Okay been playing several hours in and man i have been digging into the combat and general survival horror stuff, some of it is basic survival horror staples but they made the resources extra stingy for this one. its all have been fun so far
For example, i've upgraded the pistol damage once and started experimenting and found out that 2 charged shots to the head and then one melee attack kills one of the more basic non upgraded grunts so that's one bullet saved every kill
Positioning and kiting enemies is the big bread and butter of the game, since enemies try to go and merge with dead ones to get stronger, so its best to kill them near explosive barrels or gas cans and once you see the ones going to merge, then you can shoot the barrels for easy kills or burns.
I've also noticed charged shots go through enemies so sometimes its good to kite enemies in a straight line and position yourself to hit several of them with one bullet.
Also found out that health upgrades using cores fully heals you, so if you're low on health and want to upgrade your health too then do that and you end up saving several of your healing items.
One thing i REALLY don't like so far is that enemy and crates item drops are completely RNG, so for example you're in a combat section and you kill an enemy and it drops some shotgun ammo, but you end up dying in that fight, reload save, go back to that section and you kill the same enemy and this time it drops nothing. Then you win the whole fight and not a single ammo drop. Same goes for item crates, it feels especially sucky when they don't drop anything at all. I find myself save scumming and reloading saves that have easy crates nearby them and keep reloading until i get the ideal items from them,
I can honestly see plenty of people being filtered by the game's difficulty, if you're not smart and use strats to save up on your resources then you will run out of ammo, so better to have several saves so you dont back yourself into a corner