Alpha Protocol

[Duraframe300]

All the gameplay stuff doesn't matter, what does is that it feels like Chris Avellone is talking to me.

So, SIE raping you is really Chris raping you?

 

[Nano]

All the gameplay stuff doesn't matter, what does is that it feels like Chris Avellone is talking to me.

So, SIE raping you is really Chris raping you?

I think you just convinced me to finally do the SIE romance.

 

[Roguey]

Game is more fun without using any guns.

Unless you do a lot of hopping around to build up your melee skill before your first boss, you're in for a world of hurt when it comes to boss fights.

 

[J1M]

Game is more fun without using any guns.

Unless you do a lot of hopping around to build up your melee skill before your first boss, you're in for a world of hurt when it comes to boss fights.

You overestimate the difficulty. I completed my only playthrough with that restriction.

 

[Roguey]

You overestimate the difficulty. I completed my only playthrough with that restriction.

I've seen enough complaints from people who tried melee-only and hit brickwalls. You also have to do it in the right order e.g. Marburg, despite being an old man, has a high melee skill so you shouldn't try going after him first. IME Deng was the easiest, and Brayko was in the middle.

 

[J1M]

You overestimate the difficulty. I completed my only playthrough with that restriction.

I've seen enough complaints from people who tried melee-only and hit brickwalls. You also have to do it in the right order e.g. Marburg, despite being an old man, has a high melee skill so you shouldn't try going after him first. IME Deng was the easiest, and Brayko was in the middle.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the game or remember who those characters are. But the chances that it is exceedingly difficult and I happened to guess the only correct way through the encounters is low. It's more likely the individuals that found limited success just needed to apply some creative use of game mechanics. When you are ignoring half of the skill categories, there's a lot more points to throw around.

 

[CaffeineConquistador]

You overestimate the difficulty. I completed my only playthrough with that restriction.

I've seen enough complaints from people who tried melee-only and hit brickwalls. You also have to do it in the right order e.g. Marburg, despite being an old man, has a high melee skill so you shouldn't try going after him first. IME Deng was the easiest, and Brayko was in the middle.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the game or remember who those characters are. But the chances that it is exceedingly difficult and I happened to guess the only correct way through the encounters is low. It's more likely the individuals that found limited success just needed to apply some creative use of game mechanics. When you are ignoring half of the skill categories, there's a lot more points to throw around.

Nah, you’re right on there. Melee is near piss-easy, but you had to exploit some of the game’s gimmicks (like give Brayko some cocaine). It seems like most of the complaints about difficulty came from players who tried something other than the pistol chain shot power with magic stealth and couldn’t adapt.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Eh, melee's fine.

 

[Raghar]

no one weapon superior to another

Found the lie. Pistols are the best weapon, indisputable.

Only with special perk.

 

[Avarize]

Alpha Protocol is kinda overrated by Codex tbh. I did play through it twice so it isn't complete garbage and it has many design elements that, if emulated by other devs, could have led to huge incline in the industry. The execution of it was just really bad.

 

[Zer0wing]

Found the lie. Pistols are the best weapon, indisputable.

That's not rifles.

 

[Tigranes]

You overestimate the difficulty. I completed my only playthrough with that restriction.

I've seen enough complaints from people who tried melee-only and hit brickwalls. You also have to do it in the right order e.g. Marburg, despite being an old man, has a high melee skill so you shouldn't try going after him first. IME Deng was the easiest, and Brayko was in the middle.

This is such an incredibly, amazingly incorrect opinion that I have to assume you've never played the game. This is like saying Fallout 1 is impossible to complete unless you use Small Guns, except not really, because AP fist run is too easy for the comparison.

As the resident ALPHA PROTOCOL LOVER, it is an incredibly easy game. It gives you many different tools and options to solve every encounter, THEN it gives you overpowered magic ultimate special attacks, THEN it gives you not-very-smart AI that is very easy to cheese and fool.

You can run up and punch everybody in the game to oblivion if you so wish, and do so without any massive trouble. Would your DEE PEE ESS be higher with pistol? Probably, but that wasn't the question, was it?

Ultimately AP is a bad janky action game that you can still have fun with when you treat the gameplay and the story as a B-movie: fly around ziplines, throw fire grenades on people, then set off tripwire bombs as they run around screaming, then enjoy the most hyperactive CYOA known to man.

If you did want to have a bit of gameplay challenge, the one good thing about AP is that so much of what we'd want from "fully customised AI settings" is available via ini - you can modify the noise levels of each individual weapon (or even walk/run), set damage modifiers for difficulty, etc, etc., so that you actually have to Thief it out a little bit instead of running past a guard, and a couple of hits can kill you. Obviously, this doesn't turn AP into a good action game, nothing will, but it's there.

 

[Roguey]

This is such an incredibly, amazingly incorrect opinion that I have to assume you've never played the game. This is like saying Fallout 1 is impossible to complete unless you use Small Guns, except not really, because AP fist run is too easy for the comparison.

I've played a melee-focused run and I've seen and understand the complaints.

As the resident ALPHA PROTOCOL LOVER, it is an incredibly easy game. It gives you many different tools and options to solve every encounter, THEN it gives you overpowered magic ultimate special attacks, THEN it gives you not-very-smart AI that is very easy to cheese and fool.

You're good at games. A lot of people are not, and found many of the boss fights incredibly frustrating.

 

[Tigranes]

Sure, there's wide variance. Are we talking about people who struggle with, I don't know, Pillars on Normal difficulty? It surely goes without saying in a Codex conversation that we're assuming some basic level of 'experienced CRPG player'.

 

[Roguey]

Sure, there's wide variance. Are we talking about people who struggle with, I don't know, Pillars on Normal difficulty? It surely goes without saying in a Codex conversation that we're assuming some basic level of 'experienced CRPG player'.

It's been a decade, but I recall that there were a number of people on the Codex who found parts of Alpha Protocol frustratingly difficult. I used to give advice about it.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/alpha-protocol-balance-is-a-bitch.45245/#post-1189629
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...ith-chris-avellone-part-2.63226/#post-1759766
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/alpha-protocol.57232/page-9#post-5195588
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/poll-bullshit-end-bosses.131024/#post-6447157

 

[Lord_Potato]

Alpha Protocol and frustratingly difficult. Seem really strange in a single sentence. Perhaps if you persist with one instrument for every scenario, when the game gives you a huge arsenal of options.

 

[Zer0wing]

Alpha Protocol and frustratingly difficult. Seem really strange in a single sentence. Perhaps if you persist with one instrument for every scenario, when the game gives you a huge arsenal of options.

The game has fairly frustrating first real level, Saudi Arabia, when your character is not swimming in xp points yet. Especially for stealthy character. And there's a huge difficulty spike

Spoiler

In bossfight with Darcy.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Alpha Broccoli Legendary MCA Edition when?

 

[Silverfish]

You overestimate the difficulty. I completed my only playthrough with that restriction.

I did melee only my first time through (except for a couple of turret sections) and it was a fucking breeze. I wasn't even aware of sly dog moves like

(like give Brayko some cocaine).

and it still wasn't that bad. Just alternate between the defense and damage buff skills and you'll bully everyone.

 

[Roguey]

Alpha Protocol and frustratingly difficult. Seem really strange in a single sentence. Perhaps if you persist with one instrument for every scenario, when the game gives you a huge arsenal of options.

You should really only invest in three skills and there are those who invested poorly (e.g. those who neglected combat skills entirely because they never saw the interviews where Avellone said boss fights were mandatory; also those who figured they could get by anyway because you could stealth kill the boss in Saudi Arabia).

There are also RPers who just don't have the twitch skills, the kind that Bethesda panders to.

 

[Grunker]

You overestimate the difficulty. I completed my only playthrough with that restriction.

I've seen enough complaints from people who tried melee-only and hit brickwalls. You also have to do it in the right order e.g. Marburg, despite being an old man, has a high melee skill so you shouldn't try going after him first. IME Deng was the easiest, and Brayko was in the middle.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the game or remember who those characters are. But the chances that it is exceedingly difficult and I happened to guess the only correct way through the encounters is low. It's more likely the individuals that found limited success just needed to apply some creative use of game mechanics. When you are ignoring half of the skill categories, there's a lot more points to throw around.

Can you elaborate how you "creatively used" the game mechanics in those bossfights?

 

[J1M]

You overestimate the difficulty. I completed my only playthrough with that restriction.

I've seen enough complaints from people who tried melee-only and hit brickwalls. You also have to do it in the right order e.g. Marburg, despite being an old man, has a high melee skill so you shouldn't try going after him first. IME Deng was the easiest, and Brayko was in the middle.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the game or remember who those characters are. But the chances that it is exceedingly difficult and I happened to guess the only correct way through the encounters is low. It's more likely the individuals that found limited success just needed to apply some creative use of game mechanics. When you are ignoring half of the skill categories, there's a lot more points to throw around.

Can you elaborate how you "creatively used" the game mechanics in those bossfights?

It was a long time ago, but I'm not talking about anything earth-shattering. Just 90 IQ moves like using active abilities to engage a boss and waiting for their cooldown if the boss is otherwise immune to melee attacks. Can you be more specific about one you think will be a problem?

 

[Grunker]

Lol Roguey I just noticed you linked to me as an example of someone who found AP difficult Very dishonest of you. I did not find Alpha Protocol "difficult." The first time I completed it it I did so with a weapon skill and besides Brayko and Deng, I don't recall having to reload once.

The post you're linking to is specifically about a stealth-only run, investing NOTHING into ANY weapon skills except a few pistol points for tranquilizing. Then I found out a few of the bosses were combat-only without any mechanics to defeat them otherwise, so I had to invest into weapon skills otherwise it would be a grueling experience.

That's not "this game is difficult" that's "oh, this game has mandatory fighting, guess I have to pick a weapon"

 

[Grunker]

You overestimate the difficulty. I completed my only playthrough with that restriction.

I've seen enough complaints from people who tried melee-only and hit brickwalls. You also have to do it in the right order e.g. Marburg, despite being an old man, has a high melee skill so you shouldn't try going after him first. IME Deng was the easiest, and Brayko was in the middle.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the game or remember who those characters are. But the chances that it is exceedingly difficult and I happened to guess the only correct way through the encounters is low. It's more likely the individuals that found limited success just needed to apply some creative use of game mechanics. When you are ignoring half of the skill categories, there's a lot more points to throw around.

Can you elaborate how you "creatively used" the game mechanics in those bossfights?

It was a long time ago, but I'm not talking about anything earth-shattering. Just 90 IQ moves like using active abilities to engage a boss and waiting for their cooldown if the boss is otherwise immune to melee attacks. Can you be more specific about one you think will be a problem?

Didn't say any of them would be a problem. Just wondering how in the world this game's very basic boss mechanics (except for one or two) would encourage creativity besides "figure out pattern, deal damage in grace periods"

 

[Silverfish]

AP bosses have patterns?