I just ascended reset my character after my first run through Metroplexity. I've been trying to keep track of my impressions as I go, and I hope they might be helpful or at least interesting. I've got things I want to say about other aspects of the game too, but rather than wait until I can write everything down, I figure I'll post impressions in smaller chunks. A few disclaimers are probably in order. First, I've only been playing for a little while. Second, I've also never played any deck-building games—no Magic: The Gathering, no Dominion, no nothing. So when I get talking about combat mechanics, my sense that certain techniques are over- or under-powered might be due to my ignorance of the principles of effective deck-building. Furthermore, my comments and criticisms may well be old hat for anybody with more experience of similar game mechanics. Third, I'm still exploring the game and, while I'm not deliberately wasting energy, I'm not even trying for anything approaching speed.
In general, I'm really jazzed about the game's combat system. I see a lot of neat design space to explore, e.g. effects, equipment properties, or even skills that increase (or decrease, for a negative effect or encumbrance or some such) the number of techniques you can draw in a round. Or some way to discard two techniques you drew to draw one new technique, so you burn through your deck faster but have a better chance of making a good chain. Or a "wait for an opening" technique that does little or nothing but can be used as a wild card and stuck in any sequence spot. (I could also see a melee-specific variant that can only be 1-5 or something like that.)
I was a little surprised initially that I couldn't go up and down a chain if I didn't repeat the same technique, for example throw a Crushing Punch (sequence 3), Dive for Cover (sequence 4), and then finish with a regular Punch (sequence 3). The way techniques with bonuses for being an opener or closer are grouped, especially ranged techniques, made me expect it would work like that. Maybe allowing those sorts of chains would be a good high-level skill?
Melee
On my only complete run so far, I relied largely on melee, so let's start with that. Other than having to choose the friendly bum over Carlos, it seems like building an effective melee character has a pretty low opportunity cost. It definitely seems cheaper than other approaches in terms of credits and energy. I managed to acquire some pretty good melee weapons and drugs with useful melee-boosting effects on my first run without going out of my way to look for them. I trained with the friendly bum until I got Pugilism, but just from fighting ghouls I got about as much Ghoul Bite as I could use, and I had more Brutality than I knew what to do with by the end of my run just from being hit with it in fights. (Maybe there could be some way to trade in, say, 20 of a technique for some kind of improved technique or other bonus?) Later on, I also figured out that I could make a special deck for upgrading my Punches to Crushing Punches in easy fights. So when I drew the right techniques I usually wanted to go with Dive for Cover, Crushing Punch, Brutality, and finish with Ghoul Bite.
Thoughts on specific techniques:
- Ghoul Bite seemed to be pretty effective. Narratively, it's a little bit of a stretch to think that a garden-variety human mouth would be capable of such an attack. I could see making this technique require etheric to pull off, but even if that would be narratively satisfying it'd probably be bad for game balance reasons.
- Lash Out didn't seem very useful to me. I had it in my deck in the very early game, but once I got Brutality and Ghoul Bite I stopped using it. If I'm starting with Ghoul Bite, I'll be trying for a longer chain than just Ghoul Bite > Lash out, so I most likely won't be getting the bonus damage for using Lash Out as a closer. Also, unless you're fighting opponents who can put together long chains, if you're going down the chain from Dive for Cover and (Crushing) Punch, chances are Brutality will be unopposed and beat Lash Out even if Lash Out gets the closing bonus. And Lash Out has low base damage, so it clearly loses out to Brutality when it's not used as a closer unless you Reflexes are somehow much, much higher than your Strength.
- I like the mechanics for learning Crushing Punch from using Punch.
- Improvisation is a bit odd, since it gets a bonus for being in the middle of a chain, but there aren't any higher-sequence melee attacks that could precede or follow it. So you can only take advantage of the bonus in a hybrid deck. Given the name, I'd assume that's by design. I'll get back to this when I talk about hybrid decks in a little while.
Seems like the big drawback of melee relative to ranged and fire is that there aren't any area of effect melee attacks. Maybe there will be some sort of flurry of blows technique coming sooner or later, or maybe it's that way deliberately. I'd be curious to hear something about the design philosophy here. Are the different combat styles supposed to be relatively balanced against one another? Or is melee supposed supposed to be more of a midgame combat style that characters will eventually want to move away from as they get more resources?
Ranged
On my current run I'm playing around with ranged attacks, but I'm actually thinking of going back to melee. I feel like I closed myself out of several key bits of content this run, so I'm looking to reset as soon as I can. That means that I'm reluctant to use clips and whatnot to acquire the more effective ranged techniques, since I'll use up the items and lose the techniques forever when I reset. (If I were a serious speedster and only worried about knocking out runs as quickly as possible, conserving resources for later wouldn't be a consideration. But I'm nowhere near that focused on speed.) And since one of the things I locked myself out of was the Dr. Thomas quest, I'm too poor to buy any training from Little Eddie's. Hell, it's currently a struggle to scrape together 5 credits every time I want to ride the Metro to another zone. If I were going to be hanging around for a while, or if runs were longer, seems like ranged would be preferable to melee over the long run, but for what I'm doing the opportunity cost of getting good at ranged combat seems prohibitive. That said, I have gotten through the early game in both of my runs so far using chains of Dive for Cover, Single Shot, and Short Burst.
Since I'm too cheap to acquire any of the advanced ranged techniques, I don't have much to say about specific ones. Looking at the wiki makes me curious about Precise Shot, though. It's most effective as an opener, but at sequence 7 it doesn't lend itself well to forming long ranged chains either up or down. But I guess it's the only sequence 7 ranged technique available until fairly well along, so maybe it's supposed to be only an early-game technique.
Fire
There are a bunch of fire techniques that look good, and they're nicely distributed for making long chains. Everything I said about the opportunity cost for ranged techniques goes at least double for fire, though, so I haven't tried it at all yet.
Etheric
On my last run, by the time I got to the point where I could use chemistry to make myself some of the etheric technique-granting items, I was already pretty much done so I didn't bother. I got Focused Mind in Southside, so I didn't really have any way that I know of to get much in the way of etheric attacks otherwise. I might have used Light of the Eye a few times, but that was about it. I imagine this combat style in particular will grow in importance when more content goes in.
Evasion
Dive for Cover seems to be the only evasion technique that you can get without being in a gang that dominates an area in gang warfare. If you're etheric, I guess there's also Light of the Eye. I'm curious whether monsters can also run out of options like characters. An evasion-only deck designed to use up all of an opponent's options would be amusing, if nothing else.
Stealth
I had some trouble getting my head around stealth. I had learned Kidney Punch from the friendly bum on my first run, but couldn't figure out why it never seemed to do much damage. I think the problem was that Kidney Punch sounded like a melee attack, but it's in a whole other category and presumably only affected by +stealth power and not the +melee power I was using. A stealth-only deck looks like it'd be the exclusive province of gang bangers, since if the wiki is to be believed the only way to get the Switchblade technique is through a gang warfare-only item. And without Switchblade, you can't chain stealth techniques unless it's possible to do a wraparound straight and chain Kidney Punch and SDNano, which I doubt is possible, although I haven't tested it. (I wouldn't be surprised if you could also learn the Switchblade technique by using one of the several switchblade weapons in combat. If this isn't possible, maybe it should be.)
I could have sworn that when I did kidney punches my opponents were reducing the damage from it by using Dive for Cover and Leaping Dodge, although the descriptions on the wiki seem to rule this out. Maybe I'm misremembering. I haven't come across anything that explicitly gives +stealth defense, which I assume is by design.
Hybrid
Making a hybrid deck would open up some interesting tactical possibilities. However, since the damage you do seems to be determined largely by your equipment, effective hybrid decks will only work well if there's equipment that gives bonuses to most or all of the styles you want to combine. Other than the suspicious rifle, +melee and + ranged seem to be deliberately kept largely in separate spheres. But there are several +melee/+etheric weapons that drop, and at least one +ranged/+etheric weapon. Gang warfare seems to be the main source of hybrid +stealth power gear. There's only one +melee/+fire weapon I know of, and no +ranged/+fire weapon. (Grenade launcher, anyone?)
I realize that stats also influence combat damage, but I found that my stats advanced at roughly the same rate, even after I made some effort to choose what I figured would be strength-boosting choices whenever I could. I think my stats were all within a point or two of one another at the end of the run, with Will somehow being the highest. Unlike KoL, where your character class skews your stat distribution pretty significantly, in Metroplexity I haven't come across a way to selectively advance one stat at the expense of others. So right now it seems to me that stats don't do much to push you towards one style over another, except maybe when you're under the influence of a strong effect. The mutually exclusive Gunslinger and Pugilism skills seem like a much more significant factor here, although maybe if I knew more about how stats figured into weapon damage I would think otherwise.