How's the Co-Op?

[Mike]

Me and my friend want to play together.

[Gadzooks]

I started co-op last night with my son.

It took a bit of figuring out how things worked before we understood how the game differed in co-op from single player.

From what we can tell, in co-op:

- You can play through the entire single player story, co-op.

- The joining player is treated as a "clone" of styx (similar to the ability). Rather than costing amber to create a clone, instead, it splits your existing health in half, giving the clone half, and leaving you half.

- The other player/clone, is around until they die. After a short 10 second cooldown, you can create another clone (basically respawning them) at a cost of half your existing health again. The other player controls when they respawn, by clicking their mouse. Certain in game situations may prevent a clone from spawning however, like being inside a barrel, or hanging from a ledge.

- If you die, you can respawn as a clone, from the clone.... Cloneception!

- If you both die, the game is over, requiring a restart from a latest save (the game does have auto saves and specific progression saves)

- The health cost of spawning a clone can take you down to just a sliver of life, at which point, you can still summon the clone, but your life doest go down more.

- The clone can do everything the hosting player can. No limits.

- Loot you pick up (mostly crafting materials and items) is not shared between players. (coordinate wisely)

Now for the biggie, that had me a bit confused having played the single player game....

- You can not parry or fight enemies at all. You can only stealth kill them. If an enemy spots you and enters melee combat with you, you are a one hit kill, no matter how much life you have. The only exception seems to be ranged weapons, which dont seem to one hit kill you (especially with the 50% evade talent)


Basically, when you play this game co-op, its a pure 100% stealth game. Treat each player as an instant kill if you get discovered and pulled into melee combat. Every situation must be solved via a stealth kill (including environment kills like chandeliers), or avoiding all together.


That being said, we played for a solid 3-4 hours, and had a lot of fun. Some situations seemed kinda frustrating in that having to get by them with only using stealth mechanics, seemed almost impossible. Aside from that, its very satisfying from a teamwork perspective. Make sure you use a 3rd party voice chat.

The one aspect that I wish was different in this mode:

- If an enemy has a red circle over their head (full alert and chasing you down mode), the other player is unable to sneak up behind them and stealth kill them while their focus is on you. I felt this would have added another good element of teamwork and strategy to the game if this was something you were able to plan out and execute successfully.