One of the best games ever made. The story is just as strong as it was back in the day. The best quest is still the second one where you liberate the maelstrom rider from an ECG investation. You have a limited amount of time to do it before your party gets infected one by one. Great levels of suspense which are achieved through both good visuals and increasingly worrying alert messages.
Yes, this part is the pinnacle of an awesome game.
It's my favourite sci-fi RPG and one of my favourite games at all.
The game contains all I like regarding narrative, everything from the other similar SSI's games (a cool rather than deep tone, a focus on what the characters do, obviously linked with full party creation + temporary extra companions, some input during to-the-point events and just enough text) plus in this context the setting is actually fresh, actually recommendable pulp sci-fi games are not legion.
The SSI's gameplay is obviously solid. The number of different consumables does probably not completely make up for a lack of spells but the encounters are more than decent and the dungeons are arguably the best among the SSI's games, this one especially but there are plenty of small events where you can check your skills (skills are a cool addition) for slightly different results : there's a dungeon where you may crash or not, I think, alarms to disable, sneaking through an unoccupied path and a super hard optional "it's a trap" dungeon.
I think Matrix Cubed, if still much worth playing, is slightly worse because after the first third of the game, more or less, all your characters carry rocket launchers and eventually all enemies do too, from then there's no much gain in power nor variation while finding the two or three rocket launchers you can find in Countdown to Doosmday is really satisfyng and I think the encounters are more fun overall.