1841

Wow. For $7.50, this was a helleva bargain. Very much Mass Effect meets Splinter Cell. Makes me want to load up Splinter Cell again, in fact.

1842

I am about down with Moscow now, I need cash! Any tips there? I sold all the ammo for shotties and SMGs since I go pistol/AR every run, but I am still in need of like 200K.

I specialized in Pistol, Stealth and Toughness.

I still dont grasp, at all, how this game scored at the bottom of the 7-9 scale. I think its tremendous. I have been hit with a handful of bugs though. First off, it asks me to confirm my save game location every time I start the game. Second, during one of the Saudi missions I died and when I reloaded the last checkpoint the screen was completely dark, my button presses would register but I couldnt see what was going on and had to reload. Finally, and most irritating, occasionally some of the gamepad buttons will just stop working. Like I cant reload or aim my gun. I can move around but cant shoot, etc. It fixes itself in 5-30 seconds, but its a big PITA.

1843

I have not had any of those bugs, even pre-patch. If you haven’t tried the 1.1 patch appropriate for your version (cd/US or digital download), you might want to give that a shot.

Cash: you need to get into the CIA headquarters and possibly the NSA post (I forget exactly which nets you more) in Rome ASAP. The bugs you put in give you Halbech blackmail emails every couple of missions, which you can use against them for 15k (by far the best use of them).

Buy only intel that expands dossiers, provides bonus objectives, or bonus loot. Skip sniper rifles, maps, and if you can handle a little more challenge, worse guards.

Prioritize, and don’t get intermediate armors. For a stealth character, buying nothing but the advanced stealth suit in Moscow is the most frugal path, and just dealing with the civilian attire until then is perfectly doable. After that, IMO, you prioritize the 3 star UC pistol, which will be another chunk of change. Beyond that, I do not buy mods, I find them (eg the Silencer Mark 3 is always in CIA mission. Taipei hotel mission has many other mods. etc).

Sell everything that isn’t equipped, apart from mods that you just can’t fit in because you are in civilian attire still. Grenades and ammo are not really lucrative; golden weapons (from killing certain bosses and minibosses), armors, and mods can be. Sell all the fluff.

Sabotage +50% for hacking can be lucrative, depending on your perspective. I find with a recruit I can reliably get 2 in Sabotage, brilliance level 1 in tech, and maxed pistol and stealth and have to forgo other things like that. Obviously with veteran it’s a nonissue.

I finished a normal game as a recruit just now, with a 380k surplus and tons of equipment. A lot of it is just not missing pickups or hacks, and not bleeding cash through unnecessary intel or gadget purchases, imo.

1844

Semi spoiler I guess, look away unless you’ve done the villa mission in Rome:

There’s a secret door in Marburg’s villa that you can only access/find if you bought the map intel. You won’t be able to open it without buying that, even if you know where it is. Don’t know if there are other missions like that, but it’s worth noting. I also don’t know if the two dossier updates you get from that secret room (Parker’s secret fact and a Marburg dossier update) come into play at all.

1845

You need those dossiers for one of the end game scenarios.

1846

Yeah, good point. I thought I’d blown that in the last playthrough because I’d done it without Madison, but that is a useful caveat. I haven’t run into any others like that, but that one is definitely worth it.

1847

Just beat the game. That has to be the best $7.50 I’ve spent on a game.

1848

also just beat the game, maxing assault rifles made the boss fights easy peasy imo

I just wish I had chosen recruit so I can play veteran straight away (is there a cheat for this?)

1849

Seconded.

1850

Not to my knowledge. If you PM me an email I can send you my “My Documents/Alpha Protocol folder” which you should be able to replace yours with and then be able to load veteran off a new game. Not tested, though, but it’s only 330k in .rar so it’s a minimal gamble.

1851

Why would I want to play the game as a veteran?

1852

OMG my fucking 360 died last night. E74 error. I bought it November 2007 so its out of warranty. I broke that fucker down this afternoon and cleaned up the heat sinks and reapplied some arctic silver, but no luck, still E74. Arg.

1853

To be OP and have unique dialogue options? That’s enough for me.

1854

I want to max toughness, martial arts and tech as fast as possible

basically become a bossfight myself

1855

You start off with 3 points in every skill that you can redistribute as you wish (up to 5 to begin). That means you dominate the gun training sequence thanks to easy critical hits, for instance, and then if you score 130 or higher (doable with 0 points in all guns, but a piece of cake with just 5 in pistols…I got 189 on my first try as a veteran) you get to do a bonus training op. For non-minmaxers, veteran is an easy way to enjoy the game at a more leisurely pace, trying out skills that you might have ignored in favor of “essentials” before. Finally, the dialog options (and some of the mission options) allow you to go a third route as a veteran as opposed to the either/or choice presented to non-veteran characters.

It’s also probably the only way I’d remotely consider playing hard again, which was singularly unrewarding and not recommended (damn you embassy!) but at least not suicide-provoking as a veteran.

1856

I also just finished this… quite a nice game. I played through as pistol/stealth and went Taipan->Moscow->Rome, with not much difficulty, aside from the helicopter sequence in the last chapter (that added an extra #$%$ hour to total playtime).

After beating it, I restarted as a recruit, assault rifle max this time, I think.

It is too bad this did not get better reviews, so no Alpha Protocol 2.

After playing it, I am not sure why it got pounded… bad timing? I tried the demo soon after initial release, and it didn’t click… they picked a miserable section – a sequence in Rome – although upon reflection, I am not actually certain what would demo the game well. I agree with the post above, a second, polished iteration of this game could have been something amazing.

1857

it got pounded because you can gimp yourself by not taking any gun skills, wich makes boss fights very very hard

1858

It didn’t help that it came out a month after Splinter Cell Conviction, which is a much better stealth-action game, IMHO, and just further emphasizes AP’s flaws in that arena. [Too bad almost everything else about Conviction’s SP game was worse than AP.]

Yes, yes, AP is much more than “just” a stealth-action game, RPG mechanics, consequences, blah blah blah - hey, I loved it too. I’m just saying that AP’s shortcomings were a lot easier to see than its virtues.

1859

Hmm. Just got a Steam update for this.

1860

I just started another play though with this game as a vet and man this game rocks just as much as it did on my first play through.