you can never please everybody.

I spent most of my credits on medkits from the machine early in the level, when I got to that part. It took me a few tries to get past the enemies in the tight corridor and get into the boss chamber. I found the nerve endings to take out the spawning brains. There are like 3 of them. Ended up running back down the corridor jumping into the pool so I could hide from last few of the brains, and snipe them behind cover. Then it was a matter of ignoring the rumblers, and using my grenade launcher on the Many, while strafing around.

My biggest problem with the brains is that they seemed to hit me fairly well no matter how much strafing I was doing. Strafing was too slow, and running I could keep away from them but it made it more difficult to find time to fire on the core. So getting rid of them first made the section much easier.

I still had plenty of medkits left over for the last area and final boss.

the trick is to change the direction when you hear that the projectile has been launched (zzzap sound).

I think the biggest issue is when that area has full spawned number of brains. It's 4-5 IIRC? It's not always easy to tell which direction the shots are coming from (I don't have access to EAX surround sound), and in such tight areas I found it hard to dodge. Can't recall if that enemies projectile had splash damage or not.

It was much easier once I got rid of the nerves so that they couldn't spawn anymore.

Yeah, isn't the game actually not completable without hacking?

You have to hack a vending machine to get a particular item. If you don't have the skill or an ICE Pick to hack it, you're out of luck. Game over.

I think you can defeat the final boss without hacking, though. It's just one option of defeating her, right?

you also have to be completely out of cyber modules, and no cyber modules must exist in all the accessible levels. same for ice picks. while it is possible to get into such situation, this is an extremely edge case scenario - and as long as you have a couple of older saves, should be completely correctable with minimal playtime loss. same thing with the final boss battle.

and if you really were clumsy enough to get yourself stuck, you can still google for cheats and summon some cyber modules and nanites.

While you could argue the very nature of the villain could imply the usefulness of investing hacking, fact is, you don't have to use hacking. It just makes the fight far easier.

There is the replicator holding the Sympathetic Resonator, but an ICE pick takes care of that. While I agree that it creates a potentially unwinnable situation and is thus an example of bad design, I would imagine most resourceful players kept at least one at hand at all times for emergencies like that. Potentially easy solution would have been to stash a pick somewhere on the Command Deck.

As for difficulty... I unfortunately had to play SS2 on Normal mode as it was my first first-person game with a keyboard and mouse setup so I was expecting to be utterly useless, though it was much easier than anticipated. So I speak mainly in regard to console gaming or slow paced PC games, but typically I find games most enjoyable and satisfying when they are at their most difficult, providing that difficulty is well thought out.

I believe that there is, in fact, an ICE-Pick on the Von Braun's bridge, in the conference room. So you get it along with the Ops Override card, backtrack through pre-explored territory on Ops and Engineering, and then you're sent to the shuttle bay where you can use your brand spankin' new ICE-Pick. Nothing to stop you from using it on the rocket turret en route, of course, but this is a respectable effort to make sure the game will remain winnable.

Fair enough then, can't ask for much more than that.

Nah, it's a plenty challenging game. You said yourself that the final battle requires skills and/or inventory items you may or may not have taken the time to invest in over the course of the game. Challenge. And it certainly does hint that hacking is important: The entire game is about conservation. Early on you learn that ICE-picks are invaluable and good things are often hidden behind computer locks.

It is challenging in other ways, too-- extremely accurate and aggressive enemy encounters, weapon degradation, huge non-linear levels.

I'm sorry that you had such a negative experience with the game, but it's not the game's fault, it's yours.

Well yes, if you play in a sub-optimal way, you will get a lot of challenge. And the game doesn't really inform you of what is the optimal way - that's the problem. I just happened to pick all the right choices on my first playtrough and the game was pretty easy even after pushing the difficulty up - on subsequent playtroughs it was pretty easy just because I already knew what to expect and what to prepare for.

Have you -seen- my avatar? Do you think it reflects negative experience? :D