Gorgeous style, unique game mechanics, and a short run-time. While the game is well polished, I felt it fails to leave much of an impact. It's enjoyable, but only exciting for a scant sliver of its encounters. The mechanics escalate very gradually, and there's no real penalty for failure save for a stat page. I for instance "died" only 6 times. I also feel that the options for charge and strike blades are poorly balanced. I never switched off of the health-gain charge weapon, and only migrated from the chain-shock striker after I acquired the wide/split-shot striker.
I wish the connection between the creature and sandstorm had been better explored. As is it's just left quite vague.
I enjoyed my time spent in the mountain, though I'm unlikely to make a return trip.

Player movement is really good in this one. Jumps inherit momentum, and it's often possible to dart across the platforming courses with impromptu shortcuts.
Combat is serviceable. Being adequate compared to its genre ancestors, though not nearly on the same level as some of its contemporaries such as Spark.
Aesthetically and narratively this whole outing felt like an interactive animated family film. Quite cozy overall.
Albeit the polish is flaky here and there. I ran into a couple of sections of building that lacked collision, facial animations could occasionally feel ill suited to the spoken lines, and the ending felt a tad rushed.
Despite the short runtime I almost felt like it was too long. Likely due to how the game does little to escalate and explore its mechanics. About two thirds of the way through it felt like I was in a repeat of past themes. Thankfully the experience is short, so I'm left looking back at another pleasant bite-sized game to recommend.

Holy shit it has bullet drop.
Loading times and screen tearing (fixed by enabling v-sync via .ini edit) aside, damn this is so cool so far. A tacticool-retro-fps.
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Simple magazine management, mantling, unlockable bullet time, and more cool stuff I won't spoil. Also the HUD can be disabled diegetically, nice touch. There's options to modularly reconfigure the difficulty, and also a toggle for the style of bullet spread you'd like to play with. Crosshairs can also be disabled, and this is the first FPS I've seen to actually pair meaningful Aim-Down-Sights with such an option. Hipfiring and ADS both have a place in your toolset, which is a balance I've been dying to see met in an FPS.
Two chapters in, and it's safe to say I really dig this.
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Nearing the end of the campaign, I maintain my position that this is a well designed game. However I'm starting to run into more consistent crashing. I think the black blob enemy giblets might be overloading the engine. Previously reloading or transitioning between levels would sometimes throw a memory access violation, but no progress was ever lost.
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Artistically the entire production is cast in somber tones. Most of the OST is laced with melancholy, offsetting the extreme brutality on screen as the mangled bodies of the enemy gynoids lay weeping in the aftermath of your firefights.
Excellent game, deserving of a higher score if stability is improved.
I eagerly await the sequel.
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If you're seeing a lot of occlusion errors as you turn corners, you can try adding this:
[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.AllowOcclusionQueries=0
to the end of Engine.ini in %localappdata%\the_citadel\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\
It's a common UE4 graphical issue.

Sensaround, at least v3, crashes the game hard. The OST definitely sounds different in this version, because DOSbox has Adlib emulation out of the box. Leading to a less harsh OST overall. There might also be some weird timing issues too. There's ways to reconfigure the the MIDI playback to use a different soundfont, but DOSbox "just werks".
I almost miss the weird DOS controls tbh. I'll probably just play through Classic again next time and use the rebinding menu for a slightly more convenient layout. Mouselook isn't actually necessary to enjoy System Shock imo. The faster turning radius enabled by mouslook also actually tangibly changes the tension and pacing of the game.

This is an adequate way to experience System Shock 1, but in its current state it can't truly be considered the definitive version to play.

After being severely disappointed that I am presently unable to achievement whore in the System Shock remake due to technical difficulties, I decided to revisit the original, albeit with the un-enhanced control scheme this time. Oh boy, this is uh ... kinda not that fun. Especially on Combat 3. [Future Nilichi here: Skill Issue.]
Playing System Shock blind for the first time has a lot of value as a pure exploration and "pay-attention-to-every-piece-of-text" game. However now that I know where everything is, all that I'm left with for this 3,2,3,3 run is a lot of aggravation at obnoxious highly damaging and sometimes respawning hitscan enemies. I now see why this game only became a cult hit, it is actually physically painful to play in its unaltered DOS form. [FYI I actually had to reduce DOSBOX CPU cycle usage down to 40%, otherwise Shodan was invincible since her attack logic runs on a frame dependent timer.]

Anyway this has been a wonderful refresher on how Immersive Sim design principles can be implemented outside of an ARPG context. Believe it or not there are multiple solutions to many of the roadblocks ahead. I realized after I spent far too long on the first mastermind-wire-puzzle that I could have just used my sprinting velocity off of some ramped geometry to clear a pit. Though what I find more interesting is how ammunition management and player movement are handled. Your avatar can lean, crouch, and go prone. Which you're expected to make use of to minimize your hitbox to RNG your way through encounters. Firearms often accept multiple different types of ammunition, and loading is handled by physically moving the mouse around. You're still just clicking buttons in a UI, but this small change leads to a much greater sense of physicality for your actions.
Grenades, finnicky as they are, effectively require you to reach into your inventory and then manually toss them one at a time.
While System Shock doesn't have as many obviously abuseable player abilities that facilitate a higher degree of emergent problem solving as in its descendants, the base philosophy of providing the player with a toolset to forge their own path forwards is very much present here. The simulationist and immersion focused mindset that guided LGS are clear in how players are expected to piece together their objectives from scattered audio logs, loose pieces of paper, and the occasional email beamed into their cranium. Dropped items persist throughout level transitions and corpses linger. Actually come to think of it, with the way resource management is handled along with the pacing of combat, this is a Survival Horror game from before Survival Horror was called Survival Horror.

My main issues really are how clumsy it can feel to actually use the QWERTASDFGZXCVB movement bindings to direct the Hacker. Yes that is actually what they're using by default instead of WASD or ESDF. It's an extension of SZXC, with keys for turning, leaning, angling, and recentering the main view, along with height-stance control, all arranged to be within reach of the left hand. Honestly if I could look up and down with the mouse wheel it probably wouldn't even be that bad. I think you can actually rebind the keys in dosbox, but I'm here to suffer.

Second main issue, which is shared with Enhanced Edition, is how this is yet another game with an inverse difficulty curve ... kinda. The regeneration bays, they're unlockable vita chambers. Or rather vita chambers and all "checkpoints-that-respawn-you-with-all-defeated-and-damaged-enemies-persisting" descend from System Shock regen bays. Anyway this allows for the developers to expect you to deal with some incredibly dickish hitscan ambushes. I must have played SSEE on combat level 2 for my first run, because holy shit this is brutal. The Reactor is especially obnoxious. I can see how to trivialize it in hindsight by grabbing equipment around the station in a certain order, but there's a real chance that first time players will have an awful time down there. Now, I think this design is kinda interesting when you're trying to beat the 7hr time limit, and first time players can experience the novelty of being able to explore more of the station after bruteforcing the encounters with the regen bays online. However for people that already know the general layout of the game very well, I've found it rapidly devolves into frustrating tedium. There's also some weird hitbox jank that's a lot more noticeable to me now. Melee seems to be affected by how you angle your view, which is ... weird.

About audio in this version of System Shock; unless I'm mistaken, there have been less abrasive tones than in the Enhanced Edition. Something that really stands out to me with the mixing is that large mechanical doors and moving platforms feel too loud. I think the DOS version of the soundtrack sounds slightly nicer than in enhanced edition by default for some reason, but I'm not sure. The adaptive score can be rather harsh depending on how the MIDI messages are being interpreted but here they've been quite nice.

Anyway this game is fundamentally really cool and should be played by all hardcore PC addicts, but esoteric UX prevents making a general recommendation.

We don't talk about the autobomb maze.

The 1.2 update is a fucking disgrace. Nightdive delayed the release of the update by several months to coincide with some console bullshit, and it turns out the PC version of 1.2 wasn't even fit to be shipped as evidenced by the fact that the game is now even buggier than before. They stated this update was done MONTHS ago. I guess all those months weren't long enough to do any QA.
All previous saves are now broken. Dropping the default melee pipe can allegedly crash the game. HUD opacity is broken. Key rebinding access is still only partially provided. All GOG achievements are broken. Access to the builds required to revert to a previous version in GOG Galaxy has been REMOVED for some unknowable reason. Cutscene subtitles disregard user configuration. And to top it all off I've heard that the revamped Shodan fight which was terrible at release is now somehow even worse. I wouldn't be surprised if the random crashes that drove me to give up my last 3,3,3,3 run are still in the game.
Great fucking work Nightdive. Both Steam and GOG forums are full of threads complaining about bugs.
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I want to love the remake but it's riddled with so many small irritations, both technical and tonal, and coupled with Nightdive's scummy behavior in the years leading up to the release that my view of the project is repeatedly soured. The remake is so frustratingly close to being excellent.
- - -
Yeah the new Shodan fight is fucking terrible.
Bugs I ran into in this playthrough:
Vaporize All hotkey vaporizes scrap.
Z-fighting on elevators during transitions.
Enemy giblets frequently display graphical errors.
HUD Opacity cannot be configured.
Cutscene subtitles cannot be disabled.
Map markers cannot be placed.
Camera map icons sometimes persist on the minimap after camera destruction.
Damage sound effect from getting hit by a plant mutant's attack persisted until I reloaded from the title screen.
The Executive level railgun disappeared as I picked it up. The interstitial animation played out, but there was no visible model of the weapon. The railgun was nowhere to be found thereafter. Eventually I was able to acquire one of the later instances of a railgun, but this still isn't something that should have happened.

Improvements:
The level 7 trap finally kills the player after all this time.
That's it. That's the only improvement after a year.
You know what, since all achievements are currently bugged, I'm not even going to suffer through the 1.2 Shodan fight. They had a year to implement a healthbar and post boss monologue autosave. Yet somehow failed to realize how crucial such features are. For reference, the current 1.2 final boss is a long enemy gauntlet where you only have access to one shitty weapon at a time and cannot see your healthbar. There are no checkpoints. There are no health pickups. It is long. It is boring. There is an unskippable boss intro. I'm not willing to waste any more of my time on this shit that is somehow worse than the 1994 Shodan encounter. I'm marking this as done.

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Insufferably terrible Chthon fight. I went to both the left and right teleporters trying to find the activation button, only to realize it was blending into the ground in front of Chthon. To make matters worse, these teleporters altered themselves to no longer give access to the side paths to reach the pillar buttons. Meaning I had to wade through lava or rocket jump over and over to get the pillars into position. I did not have enough resources to do this, and kept getting instagibbed by Chthon so many times that I activated godmode for the first time in my gaming career. Fucking terrible way to end an already more frustrating than usual mapset. I can't be bothered to find the secret level. This would be a neat couple of levels if the bossfight wasn't godawful.

This would be quite good if it wasn't so fussy and buggy. I had to reload the final encounter because the boss clipped into a slope and was unable to progress to the next phase.
Music only played in the overworld, while the dungeon was dead silent. I ended up playing some dark ambient recommended by a Quaddicted poster instead.
The visuals are great, and encounters are distinctive due to some tweaked and new enemies. However I feel that overall the combat encounters were slightly lackluster compared to some of the stellar levels I played earlier today.