A remarkable precursor to what is now a beloved niche genre. System Shock has plenty of rough edges and it's certainly an ordeal to use the original controls, but the resulting challenge and variety is still fairly rewarding.
It definitely takes some time to get your bearings and understand how to navigate the world. Cyberspace in particular is miserable until you can get a grip on what the objectives are. Even then, it's very fortunate that the cyberspace sections are relatively brief.
But the general exploration, resource collection, enemy encounters, and gradual storytelling through audio logs makes for an atmospheric and unsettling experience (albeit falling a little shy of real horror tone). Audio logs are foundational towards the actual objectives that progress the story. Figuring out the correct sequence of locations to visit and actions to perform based on diegetic instructions makes the game unfold in a natural and believable way despite the haphazard path it takes around the station.
SHODAN is regarded as a true classic of video game antagonists, and while I think a huge part of that is attributed to the excellent and unsettling voice manipulation that characterizes her sound, I also love her unrepentant egomania. Her motivations rarely seem more complicated than "because I can and I want to", which imparts a sense of horror that would be lost if she had any degree of moral intention. Her gloating and monologuing could have easily become annoying if overused, but they were deployed exactly the right amount.
I've not played the remake, but I have watched a good chunk of it; while the modern remake brings some interesting ideas, elaborations, and design adjustments, I think it also loses some subtlety in its characterization of both SHODAN and Citadel Station. The graphical and narrative elisions of the original game stand up to scrutiny, in my opinion, and still provide something rich and interesting.
I even found the legacy control scheme to be productive, because it forced me to be more tactical and resourceful rather than relying on reflexes. That said, if you wanted to use the free-look support in the Enhanced Edition, I absolutely wouldn't blame you. It's a cool game that's worth seeing one way or another, so don't let that get in the way.
It definitely takes some time to get your bearings and understand how to navigate the world. Cyberspace in particular is miserable until you can get a grip on what the objectives are. Even then, it's very fortunate that the cyberspace sections are relatively brief.
But the general exploration, resource collection, enemy encounters, and gradual storytelling through audio logs makes for an atmospheric and unsettling experience (albeit falling a little shy of real horror tone). Audio logs are foundational towards the actual objectives that progress the story. Figuring out the correct sequence of locations to visit and actions to perform based on diegetic instructions makes the game unfold in a natural and believable way despite the haphazard path it takes around the station.
SHODAN is regarded as a true classic of video game antagonists, and while I think a huge part of that is attributed to the excellent and unsettling voice manipulation that characterizes her sound, I also love her unrepentant egomania. Her motivations rarely seem more complicated than "because I can and I want to", which imparts a sense of horror that would be lost if she had any degree of moral intention. Her gloating and monologuing could have easily become annoying if overused, but they were deployed exactly the right amount.
I've not played the remake, but I have watched a good chunk of it; while the modern remake brings some interesting ideas, elaborations, and design adjustments, I think it also loses some subtlety in its characterization of both SHODAN and Citadel Station. The graphical and narrative elisions of the original game stand up to scrutiny, in my opinion, and still provide something rich and interesting.
I even found the legacy control scheme to be productive, because it forced me to be more tactical and resourceful rather than relying on reflexes. That said, if you wanted to use the free-look support in the Enhanced Edition, I absolutely wouldn't blame you. It's a cool game that's worth seeing one way or another, so don't let that get in the way.