Just finished my first playthrough on hard mode, boy it was sure as hell hard! Beating the last boss on hard mode on your first playthrough ridiculous especially when you don't have full upgrades. Must warn all those who wanna start new game on hard mode to carefully collect all your upgrades, maxing your endurance and fuel cells before you attempt the last boss, also try to keep some nanopaste before going into last boss fight, unless you are ready to restart a million times to master all the boss' moves and parry/dodge every single one of them...

By the way, I lost all my unlockables after I finished the game because I chose to start a NEW GAME. Bear in mind guys, use Chapter Select, else you will find yourself playing Very Hard mode without any upgrades, BP and all the weapons...

Change the controls to suit your need. I changed mine for Ninja Run as this needs to be pressed most of the time and the original button is CTRL, which is too hard to reach with pinky. I swapped it to Shift and Blade mode to CTRL, it works better for me.

General tips about the game is to parry if you can, it solves most of the problems in the game, so I suggest you always learn the movements of new enemies before you move on to next stage so you can always be prepared to fight. A lot of the game can be stealthed through if you want, just use the Enhanced AR to see enemies in front and execute them from behind, this will take them down in one hit. For the most basic Cyborgs, you can kill them easily by sliding + heavy attack, this will flinch them and you can perform Blade mode into Zandatsu right after.

Dodge is a skill that you need to learn with 3000 BP and it's called Offensive Defensive. It dodges enemy attack and counter slash them. This is more useful against bosses while parries are better against mobs because bosses sometimes have moves you can't parry, especially the final boss.

The learning curve for the game is very steep but once you get hold of it (mostly how to parry different enemies), you will breeze through without problem. If you find extreme difficulties at certain stages of the game, you can use the Red Phosphorus grenade, it works like a smoke grenade where only you can attack enemies but enemies can't strike back, it's a very good item.

This post has been edited by JustForFun: Jan 18 2014, 11:55 PM