- The best starting character is probably Soldier or Hacker, depending on whether you want to fight or use skills.
- The Shop Drops perk causes any merchant to drop one item from their inventory upon being killed by you, and if you upgrade it at an augmentation booth for $350 they drop two items. It applies to Shopkeepers, Bartenders, Drug Dealers, Clerks (only the ones in movie theaters), Thieves, and the Upper Crusters that have a store in the mall. It's an incredible way to rack up money fast. Note that the death has to be caused directly by you.
- Long Lunge and Floats Like Butterfly are two other insanely good perks when combined, since they let you practically rocket through the level by swinging your melee weapon like crazy in the direction you're walking. (Be careful not to whack pedestrians).
- Leveling up is always a full heal.
- Garbage cans are a great source of free money, healing items, and cigarettes.
- Cigarettes have very little use for most characters, but are a readily available way to poison air vents.
- Loadout-O-Matics will resell you copies of your character's starting equipment, which can be huge for some characters, far less for others.
- When you hire somebody, you have to talk to them to get a command menu, at which point you can hand them items and tell them to do stuff. The tutorial never really brings this up.
- Every third stage has some kind of crazy modifier that generally causes tons of chaos.
- Big Quests are run-spanning objectives that bestow a significant benefit once you reach the endgame and grant bonus XP. Some have wiggle room - the Slum Dweller needs to pay $150 in 50 dollar increments per level, but it can be done in any/all of the individual stages. The Hacker meanwhile has to plant malware in at least one computer per stage no matter what. If all of the computers get destroyed before that, you've failed, try again next run.
- Many things can be destroyed with your bare fists or melee weapons (at no durability cost). This includes wooden doors and security system objects.
- Using computers by default only lets you control locked doors and safes, Tech Expert characters get more options like being able to deactivate security systems, but somewhat oddly destroying a computer (or EMPing it) does all of the above in one fell swoop.
- Completing objectives cleverly, like without being spotted or without killing anyone, gives bonus XP.
- There's generally no real morality at play and any consequences of your actions usually don't follow you between stages. The only actual downside to killing everyone in a stage is the resource costs involved.
- If a required mission involves escorting somebody out and they die in the process, you fail the mission and forfeit the prize but your progress isn't otherwise blocked.
- Uptown represents a significant difficulty spike. The earlier levels are arguably prep time for how to survive the endgame.
- There seems to be about 5~ different ways to interact with any given thing (with the exception of most, but not all, set dressing objects I guess) so definitely experiment.
- At least imo, I'd prioritize unlocking new perks slightly more than new mission items, as the items can often be obtained elsewhere. But being able to randomly get a "free" rocket launcher isn't exactly a bad thing either.
- NPCs with an M over them offer side missions. They're the same kind of tasks as regular missions, but the reward is always meta-currency.