This game depresses me. I absolutely love the art, the setting, and the storyline. But I just can't play it.

I was playing it last night after restarting for about the third time. I got further than I have before (which is to say, past the part where you get in the elevator only to find the shaft blocked) but now I have a problem: I'm extremely low on health with no med hypos, and I have to research an item to advance the story but I lack the chemicals needed.

This has been my problem every time I play this game: I always end up fucked. I'm even playing on the easy difficulty this time, and I just can't do it. I find the game to be really fun, and like I said, I love everything about the presentation, but holy shit, it's so stressful. I want to see how the story plays out, but I just don't know if I can do it.

How do you people do it?

Welcome to 1999; games were a lot more brutal back then. Continuous use of the quick-save is very useful for this kind of game.

When I played it back when it was new, I chose the Marines path to get a bonus to weapons. Then try to conserve as much ammo as possible. When you get to the hydroponics floor, you'll get an assault rifle and the game becomes much easier from there.

Just remember that enemies constantly respawn, so don't waste ammo if you can avoid it. You can disable respawns by modifying a user.cfg file and adding no_spawn to it, so this might help out... I personally wouldn't recommend doing this since the constant threat of enemies are what makes System Shock 2 a super tense horror game.

Hopefully you can keep going, the game's story and the way it's told was revolutionary at the time, and you can see a lot of modern games lift that system outright.

The many Sing to us.

@tikicobra: What weapon type are you specializing in? For beginners it's a really good idea to dump as much as possible into standard guns. As soon as you get the assault rifle the game might as well be done. Quick save often, make a hard save in a seperate slot after every level load. Just savescum your way to the next opportunity to get hypos. There's no shame in that if it's your first time through.

I really don't know what to tell you. I must have played through SS2 at least five times and I don't think I ever found it that difficult. But stressful? When that one techno beat hits my heart always feels like it wants to jump right outta my mouth. The last time I tried to play it I couldn't get past the first rumbler. My mind fleshes that crude model out to insane detail. I just couldn't look at it.

It shocks my system that there aren't more games like this.

I just got done with SS2 a while ago. They didn't make this game that brutal...obtuse but not truly brutal. The map and inventory etc. can be clanky. I take it you have found or know where chems are... Also look in odd places for stuff, even farm the hybrids with your wrench.

I'd like to complain about Batman, I am truly stuck and I should not be.

I definitely am familiar with difficult games from the '90s, I generally love them. And I know that this really is a fantastic game, but something about it is just really hard for me. Also, I'm specializing in psi powers.

Well, that's your problem right there! (I actually am not sure if it's a hindrance, though I believe people often talk about the virtues of picking the firepower specializations, but I could be misremembering)

This game punishes you super hard for playing sloppy. I've beaten this game numerous time and I'll still sometimes dig myself a hole I can't get out of if I'm not careful.

Some tips for where you are: Go back to previous decks and use your nanites (if you have any) to buy some med hypos. The replicator on Engineering in the elevator room has them (I think, it's been a very long time since I've played vanilla SS2). Also, the chemicals you are looking for are on the Deck you are on, you just have to find them. You'll also be getting a bunch of cyber modules in that area. I would recommend investing some of them in Standard Weapons. You can also unload the shotguns found on Shotgun Hyprids. You have to loot them, right click them and then click on unload, and then drop them. It's tedious, but you'll have a ton of shotgun ammo.

Put some points into melee weapons so you can fight easy foes without using ammo. I finished the whole game on hard using the wrench, pistol and shotgun. Don't be afraid to run and quicksave but also make hardsaves often incase you get buggered.

Edit: In case you haven't remap the controls. The default is super messed up

@tikicobra: psi is cool in theory, but shouldn't be used at all during your first play through. Focus on weapons first, and hacking second.

System Shock 2 is a punishing title from an era where it was still ok to make games hard. The only reason I got as far as I did was through copious amounts of quicksaving, along with putting a lot of points into regular firearms and hacking.

I went as a full-fledged psi user in the beginning, and Christ is it TOUGH! Having to fight synthetic enemies, your spells are practically useless against them in which you are forced to use armor piercing rounds for guns instead.

One rule of thumb is to always, and I mean ALWAYS, use the wrench. It's the weapon every class should use as SS2 is all about resource management. You must save up on as much as you can.

Buy a Sidewinder.

I wish they'd just make another System Shock. Nothing fancy like Bioshock Infinite's visuals, music etc. Just a 30 man development team sans Levine(He's too far up his own ass by now). Bring back some of the people who worked on SS2. Just as a side-project for 14 months or so with the focus on gameplay and story.

Levine can just go ahead and make another game with extremely shallow gameplay and leave that project alone. Maybe he can make a game where his other dimension past self goes to the future to kill him to prevent BS:I. from ever existing.

use sidewinder to manipulate easily. you will not stand it if you don't use sidewinder trust me.

So I think I'm gonna restart and specialize in guns. Psi is becoming very difficult as mechanical enemies become more prominent.