Playing this game again without having to go through modding it myself has been nothing short of wonderful. I have a few hours into it so far, but there appears to be an issue that, to be fair, did exist in the original game, but it seems exacerbated in this version.
Specifically, the movement of melee enemies like The Hybrid, the first enemy you encounter in the game, are highly erratic. In the OG their movement was quite scuffed because they would move toward the player to attack, then use super saiyan movement to quickly move out of melee range when you swung at them. That problem is now much, much worse. It happens more often and that glitchy movement is faster than it was originally. I hope Night Dive can fix this for good because it's so dang jarring.
With that, it's really only one small issue that I've discovered so far since the rest of the game has been great.
SS2 Veteran here.
I'm going to make my final review once I have completed this version of the game.
Pretty decent so far. I want to give this game 5 stars.
Problem:
No quick save nor are there many auto saves. Maybe the Devs thought this as a problem in CO-OP mode, however, it should definately be included in the Single Player mode. Too many deaths and repeated steps over and over again because I forgot to save my game. Albeit, I'm on Impossible Mode.
I'll update this review as soon as I've finished the game properly. I might have some additional issues to report to the Developers.
When that all is said SS2EE is a proper GOG, no doubt about it.
Remastering a groundbreaking title like System Shock 2 - a game whose plot, UI and RPG-FPS hybrid mechanics now exist in some form in almost every FPS today (even Call of Duty!) - is a no-brainer. Granted, this remaster is little more than the base game with a handful of the most popular community mods but the addition of previously unseen concept art, achievements and controller support make this remaster THE definitive way to play System Shock 2 in 2025 especially on a console.
To mod-happy people like myself the remaster doesn't do much that I couldn't do with an hour of free time. (I'm not being hyperbolic; a quick check in the game menu shows the mods that Nightdive used, one of which is the popular System Shock 2 Community Patch!) That said, plenty of people don't want to deal with the potential headache of mods and the problems they can bring - including the dreaded CTD (Crash To Desktop). This remaster does away with so much of the hassle to bring a 26-year-old game to a state of usability and, since it now has controller support built-in, can finally be played on consoles and deck computers with ease. (That alone makes this a worthy product in my mind.)
As stated above, the remaster also includes video trailers for the original SS2 along with concept art, music and sound effects. This is content that was previously unavailable to most people without some serious digging in half-dead forums.
Sure, the game has a few mods slapped on it to make in run well in 2025 while updating the visuals and animations to something better than the original (not that that is an especially high bar to reach); sure, a guy like me could replicate most of this remaster in less than a day - and I still recommend it anyway. It opens the game up to an entirely new audience of gamers while allowing a 1999 game to be playable in 2025 hassle-free. This is THE definitive way to play SS2 - at least until the remake comes out.
Nightdive needs to stop with their half-baked UX for Gamepad/Console players. Either commit fully to something usable and convenient, or don't even bother.
When the System Shock Remake got delayed for console releases (just like now with SS2!) I was hoping they'd fix the _awful_ inventory and control design for controller players. Even after the latest patch, it is still terrible.
Nightdive has had 25 years worth of games pushing this genre forward, mainly from games that were directly inspired more from THIS GAME than the original System Shock. But they've felt that console players must have a comparably clunky and slow experience as KB+M players and be bogged down with menu-first minutiae.
I'll give one main example of frustration:
Switching ammo types.
During combat, this is outright impossible, due to how slow it is to actually: find the right ammo, DRAG IT to your weapon, and then PUT THE OLD AMMO BACK into your inventory.
This is an issue because the inventory menu is open in REAL TIME.
So either, you already know the enemies you're going to face and switch accordingly, or you YOLO it with sub-optimal ammunition, which could be dire depending on difficulty settings and playstyle.
This could have been solved numerous ways, without redesigning any sort of UI:
- Double-tap the reload button to switch.
- Bind D-PAD Left and Right to context-aware switching: if the Psi amp is equipped, cycle through Psi powers. If a weapon is equipped, cycle through ITS ASSIGNED ammo types.
- Re-bind D-PAD Up and Down to switch ammo types, and have playing recently-looted audio logs bound to holding Select, like every spiritual successor to this game does.
Assuming you have inventory space available, just do it!
There are many other examples I could pick, but am bumping up against the character limit.
Controller issues aside: Wow. What a game!
I've bounced off playing the original many times because I hate KB+M, but I can definitely see why this game is so beloved.
