Legendary's insane difficulty

I've played co-op for every main Halo game on Legendary. They've all been challenging, but never to frustrating levels. This game, so far at least, has been incredibly unforgiving and possibly one of the hardest FPS campaigns I've ever played. Enemy shields, particularly Elites, take way too many shots to take down and you go down in two or three hits. Anyone else having this much trouble on Legendary?

I started playing the first level on Legendary and I was like "eh. ehhhhhhhhhhh. I'll pass".

In my first playthrough on Normal, the game checkpointed me after killing the first Warden as the second Warden was getting ready to strike me. I wound up having to perform a very specific set of actions very quickly to get out of that clusterfuck and I didn't want to find myself in such a situation in Legendary. Also, I wasn't impressed enough by the campaign to want to immediately replay it.

I'd much rather play Reach on Legendary. I remember that one feeling very difficult without ever feeling cheap. Unfortunately, it seems like MS and 343 have no plans to give that game the same treatment that 1, 2, 3, 4, and ODST got.

Haven't tried legendary yet, but are you using overcharged plasma pistols against shields? As tradition dictates?

They've designed a lot of enemies this time around to stymie the effectiveness of that tactic. Most of the Promethean enemies are just relentless bulletsponges who can two-shot you from extraordinary distance.

Unrelated, but the jump from Heroic to Legendary in Halo 5 is absurd. Legendary has always been a difficulty apart, but Heroic feels like Normal+. Legendary might as well be a different game.

I originally was considering trying for the solo legendary achievement, but after playing through the first level on legendary I just decided "Meh, I'm good." It simply isn't fun. Sit back as far away as possible, crouching behind cover and taking cheap potshots at enemies until you chip away at them enough to die, constantly micro'ing your AI team mates to stay back because they're terrible and will just die, all while doing your best not to get dropped nearly instantly yourself.

Normal is so much more fun, when you can actually get into the fray, shoulder charging and diving from the sky to crush the enemy, even if it makes the game really easy.

I'm a couple of missions into solo Legendary. Like with previous games I had more fun on Normal than I'm having on this difficulty mode, but I'm not finding it as tough as I thought I would yet. Maybe I'm just benefiting from going in with a different mindset. I am not looking forward to facing the Warden though, I might just drop it at that point. It's obviously an enemy built to be tackled co-operatively but the ally AI aren't nearly smart enough to co-operate against it.

My biggest problem with the game is the difficulty in fighting the bosses in this game as they have been clearly designed to be killed with another player. Especially the first 2 boss encounters were exceedingly frustrating (I play these games on heroic difficulty) since the AI controlled team mates die pretty fast and the bosses tend to keep heading straight towards the player at all times.

Does the AI still review you? Seems better to just play in coop

Revive, I assume you meant?

They certainly try to. In fact, that's the one thing--in my experience--they attempt to accomplish with any regularity. That said, if you die, you're in a position within the direct sightline of whatever killed you. And the enemy damage tables are such that they can exterminate your AI squad with ease, especially since the AI won't move strategically to your injured body in any way. They just make a beeline for you, which ends up committing them to a path under heavy crossfire from enemy forces. Basically, every one of your teammates will die trying to revive you. So, on Legendary, if you go down you'd might as well just restart the checkpoint.

The Spartan AI is almost a complete non-factor when it comes to combat otherwise. If you aren't killing enemies you simply can't rely on the AI to offer any additional firepower toward that end.

For me, it was a matter of getting the Covenant plasma pistol (as with all Halo games on Legendary), using that to take their shields down and using an assault rifle or pistol for the headshots. It's tough - no doubt - but, I'm having fun with it on Legendary.

@historyinrust: review, lol. Damn autocorrect.

It's only a non-factor if you aren't given them commands to kill stuff. The best thing to do is use them to kill off grunts or jackals while you work on the elites. Once the jackals are down in most fights have them focus on elites with you and the enemies go down pretty quickly.

You don't know pain until you fight all three wardens on legendary solo. In that fight use your AI to lure out wardens or distract them while you power up incinerators to full power.

I mean, in theory that sounds great. In practice, I continue to watch them stand idle after I command the team to focus fire on a target. Even if that target is alone in the room. They're just not active enough to tip the scales, and I think they're even less so the higher up the difficulty ladder you go.

Again, that's just my experience. Maybe for you they're unfettered killing machines. But judging from other impressions people have had, that doesn't seem to be the case.

You don't know pain until you fight all three wardens on legendary solo.

Also, yeah. This part of the campaign is a joke.

Yeah, somethings messed up with the difficulty jump to legendary. From my experience, legendary co-op with a single other human is the absolute worst. I don't know if there's more enemies in co-op, or they do way more damage, or probably a combination, but in the very first mission I was getting mobbed by groups of those crawling prometheans and I just couldn't get rid of enough of them, kept running out of ammo, and even one can kill you incredibly fast.

I tried it again later with 2 other humans on legendary and had a lot less trouble, so I don't know what was going on.

I get the frustration because they aren't great 60-75% of the time but they do have moments. The majority of time I use them to focus on targets in one area while I flank to other side. The other thing to remember is even if they die; they do eventually respawn after like 4 or 5 minutes. So one of the tricks I did was if my whole squad died I would fall back and just wait for them to respawn and start again. It's better than checkpointing.

The teammates are useful with normal mobs (elites and grunts) but the problem becomes pretty apparent when you have to shoot the backside of the warden boss to exploit its one weak point. The AI controlled npc´s usually died in 1 hit and the time period in which to shoot the backside was pretty narrow as the warden tended to turn towards me whenever i appeared in its line of sight. It also seemed that the AI controlled npc´s really didnt damage the boss that much.

I regularly used the trick of waiting for the npc´s to be resurrected especially during the warden fights. It would have helped if the AI controlled teammates would have had a bit more commands than a) attack or b) go to this position.

Another player would have played those encounters far more intelligently instead of charging towards the boss and then dying in one hit.

has anyone found that making the AI pick up some of the better power weapons found lying around the levels makes them more useful?