To put it simply and to avoid a long badly written rant... I'm stuck. I'm at a part in the Body of the Many where there's a couple of those jellyfish things and at least one of those charger things. They keep on respawning, and on one try to escape, there was about 3 of them on one side, 2 on the other closing in on me. Currently, I have 17 HP, so they 1-hit kill me(I have heavy combat power on). My problem is really that I can't go anywhere, nor' can I do anything. I've got 3 anti-personnel bullets left, and I used my 3 incendiary grenades to actually get to this idiotic position. It's really a turn-off that this could really happen, and I'm not even sure what the hell to do. Those jellyfish bastards 1-hit kill me, and their projectiles move really fast, so I can't even move out of the way ( also, the fucking hit detection is terrible).

So, some help would be nice. If I have to restart this whole game all over again, I'm installing the game and never playing it again. On the topic of auto-saves, it wouldn't help.

P.S. I actually have this on Steam, but they don't have game-specific forum sections, so I was forced to go here.

Multiple jellyfish monsters? The only place I recall that'd fit that description is the end of the level, for what that's worth. There should be a gigantic pool of water (some of the corpses have ammo), then a corridor packed with Psi Reavers and Rumblers (jellyfish and ugly charging guys), and then a large room with the boss, some more Reavers, and an unlimited supply of Rumblers. So I would advise you to save your ammo for the boss (and the targets that orbit it, have to kill them before it becomes vulnerable) and run, run, run. Once the boss is dead, you can exit through the hole where it used to be.

There should be some ammunition in the corpses in/by the lake, too. At the very least, I recall one of them having a partially-loaded pistol.

if you really got into the boss chamber with 17HP, 3 bullets and no medkits, then yeah, you are dead. and you would be in pretty much any game. if you had at least ten of those bullets, and at least one medkit, you should be able to run around like crazy dodging the projectiles, shoot down those flying stars, destroy the brain, and jump into the passage underneath before you die.

you will have to revert to your latest save - if you do not have any (what?), the autosave should be your life saver.

//share that last save of yours (upload to mediafire/sendspace etc), I will try to to pass the spot, safe right after that, and give it back to you. if you have at least some more ammo that works against organics, it should be doable.

Well, the thing is, I didn't get a lot of Nanites after the machine in the ship, where the chemicals were. Would I still be able to go back, and get some stuff from it?

Also, I assumed it'd be one of those games where saving on one spot would be perfectly fine. I didn't expect me to get completely screwed over. It's not like I waste ammo, too. At this point in time, I have every gun ( if I recall correctly ). I was trying to use the second heavy-weapons gun, but apparently that's just terrible against organics. To sum it up, I'm pretty sure the anti-personnel bullets for the guns are the best (and only?)'tactic' I can approach from here. I suppose I can buy about 3 or 4 more packs from the machine, because I already cleared out the rest of the area.

the point of no return before the boss chamber is the long jump into the pool. if you have a save before that, you can return to the beginning of the Many level where the replicators are. you won't be able to return to the Rickenbacker though.

as for saving, the game has 14 save slots for a reason.

Well, I beat the game. The boss battle was *REALLY* easy. So was the brain part. Only had to restart once ( even then, I probably could of done it, but I just lost a lot of health quickly ). What I did was basically bought about 60-ish bullets for my assault rifle, and about 5 or 6 med packs. I went overboard on the ammo, as for the boss battle, I just used the EMP rifle. Too easy.

Anywho, thanks for your help! I guess I'm not really great at the older games, but this game was great.

told 'ya.

For all the flack it gets, this is why today's shooters come with regenerating health or shields. So that you can't get stuck, and there's no reason to go to interrupt gameplay and go to a previous save just because a battle went poorly.

Don't get me wrong, I like having to manage my resources, health among them, but it's not just a feature they put into games to make them easier. It has a very important and practical purpose. Frustration is the cardinal sin of game design.

if 95% of users are able to manage fine, and 5% are not (too clumsy, too stupid, bad luck, whatever), what do we do? dumb the game down so everybody can play it, and kill the challenge for most of them, or tell the 5% "sorry, you've messed up, try again"?

I'd pick the latter.

Frustration == challenge? Definitely an interesting vocabulary you've got there.

that's the trick, actually - to supply enough challenge without sliding into frustration.

Yep. From the first minute the game challenges you to conserve ammunition, look everywhere for stuff to find, and invest points in hacking. If you failed to notice this until the end, you get the boot. You know what "Survival" means in game terms, right? I'd actually want to know that you expect from a survival game such as System Shock, letting you waste everything but coming back to you in the end, saying "sorry" and filling your inventory? (On a side note, the game actually kinda does, although it's very easy to miss)

Instead of demanding for the game to coddle players such as you and ruin the fun for the actual target audience, why not accept that it was your fault to end up in such a bad situation and try better next time?

Arguments like this one remind me a lof of this brilliant presentation:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-13-what-european-developers-need-to-know-about-american-online-gamers

Although the focus is on American gamers, this easily applies to the general audience of today and might explain why the possibility of complete failure in game was considered a necessity back in 1999 but is now regarded as a shortcoming.

That's not challenge, that's bad design. Nowhere does the game hint on you having to use hacking in the end. Funny the original System Shock was challenging and didn't have 'you have to do this for the game to become ridiculously easy'. SS2 is a mess as far as balance goes, and rarely poses 'challenge' in the right sense of the word - it's either easy or it's frustrating. The game's not exactly a good example of a solid difficulty curve, which is kind of sad as the original game was balanced enough (not that much, but it pulled it off much better than the second game. Yes, that is because the second game implements RPG skill progression. Then again, I have never really liked this shift precisely for the reasons stated above.) I would continue, but:

Pretty much that. I do believe that SS2 just didn't do very well in that department.

well, most of the gamers and game reviewers out there seem to disagree.