TERRIBLE OPTIMIZATION: You are going to spend HOURS trying to get this game to run at a decent, stable frame rate. At the end of it all, you will have a blurry mess (thanks to upscaling) that still tanks to <30fps whenever you enter a town. Like many modern games, frame times are all over the place. It's ironic how much effort they put into graphical fidelity, despite the fact that 99% of players won't be able to enjoy it. NON-EXISTENT A-LIFE SYSTEM: I won't explain what the A-Life system was from previous games. If you're interested, do some research. GSC is currently claiming there is a "bug" in the game's code preventing A-Life from functioning properly. This is a lie. A "bug" would imply that the system is present in the first place. Enemies will spawn within a couple of metres of you, they will spawn in areas you just cleared and will disappear from existence once you are 85m away from them. MEH STORY: In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the protagonist's motivation is so flimsy, it's actually comcial. Moving past that, the dialogue is so corny and over-acted. Most people will tell you to switch to the Ukrainian dub for the same reason people tell you to watch anime in Japanese -- When your brain hears laughably bad dialogue in your native tongue, you can't "hide" the fact from yourself that what you're watching/listening to/playing is just silly nonsense. BAD BALANCE: Mutants take buckshot to the face like it was nothing, mag-dumping 5.56 is a mild annoyance to them, .308 Winchester rounds have the same effect on them as getting dust in your eye or a hair on your tongue. Ammo and medkits are abundant, so this just becomes tedious. Overall, this game feels half-baked, I'm currently hard-locked out of progressing the story because the game crashes every time I try to talk to a particular NPC. I think with a year's worth of patches, this game could become a 6/10. With mods, the sky's the limit. Ultimately, for OG fans, this will probably dissapoint.
I like the game so far (about 3/4 through the "Downtown" zone) BUT this game constantly suffers from crashes that seam to occur when I save and/or load. I could be the only one getting this but just FYI all my drivers are up to date and my computer is pretty good so I'm going to have to blame the game for that.
