How did you find the campaign? What difficulty did you play on? Did you find it more or less challenging than previous Halo’s?
So, I’ve played through the campaign three separate times now. First run was on Normal difficulty so I could completely unlock everything without it being too easy or too hard for exploring purposes.
I was genuinely surprised by some of the engagements with bosses and enemies. At some points it seemed to be a breeze and then other moments I got caught out and destroyed. It was nice to have to think of strategies to get past certain areas.
Once I had finished collecting everything I played through on Easy difficulty just to get the speed-run achievement and also to get one last look through what I’d be doing before taking on LASO.
Compared to other Halo games I’d say that playing it Normal and below is fairly forgiving which is typically the same as legacy Halo. Heroic and Legendary seem to be in a league of their own however. Legendary was definitely a challenge, and it was exceptionally enjoyable for me as I really enjoy a challenge. I definitely needed to employ new strategies instead of the typical green gun headshot meta.
I just finished playing through on LASO difficulty (Legendary All Skulls On), which believe it or not seemed to go in the opposite direction of difficulty. Now don’t get me wrong it was definitely not a walk in the park and there were definitely moments that had me frustrated. Compared to legacy Halo LASO which are the stuff of nightmares. (Looking at you MCC). I personally think 343 deserve a thumbs up for the thought they put into LASO. It is a mixture of difficult unique encounters without making me feel like I need to redecorate my wall with my controller. Difficult and doable, even casual players that wouldn’t dare try LASO would be pleasantly surprised at how far they could get with patience and determination.
Thanks for an absolutely amazing and unique Halo experience 343, you definitely outdid yourselves with the story. I cannot wait for campaign DLC, I’m hungry for more!!
I’ll be offering up advice, tips and tricks to anyone who’d also like a walkthrough of the campaign on LASO. Let me know below if a breakdown of the game would be beneficial to you and I’ll create a separate topic. (That topic will include spoilers however).
I played it on normal, so I could explore the world and story without dying constantly (I’m not the world’s greatest player). But like you, I found some of it was much easier than I was expecting, and others like the HVT’s and some bosses harder, really made me think about strategy. I really liked that about the campaign.
The weird thing about legendary is the game seems like a breeze, like a literal cake wake until you get to a boss, and then that boss proceeds to hand you your backside ona platter for the next 45min until you figure out a way to cheese it
I’m playing on legendary. I was a fool. I underestimated the banished, and more specifically the sniper jackals. The bosses, they are powerful. They are the strongest of the banished and they hurt things. I keep playing on legendary anyway though because it’s fun and a challenge.
Did my first playthrough on Heroic and feel like it was a really grest balanced experience for the most part! Some difficulty occurred in relearning how to fight Hunters, which I didn’t love considering how much fun they always were to fight in CE-H4 with the “dance and exploit” maneuvering- the new recipe for defeating them seems to be “move around a lot but don’t get close if you can avoid it, and unload a TON of Needles and Spikes into em”, which feels comparatively unengaging and lame.
Also, the difficulty spike on bosses felt a little steep at times, especially towards the end of the game. They definitely weren’t too much to handle, just felt disproportionately hard compared to the basic combat flow on Heroic and have me biding my time a bit learning the ins and outs and getting more familiar with the weapons sandbox and equipment before doing my inaugural Legendary run.
Heroic is, bar none, my difficulty of choice in Halo games. I’ve beaten all but H5 on Legendary, and I do enjoy the additional challenge present there but prefer Heroic for a slightly less intense experience that still keeps me paying attention and engaged. I’m pleased to say Infinite got that dynamic right for the most part! Again, just going to require some more time and exposure to decide exactly how I feel about the difficulty spike around the bosses. And, I don’t know why 343 has felt like they needed to reinvent Hunters in H5 and Infinite. They were plenty punishing in earlier games, but the player had a more entertaining and consistent method to deal with them.
Heroic on the first time through, same for every halo game since bungie’s “Heroic is how its’ meant to be played” post from years back. I was able to 100% the game without changing the difficulty. It’s just hard enough to keep you honest without being too punishing, granted some of the later boss fights were a bit rough. Overall I think they nailed the Heroic difficulty.
Just finished my Legendary/ “Forza Veloce” run last night(just over 4 hours including a complete level restart), but I did it with the Scorpion gun/bandana skull, though it did not feel much worse than Heroic. The big things to watch out for is the Jackel/Brute snipers and try to use natural choke points so not to get overwhelmed
I have solo Legendary-ed every other game (never did a LASO run though, the blind skull makes it unplayable for me), Infinite is way easier, which in my older age I am not complaining.
If you ever wanted to beat a Halo on LASO difficulty this is the one to do it in. You can circumnavigate the Blind Skull by placing a bit of tape and paper where your reticle should be on your screen and it functions the same as per normal. The only real downside is not seeing your health.
i enjoyed heroic quite a lot. found it challenging, but still allowed me to screw around abit. the bosses still took around 2-3 tries but not at all frustrating or unfair. overall a pleasent experience.
laso at first was sth i had to get used to (infinite kinda brought me back to halo. have not played any halo since 1+2 on the og xbox so i don’t have any experience from recent releases). when you first encounter jackals, shortly after having to hook over a gap, i got a rocket launcher off a brute. with unlimited ammo it was not that bad after that point, but gameplay was hide and peek: throw shock grenades to stun, then shoot rockets, back to cover etc. (later on also sword as 2nd weapon for easier shield recovery).
it was ok, but nothing i really wanted to do for a whole run, so i did get the tank gun. albeit the controls being a bit wonky, since you shoot from your feet, it did speed things up quite a lot. so much so, that i got the sub 8hr achievement in the laso run… even though i lost quite some time not knowing at first that you only get checkpoints with full shields overall laso was quite manageable but just sth i wanted to get out of the way^^
now i do look forward to do a regular legendary run in time. it’ll be interesting how that will compare to regular heroic.
Legendary (which was my normal playthrough, collecting stuff as I felt fit)
LASO (since I managed to collect all skulls in the Legendary playthrough)
Easy (collecting the rest)
I guess the discovery of the Scorpion gun really broke the difficulty spike entirely. I wanted to avoid seeing ANYTHING that relates to the campaign which I kinda managed to pull of. But then of course someone from my Gears 5 Discord posted it So I had to check it out.
Same thing goes for LASO, missing Ironman and the requirement of Bandana make this run a joke in comparison to the other LASOs.
I imagine I’ll eventually just play it through the “normal” way sort of, at least on regular Legendary or maybe sometime without Bandana on LASO to get a bit more realistic feeling of the LASO of how I feel like it should’ve been.
overall laso was quite manageable but just sth i wanted to get out of the way^^
So I had to check it out.