1.5/5 ★ – Pencil_Nexus's review of System Shock 2.

I wish to God this game was fucking good. I'll start with the positives. I like the horror elements of the game and the RPG elements that it presents. There aren't a lot of games with this level of role-play with first person gameplay, which is neat for its time. Unfortunately, the whole game is a mess. The level design is genuinely awful, all the areas are samey with identical visual designs and corridors. Enemy designs are abhorrent, with many being spammed at the player, with ridiculous amounts of health, tracking, and damage. The rpg elements itself, while neat, is drip fed in the beginning, making it a slog to get through, until half way through where they just throw upgrades at you. Where is the balance in regards to enemies and upgrades? Durability in the game is a joke, weapons break arbitrarily and at such a fast rate. As an FPS, it has aged like milk, on top of the durability offense, it has unresponsive and unsatisfactory gunplay that has such high level requirements that it takes half way through the game to get a decent weapon. The narrative is probably the best part, but getting to experience that after hours of tedious, boring, and aggravating gameplay doesn't save this. It's a tedious, poorly aged, slog of a game that is in desperate need of a remaster. Maybe streamline a lot of the outdated game design elements with modern sensibilities. It would genuinely be a great game... wait it already exists. I'll just go play Bioshock.