This beautiful game has two major problems: "its name" and "the fans of the series who, for more than 10 years now, can’t accept that the franchise has changed — yet still keep buying these games year after year."

Yes, I didn’t finish the game. But with Ubisoft games, that’s not really necessary. They feel much closer to MMORPGs. Whatever you’re doing in the first 10 hours, you’ll be doing the same thing after 20, 50, or even 100 hours. Namely:

Exploring a gorgeous open world.
I won’t hide the fact that I love Japanese culture and architecture, so it mattered a lot to me that Ubisoft, true to their tradition, managed to capture all the key cultural and architectural landmarks. For the first time in many years, I deliberately avoided fast travel and moved through the world on my own, trying not to miss a single temple or a single cat. The open world is the game’s biggest strength. Yes, it already has strong competitors in Sony exclusives and Sekiro, but in terms of sheer size and amount of activities, it’s still on top.

Activities.
Unfortunately, as always with Ubisoft, out of a thousand quests only about 5–10 are actually memorable. Everything else is pure resource grind and clearing outposts so you can unlock even higher-level outposts to clear. Yes, the game has its own settlement you can upgrade, tons of good-looking armor sets, and some interesting builds — but the problem is that all of this works great in games like *The Division* or *The Crew*, not in story-driven games. And this is exactly where many players start to break.

Story.
Well, it exists, and it’s… (surprise) about revenge. I spent over 20 hours with it, and all I really remember is: nice music, during the tea ceremony you shouldn’t bow too deeply or too shallowly, and the saucer should always be held with the pattern facing the host… That’s it.

Gameplay (as Naoe).
Now this is where things get interesting. The game has excellent and fairly challenging (thanks to the architecture) parkour and stealth. Weather conditions and time of day heavily affect enemy behavior and how quickly you get detected. I really wanted to learn how to silently and cleanly take down enemy commanders and deal with groups of bandits using the minimum number of hits.

As for Yasuke, I deliberately avoided playing him. His tank-style gameplay does add variety, but personally, it does absolutely nothing for me.

In conclusion , Ubisoft, in its chase for revenue from longtime fans, is clearly afraid to let go of the "Assassin’s Creed" brand and ditch all this schizophrenia with Pieces of Eden, Templars, Animus, and so on. At its core, this is just a beautiful sandbox for dozens of hours — for people who enjoy exploring every dungeon and practicing flawless, “John Wick”-style outpost clears without taking damage. And all the problems stem from that.

I’d recommend the game to fans of Japan and to those who have a lot of free time. Everyone else might want to take a look at the “competition” instead.

I’m a huge fan of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe. The very first thing I played on my PC was the Valley of Whispers mod, and the first game I actually finished from start to end was S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. Because of this universe, I met people I’ve now been friends with for more than 10 years. We used to discuss artifacts during university classes, and if someone brought a guitar to a party, they were basically doomed to play at least a couple of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. tracks.

Sadly, the current political situation has cracked the once united community that formed around the game over the years. But even now, the second game feels like a small camp at the edge of the world — a place where you can forget, at least for a moment, about the horror surrounding us in real life. Dear developers, if you’re reading this: I know it’s hard, but please try to keep the game the way it is. Don’t let art that was created to unite and build turn into a political tool.


Technical state.
Probably the most painful topic. But to be fair, over the past year the game has become much better. There are far fewer bugs, crashes are mostly gone, stutters are minimized, and controls feel more responsive. Yes, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is demanding — you won’t be running around the Zone on a GTX 1060 anymore. But there’s one huge problem: SHADER COMPILATION. It’s a nightmare when instead of launching the game, every second startup you have to wait 2–5 minutes for it to “remember” what hardware it’s running on. I really hope this is a temporary issue and one day it will leave this project for good.

Visuals and atmosphere.
I wouldn’t say this is the most beautiful or technically advanced game in the world, but it's one of the most atmospheric — that’s a fact. Location design, weapons, gear, anomalies — all top tier. You can tell the devs earn their borscht. I often catch myself just slowly walking around locations, not running and not using fast travel, simply to enjoy the views and the sounds. The crackling of a campfire, guitar strings, the sliding bolt of a rifle. But there’s a catch… voice acting.

I totally understand why there’s no Russian VO, but the English one is often very flat and doesn’t even come close to conveying the atmosphere and mentality of people from the post-Soviet region living in the Zone. Maybe it would’ve been worth adding more language variety to the original version: Ukrainian as the main language, but with characters of different nationalities — German scientists, separate squads of stalkers from Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland, the US, and so on.

Story and quests.
I like that the developers continued the idea of a “Living Zone.” What I don’t like is that almost all key characters from previous games turned into unhinged psychos, and the ending drifts into straight-up fantasy. Scar basically becomes the Joker, Degtyarev develops some kind of Stockholm syndrome toward the Zone, and Strelok at one point starts channeling Eren Yeager with his obsession to “save” the Zone through total control and cleansing… and against all this epic drama we have Skif, who’s just running around with a piece of glass hoping to get compensation for property damage.
Side quests, though, are classic S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: a solid 4/5. Just good quests telling their own stories. Are they super memorable? Not really. Are they fun to play? Absolutely.

Subjective complaints.
These are things that will probably be fixed over time and aren’t that critical overall:

- Weapon variety. All the classics are here, but I’d love to see more sniper rifles and more modern NATO-caliber guns.
- Artifacts need more impact. Most of them are useless even on Veteran, and they sell for pennies.
-More “underground” areas. Locations with harsher conditions than standard quests, but with better rewards to match.

Final thoughts.
Can I recommend S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 to everyone? No. It’s a very specific project that offers a unique exploration experience, and it definitely won’t click with everyone. It’s more grounded. You can spend hours looting stashes and collecting sausage and bread, and you can finish the entire story with starting gear. But if you’re willing to give it a chance, dive into this world, and just play — you might not even notice how you end up spending several hundred hours in it.