I always play fps on the hardest level. Bioshock infinite is a B**** on Hard, usually I breeze through with only 1 or 2 areas that really challenge me in any given game, but man this is a tough game. I'm almost done and actually kinda regretting choosing hard mode. Just thinking about what I have to defeat makes me cringe a bit.

So when you say hard you dont mean 1999 mode??

I guess 1999. Because otherwise Bioshock Infinite is pretty easy, apart for one single boss fight (the ghost). At least, compared to the STALKER or Metro games.

Bioshock Infinite is imbalanced - particularly when it comes to vigors. You can easily make your life hard by choosing wrong and there's really no way back. Lady Comstock is a laughing stock on 1999 when you have maxed Charge. The final level is a joke if you have Charge and Undertow maxed out. Some of the more straightforward and seemingly obvious vigors (Murder Of Crows, Devil's Kiss) can be quite useless compared to these.

The gear is also a very big factor - changing it based on the fight can make a huge differences as a single piece of gear won't generally give you a 5% boost, but rather 50.

Like I said, imbalanced.

Edit: overall, Bioshock Infinite is dead easy even at its hardest compared to something like Quake 4 on General or Quake 1 on Nightmare - not to mention the hardest difficulties in the first two Doom games. You know - where enemies outright respawn after a short while. All it takes is some planning ahead, going over the gear and thinking out of the box. I personally only found the Handymen a challenge - especially the one in Finkton as I was aiming for the achievement where you can't shoot anywhere but in the heart (frankly, the achievement is nigh impossible on 1999 without glitching the fight).

Yes I agree about the imbalance, i played on "hard" (not 1999) mostly because I don't play Bioshock for the gun fight, which is, imho, pretty bad in all the iterations. I don't recall anything particular about the handymen apart that compared to the big-daddies it was sort of a let down, I guess they are trickier in 1999.

I don't think the shield upgrade (when you get to choose between mana, life and shield) has much use. IIRC i went for something like 50/50 Health/Mana after noticing that the shield has no longevity anyway. The "broken shield" effect gets annoying after a while, though. I mostly used direct damage spells + one of the "don't move" spell (undertow?) from time to time and my shotty + whatever weapon is good / has ammo in the current context.

(I still heavily recommend Stalker: call of pripyat + misery mod to those looking forward to press F5/F9 a lot)

I didn't even know that there was a 1999 difficulty. Not looking forward to that at all. But after reading what you have all posted, I can see why I'm running into difficulty. Firstly, I put all my eggs and money into Murder by Crows and Devil's Kiss which become almost useless towards the end of the game. I also upgraded my shield a lot, which turns out is a big no-no.

The shield is actually worth upgrading on 1999. If you want any sort of challenge at all, though, you'll combine the "don't use vending machines" achievement with the 1999 mode, in which case balancing out your existing ammo and vigors becomes far more interesting - essentially you won't be able to plow your way through the game using sheer force, but need to use both mana and ammo sparingly - which is fun. I advise you read on some strats though, as depending on your chosen vigors, maxing out mana can be a waste.

One thing I do think is pretty silly in 1999 mode is the "uhoh, when you run out of money, we'll throw you back to the main menu". First, if you lose your money to dying on 1999, you won't finish the game - plain and simple. Second - why not just offer the player to automatically load the last save instead of stirring up fake drama with the menu? Most FPS players who were around in 1999 hadn't heard of checkpoints anyway - so why force it down their throats while calling it the 1999 mode? They'll end up manually going to the main menu and loading to save the cash anyway.

Incidentally - the first half of the game has a pretty decent number of checkpoints, but the Lady Comstock fights can be a pain if you're still lacking confidence or trying out strategies. With Charge on 1999 I didn't have to load once during all of the three fights, but trying to do it on Hard with Devil's Kiss really made me hate the game for a period.