After finishing both games, I can't decide which one I liked better. I liked the pacing and figuring out how to do things in 1, but the combat wasn't super good and kind of fell into that "Where am I getting hit fr- Oh, I'm dead" type of game. I think I preferred the setting of 1 as well. Cyberspace I hated at first, but once I got used to it I really liked it. The puzzles were also way better than the ones in two (If you can even call the match 3 game a puzzle). The world felt a bit more interactable.

2 had a more interesting(?) story, and I haven't replayed it on a Psi build (And want to) so maybe that alone makes it the better game; I only would replay 1 to play on the 4/4/4/4 difficulty.

But, there wasn't nearly the enemy variety that the first game had. I liked the security system more in this game, the 1st game it felt more like a bonus point thing to get 0% security to open the SHODAN locked doors. The combat was better, but weapon maintenance sucks (It's negligible with some maintenance skill but still irritating). The re-spawning enemies sometimes felt a bit too much, I think instead I'd have preferred some levels to have a giant security robot that patrols the area slowly that can be avoided, rather than just having endless hybrids and protocol robots. The game also felt a little too short, after the Von Braun it quality felt like it dropped.

And the ending was just awful, clearly an afterthought tacked on. I even wrote my own version down to forget about it, genuinely one of the worst endings to any game I have ever played. I read the story of what happened and I felt bad for the lead Developer or whoever's idea got shitcanned for that.

The best way to describe it is that System Shock 2 feels like Starcraft without Brood War. Like it just needs a few more things added to it, the Rickenbacker/Many to be redone, and it would be the perfect game.

SS1 really is a sci fi dungeon crawler. The floors are straight up mazes and typically don't have much adherence to realism, besides from maybe the plant life deck or maintenance areas. It's a really solid game and the CD version does incredible things for the era like the voice logs and transmissions that put its competition to shame. Its good but I don't think it left too much of an impression on me by the ending.

2 is a fucking mess for all the reasons you've already said. The Rickenbacker and Many final stretch is just awful and I never feel bad about resorting to cheats for that total ammo dump at the very end. It gets a lot wrong but I find its ambition, atmosphere and "sense of place" so engaging that it I prefer it to SS1 at the end of the day.

"Immersive Sim" is one of the worst terms ever created. Warren Spector clearly meant it to mean "a really immersive game with lots of different gameplay systems" but nowaways use that term to describe games where each hurdle has a very open-ended solution, like Deus Ex or Hitman. In no way do I think any of the Shock series meets the criteria for what we now call "immersive sims". They're shooters with light RPG elements.

>>11892236
I agree, with your opinion on "immersive sims', I also played through Deus Ex recently and I'm shocked people compare that game to System Shock 2. It's a completely different game, System Shock 2 is closer to Half life than Deus Ex by a long shot.

>>11892225 (OP)
System shock 1 for me, and it's only because I can't stand ss2's horror it's way too fucking scary and I'm being serious!!!

>>11892225 (OP)

I think I enjoyed playing SS1 more.

I liked SS2, but it felt a lot more frantic and panicked; I liked the creeping dread atmosphere of SS1 more and feeling like you had more time to explore.

The big Shodan reveal in 2 was really well done though, and obviously was something they sought to copy in other games like Bioshock, Deus Ex etc. That said - I honestly found Shodan scarier in the first game.

I also hated the weapon maintenance, and it felt to me like the skills tree was a bit needlessly punitive at times (not being able to even use a combat rifle until you had a certain skill etc.) particularly for a game that played more like a shooter most of the time.

In short - SS1 felt like it was clearer as to what it was trying to be, and do.

>>11892490
System Shock 2 was actually much scarier, lol. The cyborg midwives kind of freaked me out.

>>11892567
Shodan wasn't scary in SS2, the Many talking to you was kind of creepy at some points. the SS2 ending was so dogshit. I really liked the common enemy thing with System Shock 2, if I were to make a system shock 3 I'd retcon the ending to SS2 because of how shit it is

>>11892225 (OP)
SS1 easily. The whole point of System Shock was to hew away at the RPG stat bullshit and have everything be determined by the player's immediate actions and the items they use, not stats and number crunching in the background. SS2 I can admire for trying to bring these systems back to make it like Ultima Underworld, but anyone will tell you it's not that well implemented with some pointless bloat (Psy).

And yeah, the ending fucking sucks.
>>11892236
>"Immersive Sim" is one of the worst terms ever created.
Agreed, but it always retarded, even with the definitions Spector laid out.

>>11892617
>The cyborg midwives kind of freaked me out.

That is a good point - I think they're the thing that most people talk about in bringing the more overt horror element, that and a few of the audio logs.

There was still something really unsettling about the silent Shodan in the first game.

>>11892225 (OP)
SS2 all the way, though I agree, the puzzles and the ending suck ass. Also, I found it too similar to Half-Life.

Somebody should make a mod that upgrades the puzzles and brings back cyberspace combat.

>read the story of what happened
wdym?

>>11892567
>I also hated the weapon maintenance
Weapon degradation mechanics have never once added anything to a game.

SS1 is much more impressive. I love how you can smoothly shift your body position instead of having discrete stand/crouch/prone/lean modes. Very few other games have this, if even any.

I just like the Hacker and his smiley face shirt more than a generic soldierman. It's also funny how some of the flavor text in 2 makes it sound like he's regarded as a hero, even though the Citadel incident was his fault to begin with.

>>11893430
It wasn't his fault, it was Edward Diego's. The hacker was just being a criminal and the company (Diego) offered the drop the charges if he used his hacking skill to fumble around with Shodan.

>>11892842
The writer told the FMV maker what the ending was and what he needed to make, and the FMV maker made that piece of shit ending that was completely different than what the writer had in mind. But it was too late to remake the FMV so they had to change the ending to what it is now.

SS2 just feels blatantly unfinished. Out of all the guns, only the pistol, the AR, and the grenade launcher are worth using. Energy weapons are pointless. The BFG thing, the stasis gun, and the worm guns are worse than useless. Similarly, they have 35 psi powers but it's mostly just useless bloat besides the self buffs.
And somehow despite all that, it's still a really good game.

I played both for first time only over the past few weeks. I enjoyed 2 more, although Shodan is a better villain in 1. Felt like she was forced into a background role for most of 2. Enemies felt more varied in 1, but 2 has refined gameplay.

SS1 by a mile
SS2 feels too different from the first game. Which makes sense, seeing as how it originally was not SS2 when development started and that was tacked on later.

>>11893823
>Which makes sense, seeing as how it originally was not SS2 when development started and that was tacked on later.
I didn't know that. Guess that explains a chunk of Citadel station somehow landing on a planet 12 light years away.

>>11892225 (OP)
1 is more challenging and plays much more like a traditional CRPG, while 2 is more immersive and atmospheric and plays more like a proto looter-shooter akin to Deus Ex or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

>>11893823
>it is different therefore bad

>>11894117
1 is more challenging only because of the respawn rate is absolute horseshit. On the flip side, 2 is only difficult because of how the game expects you to have leveled up certain skills throughout the game when you wouldn't otherwise and locks progression based on that.

SS1 was more developed and ambitious. SS1 felt 10-15 years ahead of its time while SS2 felt outdated even when it had just come out.

>>11892236
>"Immersive Sim" is one of the worst terms ever created. Warren Spector clearly meant it to mean "a really immersive game with lots of different gameplay systems" but nowaways use that term to describe games where each hurdle has a very open-ended solution, like Deus Ex or Hitman. In no way do I think any of the Shock series meets the criteria for what we now call "immersive sims".
unlike what the warren spector hating schizo has to say, i don't think he's to blame for this. he clearly meant to describe a design philosophy and retards took it and tried to make it a vidya genre.

2 was far better just for the ambience and setting

>>11894151
I didn't say SS2 is bad. It's just not as good as SS1.

SS1 feels super unique and advanced, even still. SS2 just kinda feels like a 2000s era FPS... which it is.

2 is good but 1 maintains a decent quality throughout the game. While 2's final section is lower quality from the rest of the game

>>11892249
Completely agree with all the anons about "immersive sims", I understand that what Warren was getting at (and he keeps insisting it was Doug Church who came up with the term) was their approach to designing games. It's not a genre. It's a translation of the freedom of ttrpgs to 3d video games. These guys were all tabletop chads and understood that numbers and dice rolls are just tools for adding balance and risk to player decisions, but that playing an rpg is eventually about your decisions, the numbers are just there to keep things engaging. Autists didn't get this and started making rpgs for computers where the numbers are the only thing that matters.
Also, I never heard anything described as "immersive sim" bitd. We called games after what you were doing in the games. Me and my friends called Thief a stealth game or sneak game, we saw it as the next level of what Tenchu had done. Deus Ex was a shooter for us but we unironically believed that this degree of interactivity and player freedom was the future of fps (holy fuck were we wrong about this).