* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: The majority of players use rifles, as they have good capacity, high damage, and decent performance against armor, and there are both semi-auto and full-auto rifles, the latter being extremely good at dismemberment.
* CrossesTheLineTwice: LCS attempts to satirize terrorism, to the point of inserting humorous elements into the torture-and-brainwash minigame.
* DemonicSpiders:
** Any firearm-wielding (and likely armored) Conservative can, if the RNG is particularly unkind, instantly kill one of your Liberals.
** Possibly worse are the Arch-Conservatives, who attack psychologically rather than physically. Their psych attacks are not only very difficult to resist, but can take hundreds of juice away from a liberal and leave them unable to attack should one succeed. If your Liberal hits below -50 Juice due to this, [[FaceHeelTurn they become a Conservative themselves.]] Thankfully, however, you can shoot them first before they attack, or just plain kidnap them if you've got a gun, since Arch-Conservatives must be unarmed to attack psychologically.
** The Conservative Crime Squad will ''never'' let up their attack efforts once they discover your safehouses, continuing monthly sieges until either the LCS or CCS is destroyed.
** CCS Bosses themselves also pack Heavy Ceramic Armor (making them near-impossible to kill even with a six-man squad concentrating their fire) and an AA-12 Shotgun that can hit twice compared to regular shotguns, easily capable of killing a Liberal.
** Guard dogs. Their ability to notice stealthy characters is above anything else's (with 10 stealth skill, you have a just above 9% chance not to be noticed if you're alone), which makes a stealth run that much more harder than necessary. And of course, you'll find them at high-security areas, so you'll have agents or tanks after you depending on your location.
* GameBreaker:
** If one is hauling a liberal, they can threaten them as a hostage. This would be glaring enough, but cops-- who usually take the hostage away in exchange for (temporary) freedom-- will ''also'' go in for this, but with your "hostage" remaining with you. You can use this to get out of nearly any high-security area without trouble.
** Reporters and similar news agents were this as sleepers in old builds of the game; getting a few news-oriented sleepers was almost an InstantWinCondition. They've been severely nerfed in more recent builds.
** Violence is also overpowered. Get a squad of Liberals that can consistently massacre the Police Station to shut it down (meaning no heat gain, no police raids) and the rest of the game becomes a boring cakewalk, with the only threat to your liberals being stupidity (hanging around too long and getting massacred in a vehicle chase, for example), overconfidence (attacking the army base) or bad luck.
** An exploit related to the first CCS Safehouse, the Desert Eagle Bar and Grill, allows you to farm CCS Bosses for Sleeper agents or new Liberals easily. CCS Safehouses are defeated only if the CCS Boss is killed. Seducing and datenapping a CCS Boss before enlightening him (giving you a free Sleeper Agent or a Liberal with high stats) does not count as defeating a CCS Safehouse. You can have a potentially infinite amount of highly skilled Sleepers or LCS Members (enlightening a hostage doesn't count towards the recruitment cap) as long as you never shut down the Bar and Grill.
* GoodBadBugs: As weapons in your inventory can't be noticed by conservatives or metal detectors, it's possible to sneak heavy weapons anywhere just by unequipping them. Notably, some locations seem to be deliberately designed to prevent the use of the exploit, as you'll be instantly met by security upon entering them.
* HarsherInHindsight: One of the standard methods of affecting public opinions is to engage in mass murder of conservatives. While mass shootings were not unheard of at the time of the game's release, it hits rather differently nowadays, as politically-motivated mass shootings became far more common in USA. ''New Age'', notably, prevents you from engaging in mass shootings due to that, as raising the alarm will make it impossible for you to attack noncombatant conservatives.
* LowTierLetdown: Several weapon types suffer greatly from being underpowered, which is why ''New Age'' has merged them into Firearms and Martial Arts:
** Clubs don't do much damage compared to sharp weapons, and they don't have the concealability of knives or unarmed combat. You'd be better off using swords or axes.
** Shotguns and [=SMGs=] suffer from bad concealability, low damage, low capacity, and inability to deal with armor.
** [[KillItWithFire Incendiary weapons]] can set tiles on fire, thus passively damaging conservatives and breaching walls. However, you aren't immune to fire, and molotovs also require your liberals to spend a turn "reloading" after attacking.
* NauseaFuel: The combat descriptions go for this with gusto. Automatic weapons frequently blow heads apart, shotguns can blow limbs off, and the text constantly describes wounded characters reacting to their injuries by pleading for mercy, vomiting, and so on.
--> "Liberal shoots at Police Officer with a M16! Liberal hits the torso. [[NoDeadBodyPoops Police Officer gasps a last breath and soils the floor."]]\\
"Liberal shoots at SWAT Officer with a M249 Machine Gun! Liberal hits the head five times [[YourHeadASplode BLOWING IT APART! ]] Swat Officer squirts blood out the neck and runs down the hall."
%%* NoCasualtiesRun: ''Technically'' possible. [[NintendoHard Good luck...]]
* SelfImposedChallenge: Try beating the game on We Didn't Start The Fire Nightmare Mode, no crimes ([[LowLevelRun ergo no juice]]) and [[SoloCharacterRun no recruiting people into the active LCS]]. [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=96149.msg3835085#msg3835085 It has actually been done]].
* ValuesResonance: The game's portrayal of a politically polarized USA and domestic terrorism can seem rather prescient, as concerns are raised about these exact issues in the current day. Most of the political issues covered by the game are also still relevant to this day, and the game had a very tolerant portrayal of LGBT people way before it became more mainstream.
** Notably, ''New Age'', in the process of updating the game to reflect the [[TheNewTwenties 2020's]], doesn't actually change the politics all that much, with most issues remaining unaltered.
* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The game is obviously based in the post-9/11 Bush-era politics, with many mentions of terrorism and foreign wars. The public figures mentioned in the game are also those who were relevant to that period, with several of them falling off in the following decades.
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