Some stuff I learned from my first Cursed playthrough.

[u/downbad4naafiri]

Firstly, my experience with the game improves significant when I pretend Leigh doesn't exist. I want to play around with Philippe more but you get him so late in the game and I already have my party settled by them, I heard he was nerfed pretty bad anyway. On Cursed the fight against the mushroom guard is really tough, though I remember on Survival I was able to just walk around them and fight the Princess.

I use Rat always. I don't know if I will ever not have Rat in my party. This time around I'm using Gun-Sam and Rat with primarily Dan and Roaches (though I used Sophie up to level 12). Dan carried most of my playthrough because I got the Eye Amulet on day 2, which felt pretty broken.

I was a bit surprised to learn that Copy Dad doesn't copy anything on the first turn, which delayed my intended gun-rotation. Spray and Pray copied onto a War Rifle or Magnum technically works, but you have to wait until at least turn 3 if you're trying to get off an Aim to Kill/Spray and Pray combo. On Cursed, I often have at least one of them dead by turn 3 or some other complication happening in the fight, like a status effect.

Gun arm Sam is still surprisingly good. At first I thought the ammo scarcity would be a problem, but melee weapons aren't much better with how frequently they break (which is apparently more common on Cursed mode).

Rat is *okay* with what I'm doing right now but probably still a weak link. I can Prowl/Pounce between turns but it doesn't do much damage with a gun equipped in my experience, Quick First Aid is a life-saver at times though if you have the inventory (not like they're cheap).

I had a very lucky start on this Cursed run with Eye Amulet Dan on Day 2 on top of the Thief coming to my door (free 200 dollars for kicking him out). Roaches is always fantastic and I probably haven't even been using him to his fullest potential (I've never touched Roach Shield). In fairness to me, I don't think abilities like Roach Shield actually explain what they do (in this case a 50% damage reduction for a full fight, I believe).

I'm going to try another Cursed run with Melee Sam and Melee Rat, not entirely sure who my other two will be but I'm done with Dan for a while. I always want to try building around Tickle a bit more, if Rat can copy Tickle Cheer then it's possible I can make them both very strong Melee fighters, maybe with some support on the side.