Some of Sebastian's skills WILL make the gameplay boring

[Al Bobo]

Hello. I'm writing this in hope that a developer happened to stumble on this forum and perhaps even read it. For those, who have not seen TEW2 skill trees and might wonder what I'm talking about, here's a link to a website with all available skills and weapon improvement options: https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-evil-within-2/the-evil-within-2-weapons-upgrades-crafting-guide

I'm that kind of gamer who really likes to be challenged in games. I crank up difficulty to highest whenever I can. I want to struggle and, ultimately, triumph by thinking fast and shooting true. From that point of view, there's 3 skills that I'm really, really worried about - Bottle Break, Synaptic Focus and Bullet Cascade. I believe that these three skills can take away all tenseness from combat. Below I explain my fears with them and the ways I would change them. I don't care what happens on lower difficulty levels, but when I pick Nightmare -difficulty, I want a real challenge.

Bottle break is the worst of the lot simply because it's easy to get (you even get it by default on easy difficulty) and it basically gives invincibility for as long as you have bottles in your inventory. In TEW1, monsters, especially 'cannon fodder' monsters, really liked to go for the jugular and from TEW2 videos I can see that it's stayed same. Bottle break gives you 3 chances to get out of trouble for free and you don't have to do a thing. Let's say that grab-bottle break-monster stumble -sequence takes 5 seconds before the monster attempts another grab. With 3 bottles, that's 15 seconds of time where you can let go of your keyboard, stretch and still survive in the middle of 100 enemies. That's really awful in a survival game where you get sense of achievement by surviving against all odds with your own skills, not being automatically helped by a program. It's almost like activating demi-god cheat mode. I could live with that skill, if it used ALL bottles at once or if there was a skill check like with TEW's booby traps -those harder ones. Otherwise, I have to pretend like that skill doesn't exist and hope for somebody to mod it away. If half of the game's monsters are these basic grunts, then Bottle break makes half of the game's enemy encounters risk free.

Another atmosphere watering skill is Synaptic Focus. Slow-mo that uses stamina as fuel. Since stamina can be get back infinitely, you can use Focus many times in every fight. Get stamina max and regen upgrades and it gets ridiculous. It costs 70K green goo points to get and the reward is a skill that, at least for me, ruins any sense of fear. You have all the time in the world to line up those perfect shots and think about your next move. All desperation and urgency drains away. Again, really bad thing for survival-horror -game, in my opinion. Only way I could make this skill NOT op would be to make it drain health in moderate speed instead of stamina so that it would truly be a double-edged trump card that's used only in special, desperate situations where not using it would potentially cost you everything. ..draining stamina, jeez....

Then there's the black horse, Bullet Cascade. This could be a good or bad skill, depending how long it lasts, how long cooldown it has and will it end, if you change a weapon.

I want skills that can help me in a pinch. I don't want skills that make enemy encounters not scary. I want more options in fights, not I-WIN -buttons.

Don't make me to not pick skills in order to keep gameplay interesting.

[Neoxsat]

im not gonna read all that but yea even with a max sebastian in the first game on survival it was still hard af but like you said if you find it to hard dont buy skills the first one had an achievement for beating the game with no upgrades

[SABYA]

Simple solution: Don't get those upgrades

[stardust]

Just as these people said, simply don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about the upgrades, problem solved. Such a useless post to begin with, so much text for such a simple answer, think with your own brain before posting such rubbish.

[Al Bobo]

That's too simple solution. You see, I want to like every skill that's in the game. I want there to be no skills that make enemies a joke. I feel like these skills are equivalent to Dead Space's playthrough reward, a finger gun that exploded any enemy with one "Pew!". Except, in this case you can get that gun in the middle of the game :I

Edit: You guys are just too simple... The point of my big wall of text was to point out how those skills could be made actually interesting. I WANT to get all skills there is or weigh in my mind, if one skill might be better than the other. As things stand now, there's 3 skills less for me to pick so of course I feel bummed out. Is it really so hard thing for you to comprehend? And would you really feel rewarded, if you bought that slo-mo skill and ran through the game on ez-mode? Why the hell would you want to play hard difficulties anyway, if you picked a skill that makes everything easy? Helloo?
I bet you guys would be all smile, if every damn upgrade would make monsters explode, when they see you. That shouldn't be no problemo for you with your, gee, so brilliant suggestion to just not pick anything. Right?

[stardust]

There is many things in life I want too kid, but it's not that easy you see. TEW was a really challenging game on akumu, especially the first playthrough so I don't see the point in your whining. Some people want to experience the story, and they don't mind the game being easy, some even use cheats to make hard games a piece of cake. Every single game can be very easy no matter what if you just think about it for a second. In the end of the day you are the one that controls everything, you can choose your path, easy or hard it is up to you. There is no point in writing such a long post about something that is so simple to solve, if you are so afraid just don't buy the game, play some outlast or similar scripted crap where it gets repetitive after one hour.

[BaHaMuT]

Originally posted by Joker:

Simple solution: Don't get those upgrades

I agree with this, he should play in a way he sees more fit

[Al Bobo]

Here's a newsflash for you, buddy. I didn't write that wall of text for YOU. I don't want YOUR input on this topic. I wrote it for any TEW developer who might find this little forum. I literally say that on the first paragraph. Reading comprehension - you lack it. I made my post because I feel those skills don't fit it's theme of struggle. Take fear of death out of a horror game and what's left?

[SABYA]

Originally posted by Al Bobo:

That's too simple solution. You see, I want to like every skill that's in the game. I want there to be no skills that make enemies a joke. I feel like these skills are equivalent to Dead Space's playthrough reward, a finger gun that exploded any enemy with one "Pew!". Except, in this case you can get that gun in the middle of the game :I

Edit: You guys are just too simple... The point of my big wall of text was to point out how those skills could be made actually interesting. I WANT to get all skills there is or weigh in my mind, if one skill might be better than the other. As things stand now, there's 3 skills less for me to pick so of course I feel bummed out. Is it really so hard thing for you to comprehend? And would you really feel rewarded, if you bought that slo-mo skill and ran through the game on ez-mode? Why the hell would you want to play hard difficulties anyway, if you picked a skill that makes everything easy? Helloo?
I bet you guys would be all smile, if every damn upgrade would make monsters explode, when they see you. That shouldn't be no problemo for you with your, gee, so brilliant suggestion to just not pick anything. Right?

You are turning a simple thing into something very complicated

[Al Bobo]

I just want to enjoy all skills there are available and I feel like some of those make things too easy, which bothers me, since, like I said, I want to enjoy alllll the skills. It's not really that complicated. Or, to put it other way, why not just give us infinite ammo from the start? How would that change the tone of the game? Would it be more or less scary? Would you have to think about your approach to situations more or less? I just don't understand why there are skills that take that fun away. Imo, it's a miscalculation from devs and I want to voice that out. You may disagree.

[stardust]

You are complicated, you have that juvenile behaviour embedded deep down in your brain. A few people said the same damn thing and still you don't understand. Your post doesn't make any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense pal, grow up ffs. Read my previous post again, see if you can understand anything I was saying, if not, well then try again until you do.

[Al Bobo]

Again you are here, buddy. Those skills I mentioned before don't fit thematically in the game. That's my feeling and that's why I started this post. Your solution for me is to turn a blind eye. I would rather not. Again, those suggestions I made were really not for you to think about.

[mw00]

Bottle break might be fair if the amount of bottles in your inventory is limited or if you can only hold one at the time plus it's a nice throwback to defensive items in Resident Evil 1. Synaptic focus sounds way too OP and the price for it isn't even that big too. Bullet Cascade seems too arcadey and uneccesary. I hope we can downgrade skills this time.

[MrPawnch]

So I guess limited upgrades / no upgrades run are not a thing now for you, topic creator?

Personally I only wish that you can deactivate learned skills instead of making a new save file, but that is only a small gripe in my opinion.

[Al Bobo]

@MrPawnch, no, I like upgrading Sebastian and weapons in general, as long as those upgrades don't make things too easy, which I think is the case with already mentioned upgrades. I feel like not picking an op skill is only second best option in games. My wish is that there wouldn't be op skills at all and with slight tweaks those skills could be thrilling to use.

@Error, you can have at least 2 bottles in your inventory and because people like number 3 so much, it's a fair chance that you can have 3 bottles.

[stonersunshine]

75000 is not cheap for the time slow skill. You could fully upgrade 2-3 entire catagories of skills for the price of that one skill. It's a late game or new game+ unlock.