deathknight1728: Why the Fuck is this game so hard? Ive been playing this game on medium using shotguns and pistols with self healing on my char.
I have finished AS2:Reloaded multiple times with different character builds, and am by no means a 'twitch' player. It's not particularly hard, although I wish they would add another difficulty rating as once you're experienced and know the pickups and weapons, you hardly break a sweat.
Weapons You definitely need
all the weapons all the time (okay, bar grenades as they suck), in fact quite often you will (or should) be strafing and retreating, fire button held down continuously as your other hand dances back and forth over the weapon selection buttons. Cluster of targets? Fire off a few blasts with the shottie, or snap off a rocket, then swap back to machine gun and sweep up the stragglers, or 'drill' out a corridor. Fire measured shots from the energy weapons (they are all burst weapons, even if they have laser effects) to clear rooms, and swap to the pistol to nab the lone survivor or to smack down a big crawler.
Your weapons are your life, and if you choose not to use some of them, you will find the game very difficult to play indeed. The only thing I would say is choose your guns carefully depending on your play style and build. Get the most accurate, fastest firing pistol you can find (not the Desert Eagle, too slow and inaccurate) once you have the top pistol, the SLK, at lower diff levels it will gib small aliens, and even at high levels is one of the most effective weapons against big walkers. Pistol ammo is cheap and plentiful.
Shotguns are one of the most effective in the game and their blast effect gives a huge kill:ammo ratio, so are very efficient. Get yourself the automatic ones, and these will take you to level 12+ easily. Once you get the max shotgun, it is out-of-scale and entire rooms of aliens just melt if you point it at them. There is so much ammo you can safely rock'n'roll pretty much the whole level. Machine guns are the mainstay - just enough damage to take down without overkill, or you can pour rounds on to take out bigger monsters. They are also one of the safest ways of taking out the rocket bosses, as the rockets simply detonate as they are fired. Again, make sure you get the most accurate, biggest clip model and you will not be disappointed. This class has the most ammo in the game. Load up and go to town!
Grenades are crap and scale out almost instantly as soon as they are available. I only keep a launcher so I can sell the grenades. Rockets are nice, but have the slowest RoF and you eventually scale down DPS unless you constantly upgrade, which is expensive. Personally I sell them all, so I can afford more upgrades for my main guns.
Energy guns are the high-tech toys and will deliver a lot of bang for buck, but the cells are not found very frequently and are expensive. You can get the laser pistol at level 1, and it has infinite ammo. You can use this for the first several levels to sell all the ammo you find to buy a nice gun well ahead of scale, and then cruise easily for the next few levels.
Although they scale off fast, it is well worth keeping a freeze or flame gun as they provide perfect defence against a hail of rockets. Killing rocket bosses simply becomes a case of walking up to them and waiting until they die.
It is vitally important to constantly upgrade you guns ahead of the scaling of the enemies. Generally you guns will be devasting, then mediocre, then ineffective. Upgrade or die.
Attributes All are useful but it depends on your build. I recommend Speed (so you can back off faster than they can run = 0 melee damage), Strength (carry more ammo and also boosts health) and your Pick, Accuracy (damage) or Life. Intelligence might be under-rated, but is actually very powerful when maxxed out. 70 points of intelligence will let you equip modules which offer 100+ points of stats, plus the bonus will net you another 30+, so it is actually more efficient than simply pumping one stat, plus you can swap modules if you feel like swapping stats around for some reason.
Picks Although Regeneration seems good, you will actually heal slower than the damage you will receive, and it scale off. If you want to make it easier, take Vampire, as then the health will scale with your damage. You can pretty much walk through the game like this - max out accuracy for more damage and more health. Hypnotism is not bad either - you can 'convert' a mass of aliens and use them as a shield wall, while you lob fire over them. This breaks their 'swarm' tactic as all they do is run at you, and can't so they mill around stupidly. Fish in a barrel. Economy is potentially the most powerful as you can afford weapons well in advance of when you should be able to. The game becomes a walkthough then.
