player1

You mean like most of the Rome hub? Not really. CIA listening post is pure stealth action sequence, several others like warehouse/ruins are standard mission, a few are dialog challenges and one is unique sniping mission. What I mean is something akin to proper spying mission. You are at location, you mingle, explore, etc... And maybe at the end do some action (just like Kasmui DLC). Played it 4 times.

^True. What I think AP is missing is some mission like Kasumi DLC from ME2. Lots of interaction, little action.

When I experimented playing this game on low performance machine, I noticed that in case of bad frame rate, mouse sensitivity is too low for lockpicking game, making it very difficult, and maybe even impossible in late game. This doesn't affect some other games like hacking.

Just as stealth skill, pistol is only really good if fully focused on. Otherwise it's just good for occasional chain shot spam and stealth critical at close/medium range. As for its ordinary shoot & fire use, it's probably the worst weapon. Low rate of fire at close range, bad accuracy at long range (exempt if you skill it to the end to increase critical range). Which is not so bad, since you are never really limited to single weapon. And any other weapon (even with 0 skill) can help when under pressure while chain shot is cooling down. Pistol is really good for stealth builds. It complements they weak spots (boss killer chainshot), and their strong points (critical hits with silencer, quick room kills with chain shot). But when playing soldier character, I would probably pass it, and take shotty or SMG as secondary weapon to swiss kn... I mean Assault Rifle, to increase close range deadliness.

Is it just me, or combat armors are too weak. For minor boost in endurance, you get both more noise, and less inventory and upgrade slots. I just started again with "badass" solider build, and I couldn't find any good reason to get any of advanced combat suits. Utility suits are just too superior. For reference, here is table with armor stats from AP wikia: http://alphaprotocol.wikia.com/wiki/Armor Basic Interceptor Body Armor has just +5 Endurance over SWAT Utility Armor, and loses 1 point in sound dampening, one inventory and one upgrade slot. More advanced versions have +10 and +15 over similar utility armor, while losing 2 points in sound dampening and one inventory and upgrade slot. And single upgrade slot can net you +10-15 endurance points, with loss of just 1 or less in sound dampening. On the other hand, stealth and utility armors seem pretty balanced with each other. You lose single upgrade and inventory, but can get something that no upgrade can give you: better sound dampening. Plus, loss in endurance is really minor, just 5 points in all cases.

That's more positive then any recent game review he did.

By the way, there are some plot hooks in the game for possible sequels, and even prequels. There is whole Senator Darcy angle (whose positions strengthens at the end of the game). Also, both Westridge and Darcy had "Yellow Brick Road" operations of their own (as shown in Alpha Protocol dossier), so possible prequel/expansion could be based on them too. There are even some detail for Westridge (rivalry with ex-KGB Alexi Dravic, affair with "Saffron", etc...)

I actually like whole wait/focus and get better precision part of AP shooting mechanics. I think it could be good to use for some shooter games too (although base precision needs to be much better then in AP). Something similar, although in more abstract term, exists in some shooters that have snipers. When you zoom it "wobbles" around, until you make it steady. Instead such "what you see, what you get" approach, that can be annoying with such "wobbling" around, having crosshairs that get more focused if you steady your aim a bit could actually work better as streamlined mechanic.

Heh... at first I was very annoyed when my master level shadow operative would sometimes cancel itself when not crouching, for no reason what so ever. Then I realized, that it only gets canceled if sprinting, not during normal "running".

I guess it was attempt to make all weapons types distinctive enough. AR good for long range, but not for suppressive fire. SMG good for suppressive fire, but not at long range, pistol good for silent kills at medium/short range, etc...

I just took small break from AP, to try Overlord DLC for ME2, so both games and fresh to do some comparison. Graphics in ME2 were better, since it uses more post-processing filters then AP. Also having scf-fi settings helps more in bringing wow effect. Combat flow is also better, due to use of hotkeys for activating abilities instantly, and having only single key (not 3) to bring all others in pause state, Pressing it gives options to activate talents, change weapons and everything else, while unpressing it brings back combat. Much better then Z/X/C from AP. In AP, if you want to use Chain Shot twice, you need to: -press Z -select Chain Shot with mouse -use Chain Shot with Q -press Z -select Brilliance with mouse -use Brilliance with Q -press Z -select Chain Shot with mouse -use Chain Shot with Q Reeeeally tedious! On the other hand, single cooldown timer for all abilities in ME2 encourages spamming of same thing over and over. Still, at least you know when can you use all abilities there, while you have no idea in AP when you can use other abilities then one currently active (you need to shuffle them with Z/select first). As for accuracy in combat, in ME2, weapons are very accurate, compared to fully skilled Thorton. In AP, even fully skilled pistol is only good for Chain Shot at long range, since bullet spread is large, and critical hit is limited by distance. You could even say that AP is way more realistic, since pistols are not supposed to be poor man snipers, like in ME2 and some other games with FPS shooting mechanic. Low recoil doesn't mean good accuracy! There is a reason why rifles have long barrels and pistols do not. Still, first combat experience in AP is in Greybox, when you have shootout with guards in one corridor (before first lock picking tutorial). I'm pretty sure everyone that played AP had their WTF moment here, when they realized how inaccurate pistols are, and that they just can't use them to shoot accurately on guards at the other side of the corridor, without getting closer. And this "fist impression" moment is probably what stayed in heads of reviewers that gave low scores to AP. What is funny is that pistols accuracy is probably better modeled in AP then in shooters, but still it gives a really bad vibe when first time experienced in the game. As for dialogs, ME2 system now looks shallow to me after playing Alpha Protocol. Good job here!

The items you can buy depend from weapon dealers available. Some come and go during game. And right after Saudi Arabia all old dealers will not be available, exempt Nasri, if you let him go. But don't worry, new contacts will be available soon.

You know what's funny. Everybody complains about mouse control, but in cases of very fast times, near end of the game, it's usually keyboard marker that is too slow, not the mouse controlled one. If you don't move immediately keyboard marker to the center of the screen, there is no chance to get to the location, if it is in lower right area.

In my "soldier" playthrough I almost exclusively used SMGs (even killed most of bosses with it). Leveled both AR and SMG to the max, but after a while I pretty much used SMG all the time, exempt if enemy is really far away. What SMG does bad is hitting enemies in cover (1/2 of rounds are then misses, due to spread nature of bullets), so you need to play a bit aggressive. Not to hide, but assault enemies as often as possible, and to have single clip last as long as it can (by prolonging it with bullet storm). Also good level of toughness is needed, due to aggressive style needed when using SMG. And most important: Controlled bursts to reduce recoil! I played before with AR and shotgun combo, and I would take AR/SMG every time instead. It felt so much more effective.

BG and all other cRPGs that use D&D ruleset modeled rogue stealth to be pretty much like invisibility, instead of doing realistic stealth (and pen and paper rules do support proper realistic stealth).

Senator Darcy?

The issue with laptops is more issue with computers that don't run game perfectly. The truth is, if frame rate in this game is not stable 60, there will be shutter when moving mouse. Specific ini tweaks are needed to remove it. Also, even those tweaks haven't helped when I tried to play this game on machine which gets only around 22fps average, with occasional drops to 10fps. Whenever frame rate drops below 20, shutter when moving mouse gets even worse (as if mouse got some super fast acceleration!!!). To fix that, you also need another ini tweak (removing mouse smoothing in APInput.ini), so that game could actually behave as good as many other games that run at barely playable frame rate (10-20fps), instead being utterly unplayable. ^And this is all, without taking in account shutter that can happen during background loading (which also messes up mouse controls, by moving camera widely), either from textures or level data (although other part can also be minimized with ini tweak). Still, the core issue here is that mouse controls gets disrupted anytime frame rate isn't perfect, either constantly from playing on weaker PC, or for fraction of second, when loading background data, and I just hope it gets properly fixed in some patch.

Heh... when I did Tapei last, there where things like 11 stat alarms and doors, making some missions reeeally difficult. In different playthrough, with Tapei first, it was peace of cake.

In my first playthrough I got to Rome first, and mini-games were very easy. In next playthrough I hot to Rome last and mini-games where very difficult. As far as I can see, game uses "difficulty scaling" for all mini-games. Higher the level of player, harder the games. Still, it's pity that there are no many skills that help in hacking. One at 2nd level of Sabotage, and one near the end of Sabotage line are only skills helping in decreasing their difficulty. And there is spy luck, which just gives second chance. . As for hacking, while I'm still looking for patters, I usually try to move both markers to the center of the screen. That way, no position is too far away when I find proper pattern.

^note that this list does not show all perks. Only perks that have associated variable with them, that is related to condition needed to trigger the perk. Like changing Resilience perk variable from 1000 to 10, so you can get it even after minor injure.

Still, nice little mod. Although long range sniping with pistol just seems weird. P.S. Post modification somewhere so others could try it. As well as instructions of how to do it yourself.

High Stability decreases inaccuracy when moving. AR have very poor stability (even worse with some scopes), walking with them gives huuuge aiming circle. On the other hand, if you walk with pistol or SMG, change will be pretty minor, since they have good stability. Still, I would consider stability least important weapon stat. Probably because I tend not to move when shooting, exempt when fighting some bosses that like meleeing. Accuracy > Recoil > Stability, IMHO.

I think I know what's the issue. It seems that with normal sniper zoom, sensitivity is as good as with normal aiming. But if you zoom further is gets waaaaay too much sensitive.

Think out of box. How big is the circle shows how inaccurate is the pistol, not how big is recoil (big difference compared to standard shooters). So, use those critical shots, if you want to be really accurate, or use proper assault rifle if you want long range accuracy (just because you can point crosshair to someone far away doesn't mean that pistol should be as accurate as rifle). Or just don't aim for the head, but the body (so that whole circle is on enemy, increasing chance of actual hit). There is reason why body armor is more important then helmet.

True. Still, it's nice that some values used by game are exposed in ini files, so some tweaking can be done. Also note that in perk list in ini file, only perks that have some value associated with them are listed there, not all possible perks.