The game gives you no reason to fight at long range, effectively making every weapon useless, except the shotgun. 100% of the time, you're sprinting into your enemies anyway. And you get an ability that sucks HP from enemies NEAR you, and transfers the HP to you, so it would be wise to stay near your enemies. It's so hilariously easy that the Hardcore difficulty should be renamed Easy. You can kill an Archduke on hardcore in about 3 seconds with an upgraded shotgun.