I barely succeeded it on my first try, hah. My char is specced to be good at personal combat though. He has 10 dodging and acrobatics, so things don't hit him too often. I also carry repair and first aid supplies to fix myself up between fights. What generally gets me are the effects you can't dodge and deal very high damage, like the fire (was full health at that point, and it nearly killed me and burnt off half my armor).
Another thing that sucks are smog monsters. They throw this smog bomb thing that has a big area effect that lasts for ages and damages you constantly and hits you for like 20-60 damage and if that doesnt kill you it also poison you, and if you aren't facing out of it and already on the edge of it the second it hits you'll be hit more than once. I had one of those in the fight to get the third lancemate slot. I save scummed on that one because I thought it was ridiculously broken, so I just reloaded every round until that one damn monster was dead (it either uses smoke or the instakill smog, so I just loaded every time it used the smog).
The main thing that really annoys me in this game are the respawning monsters. It wouldn't be so bad if they respawned a few here and there, but some places they spawn so fast you absolutely can not clear the level and end up just dashing through places hoping you survive all the shots you're taking to reach a safe spot and use first aid. In that cayley mines place (the deep area where you go for the lab) I got jammed in a corner and fought for like 20 minutes just bashing and bashing and bashing stuff to death. I couldn't get out, and stuff was spawning faster than I could kill it, even though it only took me 2 or 3 hits each. I wound up leaving that corner with 25k more experience than I entered it with. Not the dungeon, just that little hallway that I walked into and had stuff spawn behind me in. Granted, I get lots of XP per kill (cheap armor since I have acrobatics, plus a bit of supplies and a weapon - doesn't add up to that much).
Hopefully the author adjusts that on upcoming releases
I'd much rather the game spawn a static set of monsters when you enter the level, and only spawn more on leaving and coming back. That way you could clear off an area and search it for secret doors rather than fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting to move 3 squares and check a wall then doing it again because that wasnt it so you have to move to the other side of the wall through that room blocked off by 20 more monsters. You pretty much have to go melee for these missions because otherwise you'd never have enough ammo.
It's weird, both Gearhead 1 and 2 are flawed on so many levels - but I love them anyway. Another pet peeve from GH1 is the way your personal scale gear affects your mecha scale experience, even though it has absolutely no effect on the combat. Playing GH1 I started the game with a set of ceramic armor and a laser rifle. I expected personal scale stuff to net me 1 xp, I wasn't focusing on that anyway - I just wanted to survive it when I had to. But what I didn't expect was to have my mecha's value double due to it, since not only does it count it - it adjusts it based on the mech's MV/TR values. Luckily this doesn't seem to be the case in GH2. (To clarify, it does still count - just doesn't modify so much with the MV/TR values. Still annoying that high end personal scale stuff affects your XP in mecha scale though).