I just beat the game yesterday, and it was an incredibly rewarding experience through and through. It's impressive that a 17-year-old game can still manage to create a terrifying atmosphere and keep you on the edge of your seat even with its low-polygon (yet crisp) graphics. It pulls it off with an intriguing story, great sound design, a dynamic music score, and a desperate lack of resources. You've been sent to a spacecraft to investigate the mysterious elimination of the people aboard it after they touched base with an alien planet, clued in by a daisy chain of voice-acted audio records scattered around that the crew left behind. All the while, you're conspiring with or against some sort of artificial intelligences. The game imparts an undeniable sense of desolation that makes it all so eery. You hear nearby enemies moaning and taunting you before your see them. The music changes to a rapid drum-and-bass track when shit is going down. And, most of all, your inventory always feels so damn precariously empty. The game rewards you for exploring the ship, which you'll do anyways because every bullet or health hypo you find feels like Christmas. You need to be thrifty to make it through the harder difficulties which is a large part of the atmosphere. Every enemy you meet takes a toll on your inventory and you'll realize the real threat of the game is the slow attrition of your supplies. You have a variety of skills and stats to invest points in throughout the game from the classic STR/END/AGI/etc stats to weapon specialties like Energy/Heavy/Exotic and Psionic abilities which act like spells. You'll need to specialize if you plan on making a dent in end-game enemies, but you'll only be able to max out a couple paths. Expect to be save-scrumming on Hard or Impossible. If you don't like that, then play on Normal. I beat it on Hard but I save-scrummed so much that I should've went with Impossible. It took me 19 hours to beat the game.
