Posted on: March 18, 2025

MarkColt

Games: 84 Reviews: 15

Awful

As a long time fan of STALKER games (including Anomaly), this game just plain sucks. Even after a multitude of patches so far, it's buggy and poorly optimized. Unreal engine was a poor choice by the devs, it's awful to begin with. Even overlooking all that - the game just lacks the soul and that immersive feeling previous STALKER games had. On top of that just a slew of other bad and lazy design decisions and lack of big and small QOL things all over the place. Don't even get me started on the main quest line and the driving motivations of your main character factored in. And lastly, the so very annoying cut scenes with complete take-away of your character agency and just doing out-of-character stuff. Ughh. I honestly can't believe I'd ever say this, having been so eagerly waiting for this game, but it's a total disappointment and a pass for me.

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Posted on: March 31, 2025

nvali

Verified owner

Games: 345 Reviews: 26

Great fun!

Finally finished the game, on normal, after 100+ hours of gameplay and honestly i want to start it again. It's a great, fun game, that took me about a month of casual gaming to finish and that felt very rewarding in the minute-to-minute gameplay category (combat, exploration, loot etc.). To start I experienced very few defects, only 2 crashes and only 2 defects that required a reload to progress (UI did not reappear after a cutscene). I got the game in March, so after a few massive patches filled with fixes, and ran it on a 3060 Ti with mostly everything on medium without issues; the game had a few stutters only in closed environments that were a bit too cluttered for my old rig. Other than that there are a few things that I was not crazy about: the stealth is pretty bad; enemies can easily spot you from (literally) miles away through bushes while you're sitting crouched in the dark with no flashlight on. I was a bit annoyed by the lack of english localization for signs or grafitti, which is sometimes needed for hints during exploration. Also the main protagonist's motivation is... I mean i guess we just need a reason for it, but it keeps popping up through cutscenes and makes me roll my eyes a little. But like i said the exploration is great and the game always offers a reasonable challenge on medium difficulty, throughout the entire experience (barring the boss fights which are kind of meh). You really take into account every encounter and wheter it is worth it or not, and not once did i just runaway from a fight thinking that it's either not worth it or that i won't make it. Solid 8/10 game. Anyone who enjoyed the old stalker games and has the rig to run this at least on medium will enjoy this.

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Edited on: October 5, 2025

Posted on: October 5, 2025

JudgeMental1337

Verified owner

Games: 38 Reviews: 5

Game is not good.. save your Money.

Played the Game right from the start when It released, its a buggy mess, UE5 trash, a LOT of problems and Main Quests couldn´t be finished and I had to wait weeks until I can get further into the game and Main Quest line. No A-Life which is pretty much "Stalker" and all its Angels, is not there. There are enough Videos on YT which shows how those systems work and its nothing like Stalker Gamma for example. If Stalker Gamma with passion and a lot of heart blood is a Ferrari, Stalker 2 is an old 20 years old Horse which is waiting for its final race track under the earth. To support ukraine and the devs I even bought the Ultimate Edition but I saw myself Refunding the Ultimate Edition because I couldn´t support a "Game" like that. Pretty Graphics are not everything and I was shocked when I played the Game here in Germany 2024 in Cologne at the Gamescom and It showed with the release. Its pretty much a Cyperpunk Situation here, will this game be good in 5 years? I bet! Right now even on sale for 42 bucks? not really. I would honestly pay 20 bucks for this Game and not bet an eye but over 100 bucks for the ultimate edition? As I said I refunded It and got the standard edition because I still hold to this nostalgic feeling I had in the Zone. And now with Patch 1.6 I can´t even Download the Game with the GOG Launcher, It fails at 92% and abort. So this is my final critic here on GOG as I move to Steam for good. TLDR: Better play Metro Exodus and come back in two or three years for a huge sale and stable game.

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Posted on: November 20, 2024

_SJJKH_

Verified owner

Games: 2 Reviews: 1

Cheeki Breeki

Gameplay is everything I wanted, optimization needs work but it’s playable

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Posted on: November 23, 2024

InkHost

Games: 203 Reviews: 2

Great Stalker sequel, shame its so broke

All it needed is a couple months of QA work, to fix the memory leak and game breaking shit. For some reason it had to release this year and this unoptimized, broken mess is the first introduction to the Stalker series for most people. It's a good Stalker sequel, but in the current state even for a fan it can be infuriating.

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Standard Edition

Discover the legendary S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe and experience:

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LEGENDARY MUTANTS WITH DIFFERENT BEHAVIOUR MODELS

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GOOD HUNTING, STALKER!

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