I take it you didn't play this on TC, did you? This map is challenging on normal, but nearly impossible on TC. The second half, that is. You did raise an interesting point - the hulks will fight you if there are no Pfhor around, so you do need to stay clear of them. For the first half of the level, you really don't have to fight more than a handful of troopers - tops. If you get cornered, simply back out and let the Pfhor and hulks have at it, then proceed when the way is clear. Avoidance is the key to survival. Even on TC I can complete the first half in only a few minutes. One thing that's curious, I can understand why the hulks would fight the player, even though you seem to be fighting the Pfhor - they've never seen one of your kind before. The Pfhor on the other hand will fight you in preference to the hulks - at least it seems that way. Why do they consider you a graver threat than the rebellious hulks?
The final terminal is interesting, particularly that point about dual host identities being noted. Something isn't quite right, but we won't learn more until a couple of levels from now.
The second half of the level is a different matter altogether. Has anyone reading this completed the second half on TC successfully? In a rather cruel twist, once you enter the second half, you can't seem to return to recharge your shields or save your game. It's not that a door closes on you, but the ceiling height is just high enough to let you exit, but not high enough for you to enter, due to the step height. I think the idea is that you're supposed to make a run for it, but there are only so many jugger grenades that one can evade. I have little difficulty running through the bland canyons that blake noted, and I can manage to climb the canyon walls, sometimes even without getting torpedoed along the way. The problem occurs when I get to the point where I am right over the door to this area. At this point I invariably find myself facing 3 major juggers, all of which are flinging grenades at me. I can dodge one jugger's grenades, but not 3 of them at once.
The only possibly successful strategy I've found is to head to the canyon's culdesac and wait a while until one jugger finds me. At this point I can run back to the beginning of the outdoor area and hope that the other monsters fight the juggers. Eventually I'll be discovered again and have to repeat the process. This costs a lot in shield strength, but it scatters the juggers enough that it eventually becomes possible to get past that bottleneck. If I manage to survive to this point, I generally die fighting the rest of the baddies as I leap from ledge to ledge, trying to reach the end teleporter. I can do it if I give myself more NRG, and even then after multiple attempts.
The new Jjaro weapon has a secondary trigger that in earlier marks functioned as the reaver fusion mace in RED - it recharged the player's shields. This no longer seems to work, but it makes the same noise. Forrest, maybe this is the problem - the ability to use the Jjaro weapon to recharge shields would make that second area playable on TC.
