>>15371758
System Shock 2 is pretty fun, especially with the psychic powers, but it's caught in a weird position especially because of those powers too.
Apparently the first game had your upgrades be strictly new abilities and powers. You didn't got +1 to Guns that made you better at using regular weapons, you instead got the ability to use them or use heavier ones directly.
You know how every weapon in SS2 has a skill requirement of 1/3/6 to be used? It'd be like your upgrades are just unlocking that tier of weapons to use instead.
This seems like an oversimplification but on the other hand, the abiltiies you got changed the game substancially when adquired while another point to a skill might not have the same impact, and some of those abiltiies were pretty interesting like having 360º vision.
There's also the fact that the first one is strictly cyberpunk so no "magic" abiltiies. It's grounded entirely on your weapons and cybernetic augmentations, so fans of the first one really didn't apreciate how the second one had an entire segment of it's gameplay dedicated to PSI, which is made even worse because of the investment it needs to be decent too, even as simply a support, or that it overlaps a lot of the game itself, with several ranged abilties, hacking and a strong melee weapon tied to it and keeping a lot of the cool powers in it's tree.
It's almost a reskin where instead of a cybernetic power that uses energy to work, you use a psychic power that requires psyenergy, but since a lot of players never invest enough into psionics to make it actually viable, they never believe it's worth the cost compared to everything else.
Then you have Bioshock 1&2 (and there's nothing else, shut up) that are essentially a streamlined System Shock 2 but more oriented towards first person action, the second one having the better gameplay and the first one having the better story.
In terms of gameplay and being an RPG, SS2 is better than either, but it doesn't look as flashy and it's combat can feel quite slow and underwhelming compared to the spectacle that some fights turn out to be in those games.
So in the end, you have SS2 trapped between being a reboot of the gameplay in the first one and a better RPG than it's successors, while having none of the crazy stuff that was in the first and none of the flashy fast paced combat of the successors, but having better controls, HUD and some more depth than any of the others.
It's still a pretty fun game to play and try different builds, but don't forget to try the others too.
Also you can check out nuPrey since it's essentially SS2+1 too, including being hated for mostly the same reasons as well.