1741

Yup, no mods. If you go to moscow and do Lazlo’s Yacht with one of the two possible outcomes (probably the one most people choose first), you have a shot at doing a quick dialog only follow-up mission and unlocking a vendor with all of the stealth armors. I actually hoard cash until I can buy the advanced stealth armor at around 130k, but ymmv.

Either way, that glove will still be there and still be useful when you get whatever armor you settle on.

I really like the VATS-like Perk - when I activate it, the game pause and I click on the enemy twice and boom! Insta-death. Very powerful. I am saving my action points to reduce cooldown rate - that would be deadly for such a skill - I wonder, does headshot matters when I activate this perk? It doesn’t look like it. I get insta kill even when aiming the body and I guess it could be because I am still early in the game and therefore lower level enemies.

It will with enemies that have better armor/endurance.

Martial art looks to be a very powerful skills to gain When I couldn’t shoot the guy, I ran up to him and melee him to death - no finesse, I know, but how else could you use martial art? I think sneaking behind and then doing a takedown is an action that do not require points in martial art, right - so this skill is only useful in situation where I rsuh Mike headlong towards the enemy and batter him to death. Any other way to play martial arts with style?

Well, the nonlethal martial arts attack from stealth instantly takes down any non-boss enemy regardless of their stats, and it does not disrupt stealth or end evasion. That means when you have the 20 second stealth, for instance, you have 20 seconds of judo chopping everyone in the room while they look puzzled. Also, because the AI is stupid, you frequently have the opportunity to do it to them anyway if you are quick after they first spot you, but that’s something that takes practice to pull off consistently.

Normal martial arts where you fight them “fair” has the huge disadvantage of their blocking ability and the relative speed, which can mean a lot of time with their buddies shooting at you, and some of them are good about shooting you mid combo as well. It becomes a lot less safe with higher level enemies, and I’m not convinced the martial arts abilities are sufficiently overwhelming to compare with any of the guns at their appropriate ranges.

1742

Turrets are a non issue with behind cover shots, that allow you to take them out with regular silenced pistol rounds, often within a few feet of an armed guard, with no reaction. The only areas with annoying cameras have convenient shutdown computers nearby, apart from maybe the last part of the warehouse that can be a little tricky. I think addressing that without the ability is a lot easier than intercepting runners, especially once you run into enemies that set off alarms unpredictably by personal radio or by weird AI bugs. My least favorite level in that respect is (again) the embassy, where alarms counting against you really make no goddamn sense.

1743

It’s not really worth heavily investing in, certainly, and I don’t think it’s -as- useful as Evasion, but I still found it handy when I inadvertently stumbled into view of electronic things. And my experience with turrets was that shooting them, silenced or not, caused them to immediately sound the alert.

I found turreted areas very frustrating. :P

1744

Normally you can shoot a turret without causing an alert, as long as you aren’t detected doing it. I vaguely remember a few turrets behaving differently, but that may have been related to alert level, recent detections, etc.

Another way to deal with them is Remote Hack, which makes enemy turrets and cameras friendly. A hacked turret will cause an alert when it starts to attack your enemies, but at least it wont’ be shooting at you. You don’t get RH until Sabotage 11, so you have to specialize to get it, but it makes turrets and cameras a non-issue, and along the way you get Shaped Charge (Sabotage 4), which makes you immune to your own grenades/gadgets.

1745

I guess it’s a case where they did half the things better than anyone else out there, and half the things worse than anyone else out there.

1746

It isn’t as bad as the male walking animation in Vampire Bloodlines. They use the same wiggling hips from the female walking animation, and it looks ridiculous on a “macho” Brujah.

1747

I finished the Saudi missions and am onto the CIA listening post in Rome. But I’m thinking of starting over as a recruit. I originally thought I’d play as a spy, then a recruit, then a veteran, but maybe that will be too many playthroughs. Or maybe not. I’m not sure yet. I’ve liked everything in the game so far except for the boss fight in Saudi Arabia. If that is indicative of what the boss fights are like, I’m not looking forward to any more of those.

1748

I look forward to reading your reaction to encountering that asshole in Russia.

1749

I can’t wait to hear what he has to say about the prick in Taipei.

1750

It’s awesome how the order of missions changes the game. That boss fight was one of the easiest in the game, I only failed once. But the fight on the yacht made me want to quit the game. Took 9-10 tries.

1751

It is indicative, in the sense that they’re often sucky chores until you learn their quirks. Some bosses are fully susceptible to normal attacks, like the 3 bosses you have to assassinate/subdue in one of the Taipei missions, so if you approach undetected you can do a takedown move.

I’m assuming you stealthed your way to the guy on the bridge, and the boss fight in question is the one with the Stryker tank. There are 3 infantry to deal with (1 tower, 2 ground), plus the tank. You can get all 3 infantry from from your starting point after the cutscene; the stack of boxes will give you cover from the Stryker and the tower while you deal with the 2 mobiles as they try to reach the stairs to get onto the bridge (if they seem confused as to your location at first, just shoot at them to get them moving). There’s about a 75% that one of the two mobiles will drop a decent armor mod. After the infantry are down, destroy the trucks which the Stryker is protecting, because the fight ends when you destroy the Stryker, making it impossible to complete the “destroy trucks” objective if you haven’t already. There are 1-shot AT launchers scattered around, and you can destroy the Stryker with 3-ish hits from those; wait until just after the Stryker fires a rocket to leave cover, because the AT launchers aren’t exactly rapid firing, and that will give you the most time to take a shot and get back in cover.

Also, some people encounter a bug when trying to destroy the 2nd of the trucks by shooting/grenading the gas tank, but I’ve never had a problem using one of the AT launchers on them.

1752

Which asshole, the one you have to assassinate, or the one you have to protect in that other mission? :)

1753

It might be worth your while to do so, now that you understand the abilities a little better. Lazo’s yacht in Russia is an excellent starting mission for a more thorough playthrough because of how short and easy it is and what it unlocks in the store if you don’t handle it like a psychopath, but as you can see a number of people had trouble with it.

My solution is to capitalize on the checkpoint before that cutscene, as the first entry into that boss fight lets you use the bridge for cover. Once you’ve reloaded, you’re 99% likely to spawn locked out of the bridge, which means you have to be a lot more nimble or overpowered to survive. Using the bridge, your biggest concern is saving up your pistol attack for when she advances on your position, and ideally using the cover shot to pick at her in between. Alternatively, you can stealth as she approaches and judo chop her away. Either way, you have to reload from when you knocked off Lazo more or less to be able to use the bridge as a defensive position.

That means that while I think Awareness fulltime is an excellent target to hit ASAP, I prioritize the pistol path more because of how easily it can get you through boss fights. In general, I’d say it makes sense to play Moscow up until the Embassy mission (or possibly the trainyard, that one can be tough as well) and then do the other two settings all the way through (Rome can get you the best silencer guaranteed from the CIA post, so I like to do that first). I don’t really like jumping around all that much since it breaks up the narrative flow, but there is an strong powergaming argument for it in this instance imo.

Also Senjak: I’ve played the game 4 times through and that part at least 7 at this point, and I never knew that about the trucks behind the APC in the first boss fight. I just assumed the outcome of that was inevitable. Sounds like material for playthrough number 6 after this one!

1754

Alpha Protocol reminds me of Hitman: Blood Money, because I’ve played both all the way through repeatedly, and I still learn new things about them. For example, I somehow didn’t know you could use the bridge for cover from Sis until just now; I must have been so focused on running forward to get into cover that I didn’t notice I already had good cover - ha! :)

Before I enter the bridge, I place grenades as traps at the entry points to that deck. I even did it in my first game, because that mission was going too smoothly, so I got paranoid and figured as soon as I completed the final objective the game would yell “SURPRISE!”, which it did. If I don’t have enough pistol skill yet when I face Sis, I spam her with shock grenades - inelegant, but effective.

1755

I actually beat the Russian motherfucker on my first attempt, but he came damn close to killing me and it was really annoying mechanically. Which was a shame, because in terms of presentation that was easily my favorite boss in, I dunno, years?

The yacht was hilariously easy because my opponent decided the thing to do was to stand in the flames from my incendiary grenades while I poked away with my assault rifle. First attempt there, too.

1756

I’ve definitely underused traps throughout the game, and it wasn’t until this playthrough when spamming incendiaries got me through the embassy finale in 30 seconds flat that I’d ever used those to any great effect. I love that cheesy enemy spawn/boom when you’ve memorized a level, though, and I should use it more.

1757

Stealth and pistol are silly over-powered, nothing else matters if you have them, with a couple of points in sabotage as others mentioned to make the hacking game winnable on the PC.

However, overpowered as it is, it’s also awesome fun :)

1758

I just finished it and man, what a brilliant game! I was playing it nonstop for the last of couple of days. Loved the story and the decisions. There was a sense that each decision was really meaningful, something I had not felt in a game in a long time.

I decided to go for a recruit/assault rifle-based character on my first playthrough and I came really close to regretting it sometimes, especially after reading everyone here talking about stealth and when fighting some (pretty cheap) bosses but I think it was worth it in the end.

It’s very rare for me to replay story-based games because there’s such a big backlog to sort through but I’m already planning my next playthrough with a Veteran/Stealth character, can’t wait for it!

A shame that so many people were put off of this game because of the bugs. If i had not seen the INI tweaks on this thread I would probably have stopped playing after 5 minutes because of the massive stuttering and mouse issues. Fortunately the tweaks fixed that for me and I had no other problem for the remaining of the game.

This game is probably my game of the year and easily the best $7.50 I spent in awhile. If anyone’s still on the fence about buying it I can’t really recommend it enough. It’s that good.

1759

I think it’s going to be Fallout New Vegas for me this year, but yeah, Alpha Protocol gives it a solid run for it’s money.

1760

I’m glad you guys enjoyed it. In a few years, I hope this will join other cult classics and be influential far beyond its sales; either way, F: NV keeps Obsidian solvent and hopefully ready for more original IPs.