After 84 hours, I have finally managed to finish my STALKER 2 playthrough.
First half of the playthrough was played on a PC that didn’t meet the minimum requirements; GTX 1050TI, I5-8400, 16GB Ram, game version 1.0 and the second half was a PC that did meet the minimum, with an RX 6650 XT GPU, the game version being 1.3.
I’m a hardcore STALKER fan, been waiting for this game for 15 years and been playing the original games since 2007. The experience of playing STALKER 2 under the minimum requirements was pretty much how I played STALKER: SoC, on an FX 5500 GPU, P4 1.19GHz CPU and 512MB DDR1 Ram. We really came full circle. So my review of the game will probably be biased, so take it with a hazardous amount of salt. 
I’ll have to start with the negatives, first and foremost, the bugs. You wouldn’t call a game STALKER if it didn’t come packed with it’s trademark jank and STALKER 2 is loaded with them. Even after patch 1.3, I encountered plenty of these so called anomalies such as weapons spawning in your backpack, sometimes the game equipping them and having a big surprise to draw a sniper rifle instead of a shotgun in a close quarter encounter.
Performance issues are another thing. While it runs smoothly in the wilderness, the moment you enter a location with many NPCs, your framerate will noticeably drop. You might also experience frame drops when a number of NPCs are spawned in your area but that can depend on your hardware. Biggest performance issue are the memory leaks. Every now and then you’ll be wondering about the Zone, minding your own business and all of a sudden the framerate drops to single digits for no reason, needing a game restart.
Richter didn’t recover from the last emission…
Now you’ll say, okay, a game restart doesn’t sound that bad but keep in mind that at the start of the game, you are required to wait for the shaders to compile which can take from 1-3 minutes, depending on your hardware. What’s worse about the shader compiling is that it can take up to 15 minutes or more if there was a GPU driver / hardware change so I hope you have some games on your phone or go do something else like take a leak or make yourself some coffee or tea.
And the biggest red flag as of the time of writing this review is the A-Life or better said the lack of it and the issues caused by the AI system that is currently in it’s place. You will never encounter NPCs, mutants or stalkers, wondering about the Zone, getting into gunfights when encountering opponents in a natural way as it happened in the original trilogy. Now the game spawns NPCs around the player to give the impression that there is some sort of simulation running in the background.
These spawns are just Skyrim random events spawning near you. It can be friendly NPCs wondering about, enemy Stalker / mutants or a combination of both in which you’ll see a fight between them. Smoke and mirrors, it 's all it is. Issues with this is that they spawn very close to the player and the moment they spawn they are agro on you so kiss stealth goodbye if you thought of sneaking by someone or something. It’s clear why the player cannot use binoculars, since there is no need for reconnaissance when the enemy spawns near you. Same with NV, you’d want to keep the flashlight off during nighttime to not alert enemies but they are alerted to your presence once they spawn a few feet away from you.
Out of me way, peasant!
Furthermore, related to stealth, I just don’t understand it, the stealth mechanics are your average modern Far Cry 3 stealth but the way it’s implemented is amateurish. When you are spotted there is a bar that fills up the more you are seen but sometimes this bar pops up even when you are behind cover what’s worse is during missions even if you were sneaking about the game puts the AI on high alert and they will spot you immediately through walls, knowing your exact position. Even more baffling is that you are equipped with bolts which you’d imagine could be used for distractions, again rocks from Far Cry 3 but nope, the moment you throw one it alerts the enemy to your location. For someone that could manage the stealth in the original trilogy, which wasn’t great to begin with, this is a total letdown.
Returning to the bugs, first half of the game is okay for the most part but second half is held together with duct tape and it’s mostly because of the AI and the way it spawns, sometimes dying immediately, or is placed, sometimes multiple NPCs spawning in one another, or how sometimes it respawns, sometimes in the same place right after killing them, even worse, spawning as an invincible NPC. Speaking of spawns, I. AM. TIRED. OF. SPAWNING. BLOODSUCKERS. Especially when they come in a pack of 3. EVERY. FIVE. MINUTES. Or SPAWNING. AFTER. I. ALREADY. KILLED. 3. OTHER. BLOOSUCKERS. Damnit!
Now for the last part of my negatives rant, the ending section / point of no return. When I said that the second half of the game is held together with duct tape, the end section is held together with sticks and mud. Jesus Christ, it is the most rushed, frustrating, boring, unimaginative and repetitive section that only exists to test your patience. If you thought the end sections in SoC and CS were bad, well, you’re all in for a surprise. At least with those you were finished in 30 minutes to an hour, this is several hours of BS. And if told yourself “it’s over” during the ending section, I guarantee you that it’s not. Again, Jesus Christ on a cross, a part of me wanted to go to sleep and the other to punch the monitor.
The devs knew that the end game sections were terrible, so they threw loads of ammo and medkits your way to slightly remedy the issues…
Okay, positives. Phew… Visuals are amazing, there were plenty of moments when I would just stop and look at the scenery, probably trying to get that perfect screenshot, the lighting with the art design is just perfect. A minor issue is that sometimes areas can either be too dark, even with the flashlight and lamps turned on in the room or during the day, walls can look flat, even ones made out of brick, because there are no real time dynamic shadows, again, umlike the original trilogy. Other than that, the visuals are fantastic, during all times of day and during all types of weather. Those thunderstorms… perfect.
Animations and facial animations are also top-notch. Bethesda could learn a thing or two from the GSC developers. They lip sync their dialogue, for both English and Ukrainian VO, though main cutscenes lip sync is only for Eng VO. Not to mention when NPCs talk, they show emotions and gesticulate in a natural way and I’ll be honest, I didn’t think NPCs having different dentures would make a difference but surprisingly it does. Plenty of times I would stare to see how many times a day the Stalker I was talking with brushed their teeth.
Audio is so-and-so. The ambient music, radio and guitar songs are great though ambient music is not as memorable as in the original trilogy, though they sneaked a couple of them for nostalgia and hey, it worked. Gun sounds are beefy and they sound amazing in interiors where there is reverb. The English VO is where the audio falls flat. It’s not good, it doesn’t sound good, it doesn’t feel good or natural. It sounds either Scottish, Irish, Hollywood-esque, just awful. Play with Ukrainian VO and English subtitles please. You’ll do yourself a big favor.
Another big no no related to audio is the ending sections, there is a surprising lack of ambient sounds. I didn’t get music even during the end credits…
Story is great, some say otherwise but I didn’t mind it, it pushed the plot forward without me rising an eyebrow or anything and the characters you meet during the course of the story are all well done though because how things are structured, you won’t be able to see everything during a single playthrough. One negative about the plot is how the factions are used, as in not that well. The story centers around Spark, Ward and Noontide with the heavy hitters such as Duty and Freedom not being used at all which is a damn shame. Actually all other factions are used poorly and since there is no A-Life to see certain events happening in real time, you’ll only learn about things from hearing rumors from talking with generic Stalkers, such as the truce between Duty and Freedom being broken at some point in the game. I didn’t see anything, I didn’t even see a single fight between Duty and Freedom. Maybe this can change with the introduction of A-Life, maybe…
Mutants are back and deadlier than ever, with 3 new aditions, such as the Cat, Deer and rat swarm. All three mutants that at some point were cut from SoC / Oblivion Lost (yes the Deer was a horse in the concepts but still). They are great aditions, the Cat being my favorite one that is able to atract it’s victim with human cries for help and such and then trying to put it’s victim to sleep and the Deer calling wild animals to it’s aid. Some of the old mutants got some new tricks, such as the Burer being able to use it’s TK powers to fire weapons that were laying around, even your weapons if it manages to grab them from your hands with TK. Only problem with the mutants is that they are bullet sponges, even with the 1.1 patch and there is no reward for killing them.
I can be a d*ck too, game!
Mutant body parts were planned but scrapped and at Rostok there is even a place where a hunter of sorts would have existed but it’s empty, Hopefully all this can come back as a free update or in one of the DLCs.
Anyone home?
As for the map, it’s big, it’s extremely detailed, it’s atmospheric but because of the lack of A-life… it’s damn empty, just one big stroll from point A to B with nothing to witness happening naturally, just the spawns happening near you. Plenty of locations from past games make a return, in one way or another though not all are utilised during the main quest or side quests. I passed the Military Warehouses and Bloodsucker Village plenty of times but didn’t have any reason to enter those places except out of curiosity. Again, maybe with A-life, things can change…
Party! Party! BOOM! BOOM!
All in all, it’s the sequell I have been waiting for 15 years but like all STALKER game at launch, it’s a diamond in the rough. Even with all the problems, I enjoyed it and by then end of the playthrough I was thinking about my second one but that will have to wait until several patches are released and A-Life is brought back. I rate it 8 / 10, do not play it. Only play it if you’re a hardcore STALKER fan, you know what you’re getting yourself into in this rough state and also have a PC that can run it decently. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that GSC can solve most of the issues and refine some of the game mechanics, not to mention restore some stuff that were clearly planned for the finished game but couldn’t because of time.
Good hunting, Stalkers!
