).

Now there is the issue of when they morph... in the demo we don't see the plaga come out of their head but there is a more basic form where they start to partially change and their head goes sideways. It is obvious due to the noise after they fall to the ground and wreathe then get back up and have a sideways head. They become far more aggressive with a pretty ridiculous amount of range on their lunge (probably some 20 feet in some cases counting the grab and repeated swipes after initial part of lunge). The issue with this, at least in chainsaw and potentially in full game's higher difficulties, is the knife durability issue and the enemy's health after they change. They become obscenely tanky. In fact, they become so tanky while also becoming highly resistant to staggers it becomes nearly impossible to prompt a melee attack on them in this state and it can easily take 10-15 headshots to down them when they're like this for a single enemy not counting the bullets prior to this state morph. The solution? Knife them while they're on the ground but your knife breaks in like 2 uses of this, aka 2 enemies... I had this happen to 3 enemies back to back before even reaching the village and was forced to use TMP due to a sheer lack of ammo caused by this. Even with the TMP it took quite a few rounds to finish the 3rd guy. The obvious solution was to run past them but I was doing some tests as it was my first chainsaw difficulty run at the time so I could understand how tanky they are. If they don't morph it doesn't take many hits to kill them, aside from the first 3 in the initial cellar which clearly have intentionally augmented health increase. Further, you can probably still pistol kill them if you do it fast enough after they land on ground but this is risky because the timing is so tight you're going to waste bullets overkilling since you can't time check for any post round results thus putting extra rounds into a potential corpse. Even worse? I highly suspect the morphing fully resets their health bar on top of boosting it which means any follow up damage before they finish morphing is totally wasted if you don't kill them before morphing. Some of this requires more testing to be certain but initial results suggest exceptionally poor tuning of the morphing features which raises flags for the full game's tuning.

The biggest issue? You can't walk into any enclosed room that has a single exit if there are multiple (really, likely even more than 2) enemies pursuing you on higher difficulties unless you are immediately prepared to toss some type of grenade or have high power AoE firepower (shotgun, and even this may actually be iffy... needs more testing on chainsaw in this type of situation when massed up) as such an area results in guaranteed death. Without basically some type of grenade/flash/explosive (maybe shotgun?) the mobs will make it completely impossible to overcome and leave the room. You wont be able to get a chance to reload and at that range you can't kite or out maneuver. It then comes down to very questionable staggering but I suspect there is some type of modifier based on how they're grouped to prevent overkill AoE plowing through because normally even on chainsaw you can roundhouse them but when they got too close together even if I staggered them there was simply no prompt to melee them in that room. That room being the tiny room with a box on counter near the village exit to the next area (in full game) and close to the locked bell tower door. This also means aside from learning by error and death attempts you also, even if you know better, will likely find it not realistic to loot those rooms at all for combat use until after clearing the area. This is another limitation aside from the route and ladder limitations already raised.

Artificial balance design where you're intentionally intended to get hurt to create atmosphere/pressure on the player and their experience is something I disagree with quite strongly. For those who haven't tried the chainsaw difficulty mode the first fight in the cellar spawns with 3 enemies coming down the tight stairs. They have radically boosted health. A single enemy can eat 100% of all your ammo and not die in that particular encounter so killing all 3 without the TMP is, very literally, not possible without god-tier luck crit instant kills 3x in a row. Even with the TMP, while I haven't tested to confirm, I doubt its possible to kill all 3 its that bad. You can't get past without getting hurt, either, due to the number of enemies and space available. In short, you're guaranteed to take damage and waste resources and the most efficient solution is to intentionally get grabbed while not shooting at all, use knife durability to remove the enemy, and then run past while briefly invuln (or at least they don't chain attack you in this case). Then heal up then, or risk dying later if you try to save healing. 1 death in chainsaw = game over, no restart. Frankly, this isn't a good design. If its a common implementation I also suspect its going to be a major problem for the no damage taken community in the full remake.

Overall, the normal difficulty was fine. The chainsaw difficulty was also quite fine IF you specifically knew about its flaws and where to cut your losses and move on. If you did not then the chainsaw difficulty is not "hard" but simply, quite frankly, busted due to massive design and balance issues. There is more I could say such as how screwed you are if you don't intentionally spawn the chainsaw guy asap and grab the shotgun in terms of resources on the hidden difficulty, etc., but I'll leave it at that. The gist is, if there is a similarly tuned difficulty in the full game it will be intended for either exclusively veteran runs, not first time, or a very hands on die oriented (due to design, not difficulty) reasons > learn > repeat until passed it type experience.

Killing the chainsaw guy is still easy enough in the chainsaw difficulty as long as you can grab the resources you need to do it and not waste your knife prior. If you don't get the resources though its going to be virtually impossible for most people. This feels less skill based and more running into a steel wall "have what you need or die" type situation.

[ZiggyPanda]

Phew, i did it. That was intense to say the least. I discarded everything i had in inventory before the village gates so the well would open, then stealthed to the well, got the tmp with 100+ rounds, triggered the house cutscene and went to town on chainsaw chadgummery with tmp, the shotgun and the grenade from second floor of the house. After that i ran laps around till the bell.

[Plank]

DemoNeZz eredeti hozzászólása:

Kazuya's bicep eredeti hozzászólása:

The stunlocking was an issue in the RE4, RE2R and 3R but the potential for it is much higher here because of a number of things. More enemies, they are more aggressive, they are faster and a number of basic actions having a sort of startup and recovery.

In original 2005 release of RE4 stunlocking definetely wasn't an issue, it was guaranteed with hitting head or leg. Almost the same thing in normal mode of demo but legs not so consistent and very rarely shot in the head cannot stagger.

Perhaps my comment was not clear but I was talking about Leon being stunlocked by subsequent attacks.

[Xengre]

Kazuya's bicep eredeti hozzászólása:

DemoNeZz eredeti hozzászólása:

In original 2005 release of RE4 stunlocking definetely wasn't an issue, it was guaranteed with hitting head or leg. Almost the same thing in normal mode of demo but legs not so consistent and very rarely shot in the head cannot stagger.

Perhaps my comment was not clear but I was talking about Leon being stunlocked by subsequent attacks.

I did see this happen once. Rather than a full attack I got staggered by a moving enemy who missed me in a way I haven't seen happen more than once. This resulted in giving the chainsaw guy enough time to walk up and stick the saw through my back before the game would take any commands to move again thus resulting in an instant and impossible to avoid death just because I successfully avoided an attack taking on damage but still somehow got staggered by his shoulder.

[BlackSunEmpire]

DemoNeZz eredeti hozzászólása:

The pain in the ass in this mode are Ganados, not Chainsaw guy, LOL. For my runs I can consistent deal with Super Salvador by 2 nades, almost every shotgun and TMP shots and fire damage. But Ganados with a LOW CHANCE to stagger in the head is pure RNG. You can one-shoting with blowing head off. You can waste your ammo like a maniac in their head and they don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about it. So the strat for passing this mode is to kill Salvador and survive by running

Kazuya's bicep eredeti hozzászólása:

The stunlocking was an issue in the RE4, RE2R and 3R but the potential for it is much higher here because of a number of things. More enemies, they are more aggressive, they are faster and a number of basic actions having a sort of startup and recovery.

It's not insurmountable of course, but when you end up in a situation where you take damage for already taking damage it can feel pretty unfair. I personally hate anything that takes control from a player.

100% agree.

The randomized stagger potential on headshot in combination with the enemies QTE button mash grabbing you from behind and how slow Leon aims makes combat way more random and way less fun than it could have been.

It really feels as if they want you to stay at least 50 yards away from the ganados all the time and just cite them and nonstop run away from them. Playing the game close quarter combat style seem to be highly unviable because you spend more time watching grabbing and your own stagger animations than actually playing the game.

[DemoNeZz]

Kazuya's bicep eredeti hozzászólása:

Perhaps my comment was not clear but I was talking about Leon being stunlocked by subsequent attacks.

I remember this happening only by several guys with maces but overall you get generous i-frames after getting hit so incoming attacks don't hit you. Besides AI most of the time won't attack you second or two giving opportunity to recover (even on Pro difficulty)

[DemoNeZz]

BlackSunEmpire eredeti hozzászólása:

100% agree.

The randomized stagger potential on headshot in combination with the enemies QTE button mash grabbing you from behind and how slow Leon aims makes combat way more random and way less fun than it could have been.

It really feels as if they want you to stay at least 50 yards away from the ganados all the time and just cite them and nonstop run away from them. Playing the game close quarter combat style seem to be highly unviable because you spend more time watching grabbing and your own stagger animations than actually playing the game.

Welp, in normal mode of demo CQC strat is pretty valuable and Ganados take absurd amount of damage from Leon's kicks. Besides, hard mode isn't supposed to be fair but some core mechanics are making this BS like Leon readiness to shoot after reloading is way too long or knife in the neck prompt not working sometimes

[ZiggyPanda]

Xengre eredeti hozzászólása:

The i-frames issue, imo, isn't an issue. Its to avoid ladder cycling exploitation ...

I agree somewhat that exploitation of ladders is can be overboard as i would often exploit it in og re4, so i'm down with that.

Xengre eredeti hozzászólása:

The bigger issue I saw, rather than the ladder, was vaulting and indoor traversal.... routes involving frequent or even any use of vaulting could be a huge no go due to being extremely high risk.

I totally agree on this point too, ladders are one thing but not being able to vault when blocked is a big no no, i ain't saying stagger the people around or on the other side as that's easily exploited too but at least move the models to make room and if needed attempt a punish attack.

Xengre eredeti hozzászólása:

I did notice issues with the barehanded grapples could be a problem at release if they're not better tuned. It wasn't a huge issue over the brief period of the demo but is kind of a clear problem that could get annoying at higher difficulties over the course of a full lengthy game and also prove to be a real nuisance to no hit / speed runs.

is this the spotty hit-boxes? I found this to be an issue with RE2&3 so i doubt this'll be different sadly if they are present, i mainly got grabbed in the basement so i didn't see well enough to call BS or not and the village proved too frantic to call.

Xengre eredeti hozzászólása:

Another issue I realized is stealth killing, while cool, is mostly pointless and a big negative at times...Stealth does an immense amount of durability dmg during stealth or attacks when they're down (more on that in a moment).

Agree on that too, i think a simple fix (without knowing the main games balance) is to make stealth kills not use up durability, otherwise like you say there is no real benefit as opposed to sneaking past them. I can't call the finisher move just yet as i think it should take away durability being so powerful, will have to see how upgrades/ other knives factor in. That kinda applies to the paragraph about the morphs too but again i worry with you on balancing.

Xengre eredeti hozzászólása:

The biggest issue? You can't walk into any enclosed room that has a single exit if there are multiple (really, likely even more than 2) enemies pursuing you on higher difficulties unless you are immediately prepared to toss some type of grenade or have high power AoE firepower

I had this happen to me on normal while searching for ammo on my 2nd or 3rd run, when i had ♥♥♥♥♥♥ around testing parries and staggers and had thus run dry, i dipped into a shack after running a fair distance away to hopefully give myself time to duck in and out but either the NPC's sprint alot faster or the game spawns them closer to you when out of camera sight. I couldn't do anything, i've noticed alot more shacks and rooms from og have multiple exits probably to account for this but not all and like you mentioned you then have the vault problem.

Xengre eredeti hozzászólása:

For those who haven't tried the chainsaw difficulty mode the first fight in the cellar spawns with 3 enemies coming down the tight stairs...

I hope when they say exclusive to the demo they do mean they ain't gonna include a ridiculous mode like this in the full game, hardcore on re2 was hard enough thanks and even if this was optional i think it would always be exploits over skill and luck anyways making it kind of pointless honestly except for the 1% or less obsessed with clearing everything, novelty for the demo but yea please don't capcom. Side stuff like RE2 and hunk is fine if not my fav thing but it's atleast short and sweet to account for the difficulty. I'd hate to see a full campaign with this kitchen sink idea of challenge.

[BlackSunEmpire]

DemoNeZz eredeti hozzászólása:

BlackSunEmpire eredeti hozzászólása:

100% agree.

The randomized stagger potential on headshot in combination with the enemies QTE button mash grabbing you from behind and how slow Leon aims makes combat way more random and way less fun than it could have been.

It really feels as if they want you to stay at least 50 yards away from the ganados all the time and just cite them and nonstop run away from them. Playing the game close quarter combat style seem to be highly unviable because you spend more time watching grabbing and your own stagger animations than actually playing the game.

Welp, in normal mode of demo CQC strat is pretty valuable and Ganados take absurd amount of damage from Leon's kicks. Besides, hard mode isn't supposed to be fair but some core mechanics are making this BS like Leon readiness to shoot after reloading is way too long or knife in the neck prompt not working sometimes

But even in normal mode it is highly annoying how unpredictable their stagger behavior on headshot is and how much of the playtime you spend watching grabbing animations or doing silly QTE button mashing.

Sure its not very difficult on normal, but still highly annoying if you want to do close quarter combat.

[ZiggyPanda]

I don't wanna dehype on the game i'm sure it'll be a grand ol time but if anything stops it from reaching up towards the Mount Olympus that is og RE4, it's likely gonna be the holes in its gameplay loop due to balancing and inconsistant enemy behaviour that we're getting a peek at now.

[Forte224]

It's a hard mode exclusive to the demo. It sounds like it's serving its purpose for a 15 minute section of the game, and I doubt the full game's professional mode will be as brutal.

[DemoNeZz]

BlackSunEmpire eredeti hozzászólása:

But even in normal mode it is highly annoying how unpredictable their stagger behavior on headshot is and how much of the playtime you spend watching grabbing animations or doing silly QTE button mashing.

For the first time stagger was questionable for me as it's not guaranteed but 1-2 shots from pistol or 1-2 stabs with knife is enough for melee. And you can prevent Ganados from grabbing by shooting them or crouching (still don't used to it but it works). Also I liked the coop Ganados mechanic when one is grabbing you behind and the other trying to attack. That's then QTE mashing is feeling pretty tense. I was more frustrated in OG with grab attack then in remake

[ZiggyPanda]

As someone who getting older mashing buttons hurts me brittle hands, I appreciate the ‘hold’ option in the menu