I've played the game around seven years ago for the first time on my laptop and enjoyed my time a lot. Back when I got my first PS4 around a year later (2017ish), I got the game on there too but ended up not playing the game at all because I couldn't get used to the controller gameplay.
A couple of days ago, I started the game up again for lack of other games to play right now and have, as many probably, started a low-chaos ghost run. For the uninitiated, "ghost" means that you go through the entire game without being detected once. To achieve this, you're either cracked at the game and know what you're doing, or you resort to save scumming, which I also did.
However, I seem to have fucked up in the last mission (saving Emily, getting rid of the two Pendleton twins) and have been detected somewhere without noticing it and loading a previous save. When I ended the mission and was shown the statistics, I contemplated starting the mission over because I didn't ghost through to mission but opted not to.
While I do feel kinda bummed about "messing up" the achievement, I feel like this'll prove to be beneficial for my overall experience with the game since I won't have to keep reloading the same passages for 15 times just to get some arbitrary achievement that doesn't even bear any meaning.
I'll still go for a low-chaos run (not killing anyone), but I won't be bothered to keep reloading saves now: If I'm detected, I run away and hide and take the game on naturally.
How have your experiences with the game been? Which playstyle do you prefer? What games did you ruin for yourself in hindsight because of save scumming?
I had a similar experience with Dishonored. I got ghost on a few missions since low chaos is more akin to my natural play style, but found it to be more enjoyable to set my own "rules" for my playthrough. It's also a game that's worth a second playthrough just to experience the opposite side of the spectrum. Super fun game any direction you choose, but you'll miss a lot of cool aspects by limiting yourself to one extreme or the other.
For sure! In my very first playthrough, I wasn't really paying attention to what I'm doing in the missions, so I ended up killing a lot of people without really thinking about it. In the final mission, I just had to restart the game because Samuel got mad and that got to me. I think I might have actually done a clean ghost run then.