I've been having a really good time playing Stalker 2. It's weird and wonderful seeing so many familiar and beloved locations from the previous games, but now not separated by loading screens. Gameplay is exatly what I would expect given the previous titles. Story is good too, as is the voice acting, and the visuals are beautiful. There are some bugs, but so far nothing that has impacted my enjoyment anywhere near enough to consider stopping playing. The single time I've had a true game-breaking bug, I was able to load a save from five minutes before and lose almost no progress, and it didn't happen again. It is a good idea to save frequently and keep a bunch of rotating saves. The other time I thought there was a game-breaking bug, I thought to update my video card drivers, and that fixed it. I look forward to more patches though, there are some things like the shaders not cacheing (even when following their official work-around), and enemies spawning too close or respawning too frequently, that definitely need tweaking. Overall I am very pleased and happy to support a smaller studio, especially one based in Ukraine. It puts games like Starfield to shame.
I avoided getting this game on the worry that it was one of those games that looks fun when you see someone playing it on Youtube and bantering with their friends, but then is disappointing when you get it yourself. I need not have worried though. This game is quite good. The premise is simple, but the execution is fun. Lots of different games to play, fun motivations to play them, amusing touches in the regular maintenance of the place. I feel just about everything has a good balance of satisfaction to effort, and of the amount of time you spend doing it. Probably won't be for everyone, but few games are. A few minor bugs (like some of the machines not registering their completion in your daily checklist), but nothing that drastically reduced my enjoyment. Worth the price and I'm glad I got it.
I was disappointed in this game on almost every front. MechWarrior has been one of my favorite franchises, MW3 was a great game, and I've been hoping for a good new MW game, but: The mechs don't feel weighty or substantial. The missions are boring and repeatitive in boring and repeatitive "arena" type areas that don't feel real or interesting or engaging. The dropship is virtually empty given there's nothing to do and no conversations to have in it; you can't upgrade later to a better drop ship even. You're stuck with a max of a single lance (four mechs) being deployed. There's a whole bunch of other things that I wrote down but then GoG failed to post my review and I don't feel like typing them up again. The whole thing feels like it lacks details and polish. Like the minimum amount of effort went into making it. I got bored of playing it very quickly, with how the missions are just the same thing over and over. At this rate I probably won't even stick it out to complete the main storyline. (Played hours are inflated; I often leave games open while I'm alt-tabbed out doing other things. Especially when the games are kinda tedious and uninteresting like this one.)
The world is beautiful. The story is good. The writing is good. The voice acting is QUITE good, and there's a LOT of it too. The facial animation matching the words being spoken is quite good, most of the time (there are unfortunately a few characters that aren't done to the level of the rest, but they're a tiny minority). The gameplay is good. Game ran solidly for me, no glitches or crashes, and a solid framerate. Just one or two times when loading I thought it might crash, but then it continued running like normal. This is a really good game. Plus, nice to have a female protaganist for once, one who is actually written well and isn't overly sexualized. The societies and characters touch on sexism as a social issue without beating you over the head with it. And you fight both female and male human enemies, unlike the one reviewer said. Wish more games had solid character writing like this one.
I feel like this is a solid foundation for a game, and enjoyed playing the demo. I look forward to seeing how they flesh it out. I also hope they give a bit more flexibility with obtaining new/more employees/volunteers (or add more of a business mechanic).
