Seriously???

What is this shit?

Has somebody pooped in my Agents brains?
Has the hydraulic motion control fluid been replaced with piss?

Why don't they anticipate enemy agents popping up around the corner anymore?
What kind of major malfunction are they suffering from?
Why do my agents respond like idiots?
Why don't they return fire?
Have they become lazy over the years?
Or are simply female agents the inferior version?

I don't mind a challenge but making my agent stupid is something I do not enjoy at all.
Maybe it's me, maybe I suck, but beating the normal game while using some nice tactics is fine by me. That worked very well. Eventually, even the Atlantis sea-station was always challenging but manageable. That was my kind of game.

But clicking like an idiot and hoping that this time the agents hold out 3.42 seconds longer than the last run simply sucks.
You have about 1 secs time to decide where your agents should be killed.
I'm really happy I got this "update" almost 20 years later because getting it back then would probably ruin the entire game experience I had.

The game turns out to be a button mashing mess, within seconds I have to position all agents at the same second and with the utterly stupid path finding I even have to babysit them all of the time. Give me at least 4 Monitor split screens and an easier interface. I can't even scroll to study the map before I get overrun and I hear: "Mission failure" because all my agents died.

This isn't fun. This isn't Syndicate anymore. Not the Syndicate I loved and enjoyed so much.

What am I supposed to do?
Should I fear enemy agents now? Fear some pitiful revolting agents?
Fear them, while my corporation has taken over the rest of the world?
Fear is not something executives of a mega-corporation are allowed to have. At least not in my book.

Sorry for the rant, but I just needed to get that off my chest!

I'm just going to pretend this expansion never existed in the first place...

The most unsettling thing is that there were so many gog masochists who were looking forward for this release.
I'm both shocked and desolate that our opinions are so very divergent.
Go have fun with you little revolt, I'm rolling back to my original version, I would actually like to encourage gog to include the version in the bonus content section for those who feel the same way but don't have the luxury of an old backup copy on disk. I know I can play the original version, by clicking on the left picture but I don't want to.
That's not the way it should be. Let me forget that unsatisfying expansion.

Syndicate Plus is the only version of Syndicate I've ever played (Bought the CD way back and now the GOG release.) I wasn't aware it changed the game in a drastic way. (Thought it was just more missions/equipment.)

What are the differences between Syndicate and Syndicate + Syndicate: American Revolt?


Can someone please list them?

Gameplay is the same, only American Revolt expansion is more intense experience to the point for some people is too much, but with good thinking and reaction is possible. If Syndicate has graduation difficulty from easy, medium and later hard missions, American Revolt is supposed to be continuation of Syndicate after you get global supremacy, so no wonder missions with revolting areas are hard to extreme difficulty from the beginning, no more easy or medium missions.

But that was probably too much for OP, as he though he was enough skilled with first one to do expansion with ease. Looks like it's not, as he called other people who doesn't finding this unplayable as masochist. Heck, even first mission and half the expansion is easy if you know what to do next. ;-)

I don't think he is lamenting mission difficulty so much as the change in agent automated behavior settings. And hes right. I do diverge in that I am happy to have the expansion as I never beat it in my younger days so would like another go. But it is certainly logarithmically more difficult than the initial release, and not all in good ways such as mission complexity.

So maybe they glitched for you. In my Syndicate Plus downloaded from GOG in both Syndicate and American Revolt they shoot on enemy sight. What you feel is what you behave and what game uses you to render. Also with Perception and Intelligence max to the right they react 100% rate in diagonal directions even if not facing them. But since first game it was pretty obvious the one that survives Minigun is the one that starts shooting. In original game they never had chance to counter that attack, even in PANIC mode. In this expansion both enemies and you have something like 50% chance to break defense of agent. Still, that was actually in basic game, just glitched RNG ways. Loading saves that always steal part of money problem is still present... ;-)

Wait a minute...my agents are supposed to shoot at enemy agents on their own? I've never seen that happen. Unless I manually fire they just stand there and die without reacting. And this is regular Syndicate, too.

With better mods they will do this in Syndicate (Eyes and Brain v3 are especially related to it). Also IPA Intelligence and Perception to the right. American Revolt start with all v3 agents so they will do it more often but that depends on threat level (enemy agent, mercenary, police) and weapon (hit-scan weapons have lower chance to break sequence and counter-attack as they have very little margin of respond time between shoots, for example it's easier to auto-fire enemies with Uzi or Shotgun than dance of death that is Minigun. Gameplay is re-balanced now, so you have bigger chance to break sequence and defend yourself but so do the enemy agents. Even with that, when outnumbered don't think your agents will survive multiple hit-scan weapons as you chances to defend lowers and not fast enough time to regen health, however setting Adrenaline to left can help with health in cost of sluggishness of moving to objective so do this only when they are supposed to remain on guarding.

Be realistic though, how do you think you survive multiple shoots of Launcher or Laser? Good idea is have optional energy shield in inventory just in case.

Clone shield doesn't work on AI enemy agents, they will always recognize you.

The three colored sliders under each agent, pull them all to the right (I think?, its been a while) and they go into "panic" mode allowing for quicker reaction times, etc. Storyline : you as corp head are administering combat cocktails. It wears off over time so dont just leave them pegged all the time. As mentioned, cybernetic modes also impact reactions.

Okay, thanks guys. I will have to test this. It's my first time playing the game, so I'm just figuring things out. My strategy so far has been to go straight for brains 3 and eyes 3, and massive use of the persuadertron. I've cleared missions full of enemy agents with one lone persuader, but that' gets harder when they descend on you in a horde the second the mission starts.

I have noticed that enemy agents are much less likely to notice a single agent on his own as opposed to a group. With one I've been able to walk right up to them without any reaction.

Thank you for your comments.
I actually lamented about a lot of things.

In mission number one you have a couple of seconds to position your agents to an exact location, in order to have them shoot the right things.

Agent 4 has to disable the firetruck blocking the street and taking out the garbage of agents approaching.

Agent 1 and 2 has to go up the ramp in order to protect the other entrance and Agent three probably had something else to do but I can't really remember.

That's just a bad point and click adventure, you don't have to make any significant choices any more.
At least according to YouTube's let's play videos.

Oh just let me quote my favourite one:
"American Revolt is probably one of the hardest games of all times. You cant afford to make one mistake and missions are very fast, you hesitate for 2 seconds and it will cost you failure."

That's what the let's play video says in the description. Well who wants that? No mistakes actually translates to no viable alternatives and if you try alternatives you get punished for trying within 2 seconds.

Syndicate changes its gerne in this (in my opinion totally obonxious) expansion, as it is no longer a strategy action tactics game but rather a action point and click, "guess what's the right combination" puzzler.

In the orginal I could think of a dozen viable solutions how to solve one map, some maps even have more variety.

But here, I can't find out what else you could do with Agent N°4 in Mission one, except of moving her towards that firetruck and blowing it up.
I wanted (or expected) a tactical and strategic mindchallenging setup and wasn't really happy with what I got.

Additionally I really liked the panic button and the Auto-Fire options of the Minigun. We can argue that the Minigun was overpowered all we want, I simply disdain that my Agent's auto combat skill turn out to be utterly crap.

You realize to solve first mission you need only one Agent nr 4 standing already on platform, move fast to the right and shoot enemy agents approaching from distance using long range rifle, laser or launchers? ;-)

That's one agent in PANIC mode. With long distance weapons to reach the threat.

These missions aren't hard in any way. They are highly tactical approach like basic game just with less time to react and tight margin for error.

Thats just a silly statement... Thats kind of like claiming Gibraltar was easy to crack open, I just need to use my tactical thermonuclear weapons.

People do realise that their team are machines, right? Well cyborgs, anyway. Even before you research the V1 limbs and organs your team are already just hapless goons snatched off the street and turned into half-robotic drones that have to follow orders.

If you don't give them orders then they will stand there and let a Jack Russell puppy gnaw them to death. The first thing to do in any difficult mission is to drag the 3 coloured sliders all the way to the left then wait a minute or two for them to drop, this sets intelligence, perception and adrenaline to minimum meaning that when you really need them you can slide them all to full and they last longer before exhausting and needing reset.

Intelligence is obvious, when set to low your agent will ignore everything, even imminent death, he will use paths that take him in front of moving vehicles, he will get confused in the use of ramps and he will happily kill any agent that is in between him and his target. When set to high your agent will defend himself, pick safe paths and locate himself beside fellow agents, not behind them.

Perception is view distance, enemy recognition, accuracy, this slider should pretty much always be moved identically to the Intelligence slider because they feed off each other - Smart and observant versus stupid and distracted.

Speed is the slider that can be used on it's own, set to low to recharge when your agent is stationary and set to high for a burst of speed when you need to get somewhere quickly. It can be of use when stationary, reaction times and whatnot, but you are not likely to leave your agents alone long enough to need them to have fast reactions, I always drop this slider when my team are rooted to the spot just to let it recharge.

Hi,

It also depends on your brain etc. mods - have them maxed out (Mark III and all that), give them a shot of adrenaline (!!!), give them a number of lasers each and all you need to do is sit back and watch ;-).


Cheers
Patrick

Thanks! Haven't played this in a long time, but I haven't forgotten about it.