As as a System Shock fan girl I have to tell you that I recently did a play through of SS2 on Imposible with no hacking skill at all. I did a Marine with Energy weapons, Exotic weapons, Maintinence and Research. It was a little difficult at the start with no hacking but starting with a laser pistol gives you something to deal with turrets that can't be avoided. It was also hard towards the end when facing multiple rumblers in tight spaces. I agree though that the balance was totally messed up for some skills and weapons and in that play through it showed through the fact that a pistol (using the base 1 skill point I got at the start as a Marine) on burst with anti-personel rounds was my most effective weapon against rumblers and dropped them in seconds.TheMadDoctorsCat said:As the resident "System Shock" fanboy, I nonetheless have to agree with Yahtzee on "SS2". The "repair" skill was absolutely useless, for example, whereas the "Maintainance" and "Hack" ones were essential. (I'd love to know if anybody has ever beaten SS2 on "Hard" or "Impossible" difficulty without putting at least three points into "Hack" early on.)
The "Exotic Weapons" skill was useless until the Operations level (almost halfway through the game) because you didn't get the crystal shard until that point. Heavy and Energy weapons were extremely specialised, whereas the "Standard" weapons included the two best weapons in the game, easily - the versatile pistol and the assault rifle - and also used the most plentiful ammunition. Standard weapons could be used on robots and annelids equally effectively (unlike any other weapon class). Yeah, it's fun one-shotting the Heart of the Many with a viral proliferator, but there's really no practical use for it before that point.
And I've only just recently got used to the psi-amp, after several playthroughs. It's a bit fiddly to use and you need to know what powers are useful and what are useless. The healing ones sound useful, for example, but there are so many health pick-ups throughout the game that they turn out to be something of a waste of cybernetic modules.
And stats? There's zero point in having anything more than three agility or endurance points, even on the very hard difficulty levels. Strength is essential for the heavy weapons, armour, melee, and just basically carrying stuff about. Psi is either essential or useless depending on your build. And Cyb is essential for a decent hacker build (which as has already been established is just about any useful build in the game.)
The end "Boss fights" in SS2 were definatly the weakest part of the game over all.
I'm guessing you haven't even played the game at all and are just judging it based on reviews you've read because it's really not that much like Mass Effect at all. A more common comparison I've seen people who've actually played it make is to liken it to Deus Ex (part of the reason why Yahtzee mentions it in comparison).Gralian said:First off, i don't know why you chose to harp on a very mediocre game to begin with - Alpha Protocol failed across the board and it's an atrocious example to use for dissection, especially when it feels like a poor man's Mass Effect
Alpha Protocol is a relly inconsistent game that goes from being awesome and comparable to Deus Ex one moment (when you are sneeking around the levels picking your paths and stealth killing everyone) to a God aweful mess that's just frustrating the next (Boss fights and other forced combat situations). Yahtzee is harping on this game because if it wasn't for the Boss fights and a few other bugs and balance issues (SMG skill, lol) it could have been a really great game.