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

This sequel perfectly captures the original games' spirit, with new systems, graphics, story. Yes, has lots of bugs, but I am totally fine with them personally. The zone is brutal, the zone is merciless. Watch your back, Stalker! Not 10/10, but maybe a strong 8/10.

The gameplay, the story, the gunplay, everthing about the game is fantastic! But using UE5 is a big mistake. I do not have the time to wait for it to load! 5 mins until it starts, 30+ mins until the shaders have been compiled. It's not worth my time to wait for a game to load over half an hour. WHY??? What were they thinking?

The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games became cult classics due to their unique depressing atmosphere and a world that truely felt alive. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is following in it's predecessors footsteps. The depressing atmosphere is felt everywhere in it's huge open world. The game does still have bugs, but the developers have released multiple big patches. If GSC continues to improve on the base game this will be a game I will replay for many years to come!

First things first, you should treat this as an 'early access' release. It needs more work in terms of optimisation and bug squashing before it's really ready for everyone, especially if you have a more modest rig. But with that in mind, I asked myself - do I want to play early access Stalker 2? The answer to that of course was - my god, yes! Performance wise I'm personally having little trouble, with the caveat of running a 5800X3D and 7900 XTX, your mileage may vary. There are plenty of benchmarks out there to show what you can expect, Tom's Hardware and PC Gamer are worth a look. You will need some grunt, especially on the cpu side. I'm fairly early in the game and haven't yet experienced any bugs but I'll say that some of the animations when interacting with the environment feel a touch 'placeholder'. Not that they are awful, they just aren't up to the look and feel of the rest of the game, which is in fact incredible! Mostly, this game feels like Stalker brought into 2024, if you are an OG Stalker fan and know what you're getting into it's likely everything that you've been wanting. The atmosphere, the fantasy of it all, it's right there. If you aren't familiar with the series it's worth knowing that the experience is a bit more hardcore than your average fps but still very approachable, especially on the Rookie difficulty setting. Just save often ;D Overall- if you like the sound of it, have the system to run it, and the 'early access' nature of things doesn't bother you. Go for it! I'm already in love and it will only get better as time passes.

This game is brilliant in so many ways and it has a lot of promise in it's universe, gameplay and mechanics. But so far it's more like an unpolished diamond of sorts. It's playable without much problems, but sometimes you have to find a way how to make something work. Some quest are broken and there are lot of other issues, smaller or bigger problems and glitches present. But other than that it's a wonderful sometimes even breathtaking game. If you are a survival fan, just go for it with some patience here and there. If you want a polished expirience, wait a few months and/or install bunch of mods.