Quote Originally Posted by Shinta
The only thing I could ask for is that the way you play should affect the story and ending. Being an honor-less ghost should result in a different ending than if you played as a (mostly) honor-bound samurai. That would've made this game legendary.
I agree with this. For the early part of the game I played with zero stealth and challenged everyone to a duel. Turns out the game pretty much forces you to at least compromise your morals once, and some characters reprimand you for your actions regardless.. so now I just do whatever seems fun and applicable at the time. All your actions do is trigger cutscenes reminding you of your past lessons in morality.

I'm still in Act 2 so I have a fair way to go.

Style-wise, I'm essentially avoiding Ghost style for now since I enjoy straight up fights. The new Lethal mode is interesting. It's essentially "hardcore" mode where everyone has increased damage. Depending on what you're fighting, it could make life easier or harder. Also since the damage is increased, running strike is now a 1 hit kill like it should be. Arrow damage is much higher but that's okay.

Mob fights are easier. After you parry an enemy, slash them twice and they're dead. That turns group fights into a series of 1v1v1v1v1. That's much easier than doing chip damage against 5 guys and parrying them all for 2 minutes.

I actually rarely fight mobs now anyway, because after I perform a stand-off against them, they're either dead or running away in fear.

I found some duels easier if they're essentially normal mobs with higher health bars, but some duels (Kojiro I'm looking at you) harder if they're tough. Mistakes are punished much more severely. With that guy, I ended up just spamming Heavenly Strike and Dance of Wrath against him until his head was much lower, then tried to go the rest of the way without stuffing up.

Overall I like Lethal Mode, it changes the game. It's supposed to improve enemy detection to make stealth harder, but since I rarely use stealth it doesn't matter.