Sorry to Spoil It - This Game is Very Easy

So preface - I love this game. I think most people playing it aren't looking for an especially difficult experience - and that's okay.

I keep seeing posts saying "this one particular combo makes the game very easy" (usually involving Cly) when in reality - it's hard not to make the game easy. I am not saying this to "brag" but to discuss how the game is actually broken.

Sorry to dispel this particular illusion and ruin the game for some folks, but you could beat this game on Expert with no cover. If the AI has a shot on your entire party, it will not focus on the same person and will instead try to spread damage around. I tested it a few times in my own expert run, and the AI will literally ignore someone on 1HP if they've already shot them a few times and have a bead on other party members.

As long as you have some form of outgoing damage, so you don't get overwhelmed, and some form of healing the most efficient (but boring) strat is to ignore cover and just run directly into the enemy's face to guarantee 100% of your shots hit and speedrun the map.

Let me just go down a bullet list here - these are systems you have to ignore if you want to make the game hard on yourself:

• Bond upgrades are busted because, except for a few capstone upgrades, they take effect even if the bonded crewmates aren't in a party together. They are easy to farm, especially with the early den lounge upgrade, and hiring crew members to max capacity just to bond farm is a more effective use of your credits than the black market. You can essentially double your focus, health, and vastly increase your damage from a pretty early point in the game.

• Taunt breaks the game because the AI ignores visibility. The enemy will literally ignore opponents standing in the open to try and hit a Heavy - so your best strategy isn't even using the retaliation ability they have for counter damage, or "standing in the open to tank" as the game would describe it, but to Taunt and run. Obviously Cly makes this extremely busted with the jetpack, but any operator can do it. Trick even has a full heal that ignores injury when upgraded, and even in my expert run, this only triggered 3 times across the entire campaign despite him standing in the open because enemies would refuse to finish him off if they'd already shot him up that turn.

• Medic is busted - especially if you are rushing the enemy and not using cover. The morale boost unique, when popped, is often enough to keep your party topped up in-between turns so you don't even need to heal. Also it's the most effective way to farm bond without using the den's lounge.

• Perhaps the most obvious outlier that people are calling out is Scout with Combat Recon. The ability to instantly gain 3-4 advantage with 1AP is an OP trade considering how powerful some advantage abilities actually are. In addition to how obviously powerful Cly is with this, Tel and Astromech have incredibly OP advantage abilities and even standard classes can output an absurd amount of extra damage. Even without Scout, a grenade into a group of enemies is already a 1AP trade for a lot of advantage.

I could go into even more details, especially with how busted some of the traits are, but this game is just lacking if you want a difficult tactical experience. I'm not sure if or when the game would get patched to actually address some of this stuff, but three essential fixes would be that the AI should concentrate fire on a low health enemy, should ignore taunt if they can't reach the target, and you shouldn't gain any advantage from a bond if the bonded operator isn't in the party. These are the most egregious things I would hit in a patch first. I'm not a developer, but I would hope starting with those three wouldn't be too hard.