Having just completed the game I can tell you that the pistol is entirely suitable for boss fights. With the AP upgrade, plus all the damage upgrades you find, it kills them relatively quickly. Plus I swear that the bosses pretty much just die if you stay alive long enough. It's only weakness is the lack of ammunition in the latter stages of the game, so if you are into killing all your opponents you might need a different gun - especially if your headshot accuracy is low.
Great... I can't wait for that. I'm playing stealthily on hardest difficulty and up until 1st boss i've had very little challenge. When I found myself in the boss arena I saved to skip the cut scene and then found out that I was completely unequipped to deal with him. Had no real weapons, 2 frag grenades (that i don't remember even picking up) and a single EMP. Took me about 25 attempts and eventually I beat him by running around like a headless chicken for ages, taking pot shots... in the end he just keeled over in a cloud of poison gas that he'd detonated himself with the obscene amount of grenades he was lobbing about. I think the boss battles really upset the gameplay if you're playing stealthily. Particularly when you're crouching as you approach every door, open it and the cut scene kicks in where you see Jensen casually strolling into the centre of the room. He might as well have been whistling and sending a text message with key tones activated while he was at it...
Heh, I killed the first boss in about 20 seconds by throwing one of the gas canisters at him then running around the room throwing all the explosive barrels at him, which took him down. You can also quite easily run him around in circles around the pillars taking potshots at him (until he starts throwing nades that is). I do agree they're the worst part of the game, but a little bit of trial and error and exploring will usually be enough to defeat them (there should be all the tools you need to defeat the bosses within the arenas - there were a couple of frags, an EMP grenade and a ton of ammo for the first boss if you miss with the barrels).
Man, I wanted to play the first level stealthy, but I got a tad bored and used the tranq gun to start dropping people. Missed the Spoiler Bomb on the first level though, got the code but moseyed past it obviously. Eugh
"What do you need?" "...guns. Lots of guns." As you can imagine, if there are any aggressive augments, I'm getting/got them. Coupled with a weapon or 6 and I'm good to go.
The pistol is entirely suited for the complete game. Screw any other weapon. ..okay, the dart gun is needed at points when missions require non-lethal. That's it.
I'm pretty much improvising my way through after a couple of botched attempts at an all out non-lethal approach. In fact, I'm considering writing my own DXHR adventures diary here.
later, harder levels: cloak and fast recharge are most important arugs. everything else are meh, im near the end and apart from more inventory for a laser rifle (in addition to tranq, machine pistol, 10mm pistol, shotgun, grenade launcher) (it's already at max), don't really feel the need to spend those 3 Praxis points. may be i need to start using those weapon, rather than carrying them around like a hobo.
Had the same problem as you but I think I sussed it. Spoiler The storage lockers around the room contain EMP mines and some mine templates. Plant mine, hide and then shoot without getting too close when they go off. Cloak is disabled on the boss and if you keep your distance they can't get you with the typhoon. AR with target tracking upgrade means you can shoot on the run and still hit them as well as keeping the target for a little while after the cloak kicks in again. Rinse and repeat until done. I finished it at about 0300 this morning. I ended up boosting the cloak, full dermal armour and hacking. The stealth hack is useful, fortify less so as it doesn't kick in until you screw up. Oh, and being able to punch through walls is so much fun!
2nd boss if you have heavy rifle with 300 bullets + emp immunity its a joke theres consoles all around shoot em to stun her and then rape her with the rifle
I found that aug choice only really had a bearing on *when* I got to use them, since by the end of the game I had bought nearly every aug there was. The fact that the game gives experience for seemingly EVERYTHING YOU DO instead of letting exploration and alternative approaches be their own reward meant that I ended up killing/knocking-out every enemy, hacking every terminal despite having codes already, exploring every vent despite main routes being clear, etc. RPGs tend to involve the 'carrot and stick' game design in that players get rewarded for their efforts by giving them experience points and so on, but DXHR just threw carrots at the player. I have to admit, it kindof ruined the gameplay for me. I still really enjoyed the game for its story and setting, but the flawed game-balance detracted from the experience a lot for me. When I play Deus Ex, I play it 'in-character': I walk when it makes sense for JC to walk (ie; instead of running around like a lunatic in the UNATCO offices), I try to think and react like JC would, etc; and I did the same in DXHR, but when it came to the quests/missions I found Adam turning into some sort of obsessive-compulsive completionist because of the game design. If I could get my hands on mod tools I'd rebalance the game to only reward experience for 'real' secret locations such as hidden praxis kits, more like in DX; and to remove the exp bonuses from hacking so as to make it the choice that it was supposed to be rather than the imperative for a power-gamer. I'd also make it so that non-lethal takedowns don't give bonus experience and are noisy, while making lethal takedowns quiet, so as to let the non-lethal approach be its own reward as it was in DX, rather than implicitly forcing players into it for reasons of experience gain and stealth. I feel that lethal should have been the 'easy' route and that it should take some effort to stay on the moral high-ground with all of the pressures of the mission bearing down on Adam. There are very few situations in which lethal is the better option in terms of being stealthy and getting things done quickly, but I'm inclined to think that piercing someone's lungs with an arm-sword (or just slitting their throat) is bound to be quieter and more expedient than giving them a solid whack to the face (or 3-4 whacks, followed by a throw) and letting them tumble noisily to the ground. [/rant] But I digress.. I played on the hardest difficulty throughout and started out with energy regen immediately, then started on hacking-capture and hacking-stealth, then inventory space. After that I went on to the 'utility' stuff like ICARUS, GlassShield, vision, etc. My playstyle was to chase the 'Ghost' bonus at all times, while still taking down every enemy. If they were conspirators or grunts related to the attack on Sarif that maimed Adam, I killed them. If they were cops or otherwise innocent I knocked them out. I used the AP pistol on the first boss, along with some EMP grenades. For all bosses after the first one, I mainly used the Heavy Rifle, upgraded with a laser pointer, cooling system and extra damage. It was a bit odd that I played through the whole game stealthily but still made a point to carry around a heavy rifle, plasma rifle, sniper rifle and many EMP grenades 'just in case' the next boss encounter demanded it. That goes to show how entirely incongruent with the rest of the game the boss fights were. It's disappointing that the 'social battle' minigame used on other characters can't be used on the bosses, or that there wasn't another way around them such as the killphrases in DX; though I didn't find the fights as difficult as people are making them out to be. EMP grenades and cautious shooting are the way to go. Like the flashy takedowns, Icarus-landing 'cutscene', punching through walls etc. it just struck me as the guys at Eidos Montreal trying too hard to include 'cool' things in the game, rather than things that made good sense. Total playtime according to steam was 58 hours when I finished it, which was a day ago. Subtracting hours where I had gone afk and left the game running etc takes it to about 11 hours per day since release. Woops.
What can I say? I'm slow and a completionist. Yeah, it is. The atmosphere is very well-executed in DXHR, it evokes that same sense of a cyberpunk future verging on dystopia that we saw in Syndicate.
Am I the only person who finds the visuals, atmosphere and some of the environments a lot like Mass Effect 2?
completed it yesterday! 3rd and 4th boss are also easy. 3rd boss: 3 or 4 round of grenade launcher to the face, didn't last more than 2 seconds. 4th boss: open all pods first, and get plasma rifle from storage locker, then take out all pods. finally just 3 or 4 round of nade launcher to her general area. 3m high jump arug is needed to make this really easy. we need a spoiler thread asking which ending did you prefer..... someone start one.
No, I think there are a lot of similarities too. It is a much more detailed and generally better designed world though - what Bioware should have done but are apparently incapable of doing any more.