just_dont

It's pretty fine for animals to be quite tough, otherwise they will always be a non-factor. JA2 cats were extremely bullet-spongey as well, unless you specifically used high-power HP bullets.

So far it feels pretty great. It's not particularly hard (on the highest difficulty), but that would be better left for modders anyway. The rules of engagement are certainly not JA2, but that's not really a bad thing. I don't mind a large step away from realism in general, but still I'd rather have it in check in certain particular moments (like enemies showering you with unlimited shots while providing absolutely no loot when dead). But again, I understand considerations that were leading to that - any kind of "true looting" would return us to JA2 times again, where it wasn't even remotely possible to run out of ammo enemies were using. On the other hand, the "parts" abstraction works pretty okay for the crafting/modification purposes. Some game mechanics feel somewhat undercooked - like sound alerts, firing small firearms won't aggro enemies literally 50 meters away? Really? Mines exploding from bullets but not from grenades? Grenades themselves blasting down walls but at the same time not displacing enemies? People throwing knives like bricks? But those are pretty little things; in general the combat feels quite good. I'm sure that with more patches and balancing (and maybe mods) things will turn out perfect. PS: Not sure why people are making big fuss over, say, weather effects. Fog DOES reduce vision range pretty heavily (along with grazing mechanic), like it should. Not like it matters too much when you're having Livewire in your team, but it does.

Silent takedowns do not open the battle unless there were witnesses to the kill. That's exactly why you can "silent takedown" a cluster of 3 enemies provided they aren't looking at each other; and even if they are - that what other silenced snipers are for. Knives (and smaller guns) require you to close the distance (and it's a lot more effort, including possible detection), snipers are perfectly okay at sitting in various vantage points across the map and shooting from there in such a way that makes enemy scrambling (should it even happen) ineffective.

While the game mostly avoids JA2 pitfall of having completely broken "kills from stealth" mechanics which make all other combat approaches redundant, silencer attachments having absolutely no downsides but providing massive strategical value is still pretty questionable. It's still reasonably easy to silent-kill lots of enemies in open areas by a small team of silenced snipers, and while not completely gamebreaking and prone to mishaps, it still makes a lot of maps massively easier than they should be. Silencing should either have downsides (reduced range, etc) or be much weaker on bigger guns. Or most likely, both. Having a bolt-action rifle *completely* silenced by a makeshift silencer is a bit too much.