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

Technical stuff: 5600x, 32gb ram, rtx 3060 12gb vram I play this game at 1440p, all settings epic except shadows and distance, no frame gen. fps at towns: 30 in the wilderness: 40+ Game looks amazing. ---------------------------------------------- Content: Alot has been said already about missing features that might break your immersion and I won't repeat that again. So here are a few of my personal impressions about what breaks my immersion: - Sitting at a campfire lets you not do anything, you can't open your bag, look at the map, nothing, you just sit - There is no tobacco in the game, you can't smoke but other npcs can - You can't sit on any chairs - There is no workbench to look at your guns and modify your weapons, you just do it in the menu - In the 11 hours I played I haven't met any female npcs, the zone strikes me as a wiener party, yeah that is breaking my immersion, you know why ? Because the world isn't a wiener party, nowhere.

Very solid shooter. Location are crafted lovingly, and have this incredible abandoned/dangerous/unknown vibe. Gameplay is somewhat simpler and has less sharp corners than original Stalkers. Lots of bugs were fixed, so now the game is playable. The story much better than typical western console shooter, with multiple unreliable narrators and some choices even meaningfully influencing the story (thankfully, this is kept to a minimum) The most weird thing is about the Zone in its current state is that you can run for kilometers and not encounter even a single blind dog. There's a distinct lack of stuff to do in the last third of the game.

Performance is gross, everything on low with FSR on the lowest (effectively rendering at 854x480 btw...) runs between 30-50fps with a 1070ti/5800X3D combo, not a great system but no slouch by any means what's the point of low settings in games anymore? UE5 is going to kill this hobby unless we all spend 5000 dollars on a PC every 3 years at this rate. Even my mate on a 4090 is complaining about performance, that's when you know something is wrong. Had a few crashes so far and having to compile shaders every single time I open the game is just unacceptable. if you're okay with this you're the problem as well, complacency in regards to game optimization is negligence and someone should be fired for releasing the game in such a state. "le epic jank game" is such a bad take for putting up with yet another Unreal Engine 5 slopfest and people saying it need to get real.

I've been playing since release, and game had problems. Was playable with some stuttering after 0,5h of playing. After restart was good for another 30 minutes. Since last update (Patch 1.0.3) I've had issues with DX12, but when I managed to start the game it is unplayable even on lower settings. Few FPS even in game menu.

First, a piece of advice: read recent reviews, not the ones from Nov 2024. GSC has done a lot of work and continues to patch the game. It is now "playable" but NOT "polished." To be fair,  I think ppl had high expectations after long delays and they compare STALKER 2 to heavily modded versions of the original games, like LA/Anomaly/GAMMA. Remember how the old vanilla games were also buggy and relied on the Complete mods to be decently playable? This is what we should be comparing the new STALKER 2 to. And it came a long way. Performance in UE5 is demanding, as expected. On my 5070 Ti laptop, a stable 60 FPS is achievable, but it fluctuates wildly even with DLSS. More optimization is clearly needed. While I only had 2 crashes in ~60h, make no mistake: 8 months post-release, this game is still PLAGUED with bugs. Expect to install mods just to fix basic balance issues, like the ridiculously spongy mutants. My first complaint is the profound lack of novelty. This feels less like a sequel and more like a beautiful but predictable remaster of the originals. There are no new mutants and no compelling new Zone mysteries. The few new locations lack charisma. Past the nostalgic thrill you're left with a game for which you have 0 expectations. The narrative is decent, but the choice system is too unpredictable. Your ending can be determined by vague, obtuse dialogue choices in cutscenes. I had to abandon my save at the end game because of an obscure choice that locked me earlier with a faction I didn’t want to join. Worse, after reloading from an earlier save I discovered: there IS NO GOOD ENDING IN THIS GAME. The "true" ending feels like a middle finger to the original mindset of SoC. You're given the pretense of agency, only to be forced into a bad outcome no matter what. In its current state, STALKER 2 is merely "fine". In a few years, I am sure modders will shape it into the masterpiece we long for. Ignoring the ending, it's a familiar, but janky, trip back to the Zone.