Well that's the problem. In the first mission you have to figure out to stun the enemies in the center of their back rather than directly in their head. Its super counterintuitive and probably leads to many players not getting past the first mission.
The minicrossbow is even harder than the prod, especially at lower skill levels and with no weapon mods. The prod at least stuns enemies momentarily. With the darts they still stand around shooting at you and set off alarms, and that's if you manage to hit them at all. You can run up to a guy and get a guaranteed stun in the time it takes him to spin around like a dumbass to look at the source of the footsteps.
My first playthrough, when I was 12, I opted for the GEP gun, but had to go to the minicrossbow after running out of ammo, thereby leaving me with no pistol skill. The worst of both worlds on the very first mission. Ended up climing up the back of the statue of liberty and throwing gas grenades. Good times.
The GEP gun is ironically the pro choice to make if you know what you’re doing. All of the other weapons on offer can be found in the first level, and the GEP works as a fantastic “lockpick” even if you never fire it in anger.
This is true, but the upside of the crossbow is that for most soldiers it only takes a single shot to take them out, even if it takes a while, and you can do it from a safe spot, this can be beneficial if your JC sucks at combat or is low on ammo.
It makes the difficulty curve super inverted