I've played the trilogy, Complete 1.5 and Anomaly which is my favourite. Considering the "situation" I'm thankful this game has released at all, and it is much better than I've anticipated. After 20-30h I can state with confidence this is NOT a CoD or a FarCry game, it absolutely positively reeks Stalker atmosphere. If anything, Stalker2 successfully captured the essence of the old games and is in no way a westernized shooter in Disneyland NPP what many accuse it to be. It's bogus. The Bad: - repairs are unreasonably expensive while missions pay little - weapon wear should be decreased by a magnitude, 3 clips in auto eats 20% of durability of an AK is ridiculous - no weapon maintenance options like repair kit or craftable items - bullet sponge mutants - 300 AK bullets for a chimera is nonsensical and immersion breaking, but the same stands with other mutants. People now rather not even engage, simply run away. There is no point fighting mutants - poltergeists are absolutely annoying - lots of cut content which was obviously planned to be there [mutant parts] - crashes, lots of crashes, at random places - the story was always fairly lame in the old ones so it's still bad, no changes here. - fights are underwhelming, most enemies are dumb - ridiculously high spawning rate in a very short radius - enemies appear 20 steps from you out of thin air - some changes in the maps don't make sense The Good: - the atmosphere is ABSOLUTELY there, it's a real Stalker game - level progression is fairly okay, armor upgrades feel meaningful - armor degradation is fair I think, but an Exo/combat gear should take almost no damage from mutants and much higher damage from bullets - mutants fight each other, yes - I have a 3-4yrs old PC and it runs okay, 60-80FPS with TAA (1440p res) so don't really understand the performance complaints - 3-4 patches and this will be THE definitive Stalker experience of the decade PS: the vatnik cope is entertaining, keep it up comradeZ!
Played about 20hrs before refund. The good: - Atmosphere and writing - based on the first chapter the writing is really W40k style, the atmosphere, the dialogues with companions and NPC-s, the story [and myriad side stories] are all very strong points of the game, the atmosphere alone could carry the game. The meh: - Fights - you don't really need tactics, and your map knowledge - and options - are usually limited, so forget to set an ambush or play clever. This is not a deep tactical game, which is fine. - The graphics looks quite dated, it does not hurt your eye [okay, a little bit] but lacks the warmth and attention to detail like Divinity Original Sin I-II. It's passable, at best. The bad: - the menu was designed by some insane cultist or someone with tiktok brain. The character menu is incomprehensible and unusable, especially when you level up multiple levels. It's just plain bad. You select a "skill" to upgrade, then on the next screen you select a talent or something then it overrides your previous selection [that you cannot see now] as you have limited points to spend... It's simply unclear what the hell is going to be buffed exactly. - naming: logically the "Ballistic SKILL" is under the "Characteristics" and "Logic" - which sounds like a characteristic - is obviously under "Skills" - BUGS. I'm no fussy, I won't even flinch when playing the Far Cry series or a Bethesda Fallout, but this was the first game in years where I simply could not progress due to the myriad of bugs. Disappearing skull companion, idiotic AI when I send a character to disarm a discovered trap it runs directly into it to access the control panel, bodies that you simply cannot loot but it's shown they do have loot... This amount of game breaking bugs is atrocious and makes it borderline unplayable. After a frustrating 3 days I've asked for a refund. I really wanted to like this game, the atmosphere is fantastic, oozes 40k, but the bugs are just too many and too annoying.
The game is a very mixed bag, the core idea of quest based freeplay, driven by discovery and exploration in a sandbox universe (literally) is very appealing. The implementation though made me scream at the monitor. - the game is highly stylised, cartoon like to the point it looks childish sometimes. Recovered or intercepted log messages are written by 8yrs old, for 8yrs old. - everything is shrunken in size and very densely populated. Wherever you land, it's basically a zoo with dozens if not hundreds of critters and larger animals in sight. So called planets are small balls, don't make the impression of celestial bodies. You can take off and leave the atmosphere in 8 seconds. - after playing the game for 5 hours it seems like a never ending tutorial, this handholding becomes tedious quite fast. It's implemented in a deliberately "quirky" way, so I had to google basic things. - the space combat is impossible, for some reason you are flying in deep space as if in atmosphere and cannot turn while at speed. Enemies just appear from nowhere with no warning, outmaneuver you and eventually you die. Fun. - Controls. Controls is abhorrent (not movement, I mean to the menu system). It was made for idiots, perhaps they can use it, but normal people cannot. Nothing makes sense, nothing is logical, nothing is easy. You can craft some basic items in your inventory, and then there is a dedicated craft menu. You have to jump between the two to craft the required base items and then do the real crafting. Annoying to say the least. - The UI in general is clunky, everything is huge for the sake of being visible on TVs but on a monitor the inventory management or trading is a pain. Clearly the UI was made for consoles so if you are coming from the PC world you won't have good time. If you are buying this for your 10yr old to play on Xbox then perhaps it's a good game. If are a Tarkov guy and just want to try something else, then this game is probably not for you.
