Ignore the negative reviews. Most of the complains are nonexistent (i.e. A-life is great, NPC and the wilderness have their life and interact all the time, which can save you from fights). The game looks incredible. Graphics is top-notch. The atmosphere is among the best. The zone is brutal, everything there is trying to kill you. It is NOT meant to be easy. You have to pick your fights and if you can, running is a reasonable option. Fights are very tactical, you need to use all the covers, and different weapons, and change positions constantly. It's kind of what I wished DayZ was (if I omit the key difference between single and multiplayer). Still, unlike DayZ (throughout history), STALKER 2 actually works (right out of the box), looks amazing with a unique atmosphere, and provides all the single-player survival benefits (like a captivating story). Given what circumstances the game finished under (literal war and bombs falling on the city where the studio had headquarters), it's surprising that I've only encountered two bugs - clipping, which is purely cosmetic and has no effect on the gameplay and frame drop which seems to be connected with the hair details of NPCs on EPIC settings. I run the game at EPIC with ray tracing, 4k, 60fps on 4070ti with frame generation off, and hair on medium and this works great most of the time. I will tweak the settings a bit to eliminate the performance drops (already decreasing the rest of the sets to HIGH solves the problem, but I want epic wherever possible). It never crashed. The save system is perfect, it does have both auto and manual save which people with real lives appreciate. And you'll use the manual to save a lot as even on Medium difficulty, you'll die a lot. It takes very little to die in the zone. I seldom buy games for the full price, but I'm happy I pre-ordered STALKER 2. It's well worth the full price. Well done GSC Game World. You created a masterpiece even when the war made it nearly impossible.
The game feels absolutely amazing during the first hours. Until you hit the drawbacks of the 90s design of overly large and confusing levels, when you easily end up running around without a clear objective and with an inventory and stash that aren't even big enough for you to keep weapons you'd like. I'm not even talking about carrying them but you can't even store all the weapons as they won't even fit to the tiny cargo elevator. The game looks amazing, the soundtrack is great, and the story and feel are incredible. Until you open yet another overly massive level and start the same old again. None of the game mechanics is explained. How recycling works, and how junction box puzzles should be sorted out. Once you figure it out, they are simple even on higher difficulties, but OMG is it so hard to include the simplest tutorial for the first one? How is the ice drill supposed to work? It doesn't seem to have any effect. And if you made it halfway through the game without using a single of the powerups.... because it's not obvious how to turn them on? Welcome to the System Shock remake! 90s drawbacks with nice graphics. Maybe it’s the early 90s thing as the late 90 brought some of the best games of all times and also their remakes are amazing. And you can collect and recycle all the junk in the game only to find it useless as there's barely anything to spend the credits on. And while you carry an overpowered arsenal of all the nice weapons and ammo that your inventory is so full, you're not even taking the first aid kits anymore; regular enemies can eradicate you in no time. It's good the game is not easy, but I guess the right word is unbalanced. Overall, it could have been great, but the further in the game I am, the more I think that I have better things to do with my life.
It still is an amazing game and RTX is exactly what was missing. It looks great, plays great. Not sure about the complains, I played it right when it was released on RTX 2080 and it worked perfectly fine with ray tracing. Now in 4070Ti in 4K runs like magic. Maybe the level design is not prefectly on par with contemporary games, but c'mon after 27 years it still is a great game. Also the music works perfectly fine for me with Quake II full game from GOG
I can’t help it, but this is the best game of 2020 I have played (I still haven’t played Cyberpunk, so I cannot judge that yet). Amazing stories, beautiful graphics, soundtrack, addictive gameplay, incredibly crafted worlds, decisions, decisions, and decisions… It’s also pretty tough, which is a plus. The only minus is that it’s almost impossible to stop playing ;). This game is a gem.
So I can indefinitely repeat last part of the level, but I can't save it there and leave the game? We're not living in the 90s anymore... It's OK that game is difficult, but it's pointless to make it frustrating. I have other things to do in my life, I don't want to play the whole level again because I did not want to repeat boss fight for half an hour or more and couldn't save it there when I had to turn the game off. Controls are quite bad. On keyboard near useless, gamepad is much better, but so far I didn't manage to optimize it so that it feels smooth and there are tons of missed shots due to the "aiming" which really matter in a boss fight with 1hit=1 lost live. Otherwise, the game is good and fun. Save on exit and resume later would make it accessible also for people who have life.
This literally is the best game ever, nothing comes close to it, well from the point of atmosphere the first Witcher does. Stories and quests are incredible, captivating, beautiful, dark with so many twists. Sometimes you just say to yourself let's just quickly finish this and suddenly thread of events starts unfoalding for 2 hours and you just keep wondering what's going on. It looks amazing (I bought new GPU because of this game and it was totally worth it). And there is in-game Gwent that is so much fun that you just enjoy it over and over. Best game ever Best soundtrack Best DLC - Blood and Wine - mindblowing Best story all the hundreds of awards are very well deserved Love it, really and don't forget to read the books, they are all incredible too :)
The game feels amazing and so much fun for first 2 hrs, then it switches to insanely repetitive actions - every level feels the same, you always only look for differently colored keys to unlock the door to look for more keys. Basically it becomes unplayably dull and feels as if the levels were just randomly generated with the same parameters. On Medium difficulty it's too easy with too much ammo literally everywhere. I felt the hype but after 3 hrs I'm extremely disappointed and only looking forward for Ion Maiden to be finished. Project warlock is not worth even the low the price.
Best Game and best DLC (Blood&Wine) ever.
