Honestly, I want to like it, I love Stalker, I get the market they're trying to aim for & it's likely why it has good reviews. The start is very much like Stalker & if you're a Stalker fan, it's trying to sell you that Nostalgia. I'll start with saying that I didn't complete- or even get that far, I couldn't. I don't think if feels "great" to play, I don't think the top down view is bad but they've made it "feel" bad to utilize/use, it could do with a quicker & cleaner way to view surroundings, snappy & instant, instead of this "gliding" that the camera does- and this "gliding" is seen through out the game. The way the character moves & interacts with the world, there's no weight to anything, it looks & feels like something they decided to skip development on when they shouldn't have. The character "glides" around his surroundings, when he's interacting with the environment- you can even see this with other objects/characters in the game world, monsters will walk on top of the character, making Melee feel terrible, boxes that you must smash with a crowbar, randomly go flying through the terrain. There's also this odd bug that will happen where if he "glides" to close to a door, he'll close it as soon as you open it, so you're stuck fighting the character just to open a door, I think with a much more grounded and weighted character to the world, they could have focused on the shooting aspect and created a semi-decent top down Stalker-Shooter, even with a tacked on cover system, but I personally can't get over how terrible it feels to play.
It's enjoyable if you are lucky enough not to encounter bugs, I unfortunately was not that lucky. It requires constant saving which really digs into my immersion, it shouldn't but due to the bugs being cut scenes and conversations not triggering it can literally stone wall your entire game, that's honestly my biggest gripe & it's a shame because I don't see them fixing it, it honestly kind of feels rushed, like the creators knew how to work the creator but had little knowledge of how NWN functions mechanically, for example there are boxes and creates littered around the city, which is cool- except due to NWNs path finding you can't open half of them & their default health has been left unchanged, so as a low level character you're stuck for 20-30 seconds breaking chests. I didn't get to finish it due to me not saving frequently enough & getting stone walled on day 6, with no objectives and what I'm guessing was the "cut scene" not starting in the tunnels.
