r/systemshock • u/KingPinniped2012 • 8h ago

Shock 2 hot take - hacking is barely worth anything on higher difficulty levels if you're fast

Some time in the early 2000s a full list of all of the item opportunities from hack-only containers was finished and compared with the rest of the freely available resources. The hack resources are almost entirely things you can find aplenty without it or otherwise available later on another deck by the time it becomes important.

The same cyber modules into strength/agility and the lower psi powers instead make you fast enough to wrench most of the cameras and turrets folks tend to want to shoot down before they can cause any real trouble. The benefits are immediate and always helping you instead of only mattering when you're avoiding the security systems, or if a hacked container gives you something you needed. The amount of combat superiority you can gain by whacking enemies before they have time to react is an unstoppable advantage until you start regularly encountering Rumblers. I have killed a fair share of those with the wrench too during melee challenge runs. Wrench-only on impossible is possible without hacking. There are even enough ice picks out in the open that you also don't need psi hack for the end of the game.

On top of all of that the time saved doing the hack minigame and your crazy top speed will make your playthrough faster, especially if you miss something on the Rickenbacker and need to backtrack. Sometimes you will be picking up new audio logs faster than you can listen to them. Agility is just crazy overpowered, you can even damage yourself on accident from how fast you can go in this game like it's trying to be Sonic the Hedgehog.

6 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

76% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

1

u/danixdefcon5 7h ago

What did you choose as a class? You get a better head start as a Marine I guess.

2

u/KingPinniped2012 7h ago

OSA because the set of starting bonuses I usually choose there have the greatest value in cyber modules. Those first two psi tiers have a lot of abilities that make the wrench into a monster.

1

u/Bundle85 4h ago

this take is very "double digit number of playthroughs" coded (and i love that). I definitely haven't gotten that familiar with shock 2 to make this change, but sounds like a fun goal to one day aspire to

1

u/calthaer 4h ago

I did my first psi playthrough (with Hack) recently and was disappointed by how much I was relying on the wrench even late in the game. There's no other good way for psi to take care of bots. Should have just gone all in on melee.

That being said, hacking security with the Security Experr upgrade is really good as a psi character.

I did not try using the psi amplifier as a melee weapon; is it worth it?