You know, I played it both ways because I was curious about the outcomes, and I had the exact opposite opinion, Doom. For whatever reason it was the fight with Branka that tore my shit out through my mouth, and destroying K-Golem was piss easy.
Maybe it's because my arcane warrior was buffing sten, zevran, and ogrhen with TK weapons, but that doesn't really explain how damned easy the fight was.
I decided to go with saving K-Golem and killing Branka because [spoiler]I hate it when my efforts don't end in tragedy for everyone involved[/spoiler].
Also, to everyone who didn't guess that shale was [spoiler] just a girl [/spoiler] wasn't paying attention when shale started talking about how pretty crystals and gems were. Finally, I'm glad someone else came out and said that shale was basically HK-47. I was afraid I was going nuts.