Playing through Deus Ex 3 without any augs, on Hard Mode, without using saves except for autosaves, is interesting.
First off, you end up having to fight your way through a lot more often because without jump, cloak, hacking, punch through walls or icarus landing system your alternate path options are basically nil. Secondly, because you don't have any of the combat upgrade augs such as recoil reduction, automatic weapons become nearly useless, which limits a lot of your firepower options.
Lastly, because you can't fucking quicksave whenever the fuck you want, removing all tension from any situation you desire, combat is tense and a single mistake will cost you your life, sending you back several minutes of gameplay.
All that being said, since you don't use augs, you don't care about exp at all, which is sort of freeing. No longer do you spend 3 minutes sneaking up on a guy to get that extra 40 exp from a nonlethal melee takedown; you just shoot him and move on. In fact, I owe most of my success to the most amazing gun in the entire game: The 10mm pistol.
Silenced, laser sighted, and armor piercing. One headshot takes down every guard quickly, silently, and at most will only turn every other guard in the area "alarmed".
Or so I thought.
Finally started finding some of the "super heavies", you know, those guards that can absorb like 50 rounds from an assault rifle in the chest and keep wrecking you with their heavy rifles.
So the first one I encounter, I think, hey, no problem. Headshot.
The guard flinches slightly as the armor piercing round passes through his skull and brain, turns toward me fairly casually, and starts spinning up his rifle. All five other guards go red and begin firing on me from all sides.
Uh. Ok. So I put another round into his left eye.
Flinch. Rifle's spun up now.
Two grenades land at my feet.
TAP SPACE TO DO THAT COOL ROLLING COVER-TO-COVER LEAP
HEAVY'S HEAVY RIFLE PUTS 500 ROUNDS INTO YOUR CHEST AS YOU PERFORM MANEUVER
YOU HAVE DIED
LESSON LEARNED: TRANQ OR STUNGUN OR TAKEDOWN SUPER HEAVIES ONLY, FINAL DESTINATION
