YMMV / Decaying Winter

• Breather Boss: The Commander, one half of the Medieval boss wave's Dual Boss. While the Emperor is a Guns Akimbo menace who can royally mess the players up with rapid gunfire, the Commander simply... approaches you. Very slowly. Sure, they have an One-Hit Kill melee attack, but that doesn't change the fact he's really easy to kite. Just be ready to say goodbye to Jericho...
• Common Knowledge: Contradictory to what may seem, Reikgon is not the name of the cult that appears in the game (as they're called the Sin cult), though he is at least implied to have a creation in the shadows, as the Boss Warning Siren for the Sin cult wave in Holdout says "The sky bleeds red with fear - Reikgon and his shadows will ensure the demise of Eden-227!".
• Funny Moments:
  • The Executioner's goggles lists the crimes of each enemy in the game. One of the random crimes an enemy can have? Indecent Exposure.
  • The Sledge Queen's scan lists that she is wanted for murder, wanted by the Agency and... blasting music.
  • The Bad Business boss wave. The first thing you hear upon this wave starting is an instrumental of Enemy, alongside a massive amount of Vine Boom spam. Then, you're assaulted by Bad Business dummies who wield themselves as both bludgeons and guns. Oh, the misery...
• Goddamned Boss:
  • The Hanger is usually regarded as the least threatening of the Reikgon Shadows, but part of her annoyance is that if you get too close, it will begin trying to induce the player into a Psychic-Assisted Suicide, and the player has to mash the E button in order to prevent them from doing so, which can be troublesome if there are enemies around. Oh, and trying to get up close has it performing an unparryable attack that has a chance of dealing various Debuffs as well.
  • The Freedom Fighters Wave is not exactly hard compared to other waves, especially if fought in Wave 10, but the ERU troops' ability to chain-grapple you with terrifying precision can get annoying real fast.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • The Collapsible Ladder auxiliary equipment. Only good for messing with enemy pathfinding, to the point where the game acknowledges how useless it is in the quote related to it. And even if you intend to use it for its intended purpose, various perks can make traversing certain areas much easier.
  Amelia: It's actually mindboggling how useful this is. Yes that was sarcasm.
  • Having the Damned perk makes you a lot worse at everything. Your melee stats are awful, decreasing weapon damage and making all your swings feel half as fast, your durability is awful, enough so that taking a shot from a Cheytac sniper deals 85, and your firearm stats are horrendous, since the perk doesn't let you aim and even with an accuracy trait your shots will spread too much for comfort. The only weapons a Damned is good at using are bows while standing still. However, in return for all of this, you don't get Morale.
  • For a while, the Sovereign perk was seen as one of the worst perks in the game, largely because for while they got hit the hardest by the nerf when Last Strandeds came out, because their thralls, which was their sole redeeming factor due to their ability to act as a durable meat shield, was nerfed to 35 HP, meaning that they were made as plasticine and even without the thralls, the Sovereign was completely over the place: While it did have a massive Stamina pool, shoving is usually considered as a last-resort attack or used against shields due to how slow it is and even when wielding a melee weapon, the damage debuff can severely hinder the Sovereign's melee combat, and their reduced movement speed means they have a harder time catching up with other perks, especially when those also had the disadvantage while compensating for something much stronger. Unsurprisingly, Sovereign users quickly fell out in favor of the Apostle, which while not as easy to get, basically has a much stronger version of Sovereign's skillset. Even with a confirmed Balance Buff increasing the thrall's HP, many players refuse to use it due to the skill ceiling preventing players from further testing it's true potential and its association as the "clown perk".
• Scrappy Mechanic: While most of the game's mechanics are punishing yet fair, one exception is that the game marks you a cheater if your salvage or ammo count exceeds a certain limit. Even though this is rare in the main game as ammo is scarce and salvage is hard to get, this is more prominent in Last Strandeds, where it's very easy to get salvage from enemies due to the increased focus on gunplay. Needless to say, not many are happy about being marked as a cheater for simply getting salvage.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Skorpion vz. 61. If players had bad memories with the Klobb from Goldeneye 1997, they're bound to remember it whenever they use this weapon. Its high rate of fire does not compensate for its pitiful damage and low magazine capacity, to the point where even pistols can surpass it in damage and ammo efficiency. Expect to scrap this once you find a better Light Ammo weapon.
  • No experienced player would dare unironically use the KS-23. You'd think, that maybe holding one of the largest shotgun shells in real life, that its burst damage would exceed that of the Caldwell. Nope! It actually uses slug rounds, which instead turns it into a single pellet that deals 85 damage. Most shotguns, as per rule, deal more burst damage with the more pellets they hit, and a few shotguns are capable of hitting multiple pellets at a surprisingly high range. Expect to scrap as soon as you get your hands on an actual shotgun.
  Bogdan: How does it convert normal shells to slugs
• That One Attack: Grenades, when used by the enemy. There's no indicator of where they land, meaning that if you're not wary of a grenade and if they're right next to you, expect to be blown to pieces. While only limited to certain minibossses or bosses such as Yosef or the Emperor, the entire Raiders faction will throw grenades if given the opportunity, and if you or someone decided to aggro the Sledge Queen or get the Raiders boss wave, expect grenades to be thrown at you like no tomorrow.
• That One Boss:
  • The Sledge Queen can be described as a Stylish Action character in a First-Person Shooter, and she backs that description up by being an utter menace to deal with in both game modes. To start, she has 1200 HP in a game where 150 damage is more than enough to One-Hit Kill nearly everything in the game, combined with her having the brutal damage output of a Sledgehammer Scav. She also has the ability to throw Cripple inflicting grenades, alongside using an enemy version of the Arbiter's longshot. You can't even run away from her, both because of the longshot which ALSO can inflict Cripple, and because she can Rocket Jump straight to you using the Arbiter's Knuckleboom. Topping it all off is that she can execute weak enough players, which also has the ability to heal half of her 1200 max HP, an ability shared only with the Sickler. The one sole saving grace is that she's optional to face in the main game mode, but in Last Strandeds, you don't even have that option, since there's a chance she may be the main boss of the boss wave, which can occur as early as Wave 10.
  • The Bad Business wave is guaranteed to end a Holdout run if not properly prepared, but even then, good luck trying to hold off against the massive amount of Bad Business enemies who are surprisingly durable for the appearance. Not only that, but the gun-wielders are basically reskinned Base Guard scavs, albeit without being able to throw grenades. Once you get past them, however, you face off against the Businessman enemy- imagine Yosef, but he holds two M60s in each hand, and he's also incredibly durable to boot. If encountered past Wave 20, this becomes a legitimate nightmare to face.
• That One Level:
  • The Scav War, which is guaranteed to happen between Waves 6 and 9. For starters, the area is filled with massive amounts of Elite Mooks, which is enough to overwhelm an well-armed agent, making scavenging for resources difficult. Once that is over, you then have to deal with a gargantuan amount of Scavs raiding your base, and unless you brought in items or weapons that are good at crowd control, expect to be fractured, bled, and crippled multiple times before you die.
  • The Lab is filled with Sin Cultists who are not only armed with makeshift guns that resemble Tec-9s and poisoned knives, but are also able to dodge and parry as well. To make matters worse, going through here is required for the Evacuation ending, as the conditions for it are to interact with the laptop in there and get the masks, though to compensate, the area is filled with crates and valuable loot. GOOD LUCK ACTUALLY GETTING TO THOSE CRATES AT ALL, THOUGH.
• Tough Act to Follow: This experience is one of the most popular of Archeximus' projects, owning to its unforgiving difficulty and gameplay style. By contrast, her other experiences have yet to produce the same amount of popularity it once had, with Anomalous Activities being criticized for not being as hard as the former.