I may be wrong here, but I think that most people have come to the conclusion that melee is overpowered based on this scenario:
1. You are playing an Angel of Berserk challenge
2. You are playing on medium difficulty (the lowest possible in a challenge game)
3. You max out the Brute perk (and probably take berserk).
4. After dozens of deaths in the first few levels you finally manage to get the chainsaw.
5. You kill the Angel of Death and get the ultimate spoily.
Under those circumstances then I agree that melee is uber-powerful. But if you take away any of those melee is a very difficult game (except perhaps the challenge - that only gives you the berserk for large medipack ability). For example, you simply cannot survive a melee game without all the bonus damage from 3 levels of Brute. You also would not last long with only the chainsaw. And the harder difficulties are nearly impossible.
I have been trying to win a Hard or UV AoB game for a while. In UV you run into Hell Knights before you even get to the chainsaw. Try taking those guys down even if you are lucky enough to find a combat knife! Also, the sheer numbers of enemies is so high that you get creamed before you can get into melee range. I have managed to get to the chainsaw a few times, but the game at that point is still extremely difficult.
In my latest Hard game I got the chainsaw fairly easily (died fewer than 10 times), but on the level after that I ran into 5 Hell Knights. I managed to kill 4, but the last one was supported by a sergeant (the arch-nemesis of the melee game) and a captain. I had already used up all my healing. I did manage to kill them, but was down below 20% health and died on the next level which had more cacos and HKs.
Overall, I guess, I am saying that even though the medium difficulty challenge game is a piece of cake once you get the chainsaw, that the harder difficulties in AoB are even more difficult than other challenge or normal games on the same difficulty settings. In other words, a medium AoMr may be harder than a medium AoB but a hard AoMr is much easier than a hard AoB. And melee combat outside of maxing out Brute is pretty wimpy. And I don't tend to put any points in Brute in any game other than an AoB challenge.
I am not saying that melee is necessarily underpowered, but I hesitate to call it overpowered based on one select scenario.
This example of melee being overpowered:
Blade killed the AoD, while being berserk and unarmed - the secret is in making him bleed, and then retreating while he loses HPs. But this requires shitloads of luck. Point is, if you see the AoD bleeding, consider not trying to hit him, but run until the bleeding stops, and then resume battering.
is not a good one because Blade played that game while save-scumming just to see if it was even possible. He died numerous times in order to get that result.
Does anyone else have experience playing the harder difficulties of AoB? I am curious if others agree or disagree with what I have seen.
