u/FluidLegion

So I've been playing the new Leon Must Die Forever for the last few days now. When I first started it I was having a pretty fun time. Even accidentally stayed up til 4AM one night unintentionally. But after reaching the higher difficulties I've noticed a lot of problems with this mode that I wanted to discuss with others who have played it. I wanna hear if anyone has had similar thoughts/feelings. If your thoughts are different than mine I'd love for you to elaborate on why and maybe there are things im missing that could improve my enjoyment of the mode.

-My first major problem is that the hatchet feels way, way too necessary. I was fine with it in the base game because there was never a point where you didnt have it. But with them taking away your ability to restore its durability on command it really shows how much the game is designed around having it up. Parrying and the breakout grab attack decimate its durability to a huge degree. Certain enemies can especially drain it like the chef. And finally its essential to have for Nemesis and Victor, to the point where if you dont have the parry restoration or an upgraded axe the higher difficulties get close to feeling impossible without it. Victor and Nemesis were designed for the player to -need- to deflect attacks with the hatchet..Leon is too slow and they are too aggressive to make it possible to avoid damage by just moving. Maybe they can give us back the ability to restore our own hatchet but make it cost more durability for executions in exchange or something. But as it stands the game feels way too reliant on you having it for them to have made it this fragile and inconsistent to restore..especially for Nemesis and Victor, one of which is a mandatory fight.

-Most pistols feel exceptionally bad in this mode. They feel fine for the low level areas, but once you reach the care center or later most pistols feel way too weak to justify the time it takes to kill anything with them. There are a couple of exceptions to this.. an upgraded Matilda is a pretty good drop because the 3 round burst let's it keep decent DPS against regular mobs. But once I hit care center or later I purposely discard any pistols I find except the upgraded Matilda because boxes will only drop ammo for weapons you have, so not having a pistol means youll get ammo for a better weapon. But most of the time holding onto a pistol feels detrimental because of the aforementioned ammo drop with boxes. This makes some of your perk choices feel like complete duds as well. Revolvers are so rare to find and most pistols are so bad that any of the pistol/revolver damage up perks seem like a terrible choice.

-This was something I disliked in the base game as well, but it also happens in this mode so I'll mention it. Enemies react really inconsistently to staggering. Especially ones like Blister heads, the singers, chef, etc. This issue has caused shotguns to feel way worse to me in this game than they did in any of the past games. It just feels really bad in a feedback sort of way when you shoot someone point blank with a shotgun or a rifle and they completely ignore it. I also wish the SMG's had a better stagger rate, because again it feels bad in a feedback since to shoot someone 30 times and it doesnt make them falter at all.

-Red enemies. Blue enemies I get and am fine with, theyre simple. You parry them, their color changes, now they take extra damage. But the red ones kind of confuse me. Description says theyre resistant to gunfire and to make use of "close combat attacks, hand grenades, gas canisters". But they seem super resistant to the hatchet as well as your firearms. Checking just now, a rifle shot to the chest did 53, and a heavy hatchet swing did 34. So, how is that "weak to close combat"? I did some rough testing against a normal zombie and a rifle shot to the chest did 300 damage, heavy hatchet swing did 69. So red enemies take roughly 1/6th the damage from gunfire and 1/2 damage from melee..it just doesnt feel right. I like the idea of these red and blue enemies in concept but the red one doesnt feel like its really working the way it's description sounds like it should.

-The game is only semi-random with enemies. I always get the same 2 variants of each area, like the piano room will either have a Blister heads, or it will have the IV zombie, and theres no other variation. Main lobby will either have 4 regular zombies, or it will have the two singers (red and blue) and two regular zombies.

-My last problem off the top of my head is that for a timed game mode, some animations really bother me. One is that some enemies if you kill them a certain way have a really long death animation before they drop their ammo. Like a critical headshot kill sometimes takes like 5 seconds to get the ammo from the body. Blister heads will often take forever to drop their loot as well (and the ones in the upstairs office of the care center dont drop anything for whatever reason). The other animation I hate is that if you have a weapon with a shoulderstrap equipped when you go to try and open one of the jammed doors woth Leon, he takes forever to put the weapon away before opening the door. I know this is a really minor thing in the grand scheme of things..but when you're trying to go fast and on a time limit, where every second counts, having a lot of different animations that slow you down more than other aspects feels bad.

Thank you to anyone who read this far. I would genuinely love to hear what your thoughts are on any of these, or if you have other things about the mode you would like to talk about. I also would love to hear what things people like about the mode as well.