Feeling overwhelmed! Need some guidance.

You do need to backtrack to different floors. More than I'd like tbh.

Following the advice of other redditors, I used the central room on the maintenance floor to stash anything I didn't want to carry. There are storage boxes and a recycler next to the big maintenance elevator which links to most of the areas you need to get to early on. It turned out to be good advice.

You can manually drop waypoints on the map as a reminder of any locked doors/equipment you come across but need to find a key/item for and come back to.

Best of luck!

Damn this image makes me wanna go play the game a 4th time.

You will also unlock the respawn point sometime soon, it makes it so if you do die you respawn making it feel less punishing, even so I still suggest saving often it is possible to soft lock yourself if you get into certain situations without enough resources.

The quadrant layout is helpful - you start to remember what is in each quadrant

All the levels are pretty much the same size as in the medical pavillion. Some are smaller, some are tiny but none are bigger than this level (makes sense, it's a space maze, it cannot be that huge). The game never goes open world.

System Shock remake is a 1/1 remake with certain tweaks and changes but overall, it plays as in 1994. That means 0 hand holding.

The exploration seems overwhelming at the beggining but it's not that bad. You just need to be aware of what you're doing plus take notes because if you don't do it, you will be aimlessly wondering around.

Wait till ya get to engineering. Going to be a great time in there!

Floor 1 - Finished medical. I’m glad I stuck with it. This game is awesome.

I love the medical level has a load of shortcuts you open up as you progress. You take the long way round and you often loop back by unlocking doors from the other side that were initially closed near the start. It’s great. Almost fire link shrine esque.

What initially feel like labyrinthian levels full of locked doors and traversing hazards at the start fully open up by the time you finish them. I hope all the levels are like this.

I’m also getting all the cameras which I’m led to believe massively reduces if not completely eliminates enemy respawns.

Rather than spam the sub with posts I’ll update this one with my progress. I’m invested now. Get to the next level and immediately greeted by four zombie dudes. lol time to call it a day for now. Can’t wait to continue this.

Just listen to the audio logs you've found. They contain information on where you're supposed to go. Also, whenever you find something noteworthy that you're not quite sure what to do with, make a marker on the map. You can even add notes to the markers, so I disagree with the notion that you need pen and paper to complete the game.

For whatever reason I could never get the markers to work on the PS5 version. I kept up pretty well though without it or making notes. I’m more naturally inclined I guess with direction. Yes paying attention to audio logs definitely helps more than you think. Emails too. Reminds me of a lot games of the past. This one definitely takes the cake on big and winding maps. The shortcuts you’ll find make it a lot easier to navigate and you’ll start to remember things.

Abuse the new waypoint system. Being able to plop down a marker any time you see a weird item, or machine, or locked door is a godsend

One of the most valuable upgrades you can get is the SenseAround. It's in a radiation barrel filled room right next to the Medical CPU's entrance, on a corpse. It will mark objects around you. Everything has its own icon, ESPECIALLY ammo and logs.

While it's activated, it's slowly drains energy, but it's absolutely worth it. It will help you find items that are harder to see, like key cards or data sticks.

It gets progressively worse and then better

Iirc, Medical is smaller when compared to some of the further levels. It'll get slightly easier, once you get one specific item that helps you explore levels faster, but other than that, yes, it persist troughout the game

I finished this game. Loved it. Never want to touch it again

You keep track by writing notes, otherwise you won't be able to remember things like codes, locked doors and objectives.

For the record you find out later >! the station was intentionally designed to drive people crazy !< .

There are many hidden rooms/doors on Medical worth checking.

Above all, remember that this game was made in the 90s, and there really hadn't been many (arguably any) games like it yet. There was a lot that had not yet been learned about game development, especially action RPGs, and it shows. The devs ported this game into the Unreal engine and gave it a graphical update, but kept it mostly unaltered in terms of gameplay.

The game is absolutely meant to feel overwhelming, and it tries to stay pretty overwhelming. The map is of dubious usefulness because it is entirely 2-dimensional but many of the 9 levels levels will incorporate multiple floors on the same map.

On each floor, there is a regeneration bay. If you find that room and flip a switch inside of it, you'll hear a voice that says "cyborg conversion cancelled," and from that point forward you will no longer "die" when you health runs out, but instead automatically come back to life in that room with 50% health. The Medical level is probably the longest stretch of time you'll play without ready access to a Regeneration Bay until the endgame, and by then you'll have enough weapons and amm (and have learned the game well enough) that it won't be that difficult.

Health and Energy recharge stations have infinite uses (the energy recharge stations take a few minutes to refill) so don't be shy about using them. Once you get a Sparqbeam, try to use it instead of your pistol when you can, particularly against lone enemies- it will save your ammo. Also, at one point the game will open up a bit, giving you the option of exploring multiple floors. As soon as you have the choice, head to the Maintenance Level and find the DHG-04 Laser Rapier. It will be your best friend for most of the game.

Also, you DON'T have to find everything. Fully exploring all the maps can be a lot of fun and will yield loads of goodies, but only rarely will you find any weapons or ammo that isn't going to be available to you later.

Also maybe it's just medical but the level feels pretty big. Almost to the point of being overwhelming! Does it stay like this through the game?

Yes (and there's a audiolog giving an explanation why Citadel is so labyrinthic.

How are you meant to keep track of everything lol.

After a while, with the need to backtrack and all, you'll run through those corridors like a pathetic creature of meat and bone it's the inside of your pocket.