No Regret Playing crusader no regret in 2022, boy is it hard!

MaddoScientisto

New member
For some reason I had the itch to replay crusader, maybe it was because I recently played Compound VR and it gave me HUGE Crusader vibes.

Anyway back in 1996 or whatever I was 7 or so and always played with cheats, I still had a blast but I could play the games for a relatively short timeframe because windows 98 made it harder to play the games until dosbox came along about 10 years later.

All this to say that I still hadn't really sat down to play the games properly start to finish the way they were meant to and oh boy isn't no regret so incredibly difficult?

I'm playing the Playstation version of no remorse at the same time on my miyoo mini (amazing device, crusader in my pocket to be played anywhere? Sign me in!) and the difference in difficulty is staggering but where does all this difficulty come from?
Level design.

First two levels of no regret are pretty tame, I played them the most since they were the very first ones, but from level 3 and on some things become immediately apparent, some patterns if you will:

Tripwires
There are many of them, way more than no remorse has and they are all deviously placed and also very deadly because most of the time they trigger pop up guns rust tear through you instantly. Energy is a much more important resource because of the constant need to ping the vir imager, which is hideously expensive with the starter battery cell.

Shields
I don't think this was a thing at all in no remorse, at least not in the psx version.
On and after level 3 a distressing amount of dangerous things are shielded, from missile turrets, to cameras and laser turrets. It changes the approach to many challenges and makes many obstacles far more deadly.
It kind of gets ridiculous later on where every single thing is shielded and it turns into a game of shooting everything in the room until you find the right capacitor or just die

Traps
So many traps, later levels get insanely creative with these. You can't walk two steps without triggering a floor switch that reveals deadly turrets and enemies of all kind. No remorse had plenty of these but in no regret they feel more maliciously placed as you go on.

Not sure about weapon and shields balance
Maybe I was horrible at finding secrets but I had to run for a long time with just my rp-32 and a hideously slow shotgun (thankfully the rocket launcher is acquired early on and helps to get out of sticky situations against robots).
But the thing is that the rp-32 feels insanely good even way later on because energy weapons drain your precious shield away in a very short time. Even after finally obtaining the fusion battery I was reluctant to use them, especially when most weapons disintegrate humans and energy cubes become kind of scarce.
In the end my favorite weapons were the high end weapons with cartridges, the ones that freeze or pulverize enemies, they were great for cleaning busy rooms and amazing against robotic targets too.

Because of all of this later levels turn the game into a weird puzzle game, which isn't too bad but the amount of quickloads becomes huge. I had to give up on playing legit on level 8 because I somehow got into a situation where my last quicksave was 10 seconds away from the time limit and the last room needed at least 4 times that to complete. Had to warp and cheat through level 9 and it was incredibly bonkers with the difficulty, and I played on something like difficulty 2 (or maybe it was 3,i don't know anymore)

I lowered the difficulty for the last level and played it legit and it was much more bearable, maybe because it was much more linear and worth less chance of weird shenanigans. I enjoyed it more than the past two levels that's for sure.

All in all it seems like I'm no regret they made up for the smaller amount of levels by increasing the puzzle difficulty, which kind of stains the game a bit. No regret is still my favorite in terms of variety of ambience and weapons, psx no remorse is kind of monotonous and uses the basic factory layout a lot, but maybe it's just the psx limitations, I got to replay on scummvm sometimes.

One thing is for certain: despite all this I love these games even more.
This whole post was brought to you by: late night insomnia
 
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No Regret is tough. Each room and encounter needs to be assessed quickly or you're a goner.

The console versions of No Remorse are pretty different overall compared to the PC. It's safe to say it's easier than the PC version, so you might have been conditioned into how that version plays and naturally carried it over to No Regret which doesn't play the same.

I think the games get better with age. They're so foreign compared to a typical game today so they stand out as memorable.
 
I lost count of how many times I just walked into a room to get a handful of missiles in my face in no regret.
The most unfair enemies are the ones that "throw" missiles at you (what's up with that animation anyway? They're in no remorse too and I have no idea how throwing missiles at you makes any sense}

I recall one room in which you walk out of a walkway and there's this guy throwing missiles around and if you try to run back a Droid spawns behind, absolutely evil. Quicksave abuse is mandatory.

Next time I play regret will be with a completely different mindset, I have to treat it as the hard puzzle game it is.

Also trying to go back to PC no remorse is pretty painful after no regret and psx since it controls so slightly different. The scumm m version looks great but it's still pretty janky in how it controls, sadly
 
Like the OP, I've been playing again the two Crusader games recently and I'm actually surprised this seems to be the first time I realized just how much tougher No Regret is compared to No Remorse. I've set the difficulty in both games to "Loose Cannon" and yet the number of times I had to hit the reload key in No Regret increased by a factor of 10.

I agree that level design is probably the biggest "culprit", since there are more traps, more shielded devices (cameras, cannons, wall guns), but the number of enemies spawning right behind the Silencer also increased to a large extent (and that feels really unfair 😅). I think that Mission 3 of No Regret is where I had the hardest time: having to rely only on the ionic shield for defense and with a mere chemical battery to power up all equipment seriously limits the amount (and type) of damage you can take. Also, that missions has plenty of Storm Troopers armed with AC-88s and it only takes a few direct hits to knock off shields and drain all of the Silencer's health.

On the other hand, this time I'm also spending more time looking for secret areas and found several that I was not aware of. This proved very helpful, especially in the earlier missions, since I could get my hands on some weapons (e.g. AC-88 already on Mission 3 rather than by the end of Mission 4) and equipment earlier than when I usually did in previous playthroughs. One of those secrets in Mission 3 also helped to avoid a particularly nasty spot, since it provides an alternate route to the mission's target that saves the trouble of dealing with a couple of shielded Trasher cannons!

Still, despite the difficulty of No Regret, I'm having quite a lot of fun replaying both games. Don't know whether it's sad or worrisome that I haven't found any more recent games that are equally fun to play lately... :rolleyes:
 
Like the OP, I've been playing again the two Crusader games recently and I'm actually surprised this seems to be the first time I realized just how much tougher No Regret is compared to No Remorse. I've set the difficulty in both games to "Loose Cannon" and yet the number of times I had to hit the reload key in No Regret increased by a factor of 10.

I agree that level design is probably the biggest "culprit", since there are more traps, more shielded devices (cameras, cannons, wall guns), but the number of enemies spawning right behind the Silencer also increased to a large extent (and that feels really unfair 😅). I think that Mission 3 of No Regret is where I had the hardest time: having to rely only on the ionic shield for defense and with a mere chemical battery to power up all equipment seriously limits the amount (and type) of damage you can take. Also, that missions has plenty of Storm Troopers armed with AC-88s and it only takes a few direct hits to knock off shields and drain all of the Silencer's health.

On the other hand, this time I'm also spending more time looking for secret areas and found several that I was not aware of. This proved very helpful, especially in the earlier missions, since I could get my hands on some weapons (e.g. AC-88 already on Mission 3 rather than by the end of Mission 4) and equipment earlier than when I usually did in previous playthroughs. One of those secrets in Mission 3 also helped to avoid a particularly nasty spot, since it provides an alternate route to the mission's target that saves the trouble of dealing with a couple of shielded Trasher cannons!

Still, despite the difficulty of No Regret, I'm having quite a lot of fun replaying both games. Don't know whether it's sad or worrisome that I haven't found any more recent games that are equally fun to play lately... :rolleyes:
Yeah I found that path when I just started hack moving everything at the end of the level to find out what I missed, after I got done playing a cheat less playthrough.

The enemies spawning behind are extremely unfair and I started noticing them even more, that's why mines and spider mines are important to leave around.

I didn't find that weapon though, guess I'll have to replay level 3 all over again and see what I missed.

Also there are "better" games nowadays but I just don't feel like playing them, they just don't have the same charm or the fun associated memories.
It's too bad there never was a modding scene, I'd play custom maps
 
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