I bought The Order 1886 for $10 in the Black Friday sale. Should I choose Medium or Hard difficulty setting? I'm not looking for a cake walk but I'm hoping not to be frustrated either. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

@poprocksandsoda: Medium. Far too many rudimentary, poorly engineered single-room/exterior encounters with limited means of approach and a stream of enemies that becomes tiring. Not difficult per se, just frustrating and dull. Some real Uncharted 1 bullshit. That said, this game is still an order of magnitude better looking than anything else I've played. Kinda to no end, but nevertheless, the sheer fidelity really is just stunning. I'd say totally worth 10 bucks to experience.

You'll probably be good on hard. It really isn't that difficult. That said, you'll want to turn it down to Medium or even Easy right before the end. The last part of the game contains possibly the single most frustrating sequence of bullshit mechanics I've ever seen in a game. You'll know what I'm talking about when you get there.

@lawgamer: is that the sneaking mission in the courtyard? That's the only mission that I died in, and more than once.

I played hard, and I think there were 3 spots where I had trouble. Mostly it's the very open areas that I struggled with, because the letterboxing is pretty bad for your situational awareness - it can be hard to stop people going round and getting on your ass.

I played it on hard, and I don't feel like I got anything extra out of that difficulty other than three or four really hard bits. Play it on normal.

I remember one or two areas that I had a really hard time with.... but I think you can switch difficulties, so if it happens just switch it to easy and then move on.

@euantor said:

Nope. It's the underground room of death that spawns a million armored enemies in a small space and goes on and on and on (and on) with no checkpoint. The game's cover system is about 6-7 years behind the times. I died a lot because it won't let you turn around corners and remain in cover.

Which is something I liked actually about the game, you couldn't just stay in one place and shoot.

However those werewolf scenes, ugh.

@lawgamer: Ah, yeah. That bit did kind of suck. I thought the game was alright for £20, but I would have regretted paying full price on release.

Just play on normal. I was able to really enjoy the game that way... for $20. I actually hope they do make a sequel that's worth the full price.

It's not so much that it doesn't let you stay in one place, so much as just not being able to spot when you're being flanked until someone's on your ass shooting you. You can avoid that by just moving around a lot, but with the crazy motion blur it doesn't really help with situational awareness.

Hardest is easy enough; that said, you don't get a trophy for it, if that matters. Also, I'm glad you got it, and I hope you enjoy it. It's a game that has flaws of course, but the game was really quite good to me, and one that, while not something I will consider the best of the year, it's one I still think about and definitely enjoyed alongside great titles. I would say it has the best visuals for sure.