Updating my review as of 11/14/25:

I want to really preface this by saying that I'm a huge fan of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. The games shaped my childhood in terms of appreciation for slavic culture with its gritty atmosphere and very interesting concepts
That being said, I've grown disillusioned with the company GSC Game World. A lot of decisions were made in the past year that were not very well received and for very good reason

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a great foundation for a game with loads of potential. Potential that is being wasted away by very unpopular choices and bad decisions on part of both the developers and the publishers
The game right off the bat was released in a barely finished state. Constant mission soft locks and crashing as well as consistent memory leaks and poor performance even for those with beefy pc setups.
Many of these issues were addressed and fixed, but the time it took to fix even the simplest of issues like desynced subtitles for the intro cut-scene was incredibly abysmal.
The game doesn't have as many soft locks and game breaking glitches these days. It's stable in regards of it's scripting and pace. However performance still leaves a lot to be desired
I am running on a system that should more than be capable of handing this game on the highest Ultra settings, and while its stable in its metrics for a time. Eventually the game starts to hang and stutter and downright just slow to crawl even with DLSS/Frame Gen and other such dynamic resolution scaling options turned on. It is very obvious that the developers are not familiar with how Unreal Engine works and should have delayed this game to iron out those problems. It should not have been released in the state it currently is

Focusing on adding new guns, NVG's and Mutant looting with some A-life updates sprinkled in is all genuinely nice to see, but none of it really matters if the game is still in such an unplayable state.

With all this in mind, you'd think GSC would pull a CD Project Red or Hello Games and just work diligently to fix these glaring issues in due time. However its recently been made apparent that GSC Game World would rather target and DMCA indie developers over misunderstandings that could have been resolved instead of callously hurting their sales for the sake of their "interests"

As valid as many of the claims were, it didn't change the fact that GSC would rather tarnish their reputation with the disastrous touch of a sledgehammer rather than work the misunderstandings out with the tender precision of a screwdriver~ (End of cringey metaphor)

This game promised a lot of things and failed to deliver. Now it is plagued with:
An almost non-existent A-life system pieced together by duct tape and prayer
Co-op that was initially promised but never delivered upon
An unfinished mess that makes the older Stalker games look stable in comparison
And a developer spending weeks tarnishing their reputation and hurting an indie developer rather than focusing on making their own game something a Stalker fan would have genuine fun with

Despite the 272 hours I have put into this game, I couldn't even get past initially meeting the Noontide in the story because the game always breaks around this point, forcing a restart each and every time with more hours wasted than I cared to further put into
I have played the first chapter of this game so much, that I can recite word for word the Ukrainian localization due to how many times I had to slog through it just to enjoy this.
By the way, whoever took out the option to skip cutscenes is a sadist. Seriously.. -.-

Don't get this game in its current state. Just play Stalker: Anomaly or the Metro games if you want a really good narrative.

On sale, this would probably be worth it. Depends on how much is taken off of the final price. I wouldn't even recommend this game at a 30 dollar price tag, let alone a 60 or 110 dollar price!
Very disappointing, and I do sincerely hope this game gets better and GSC's practices with it

Updating my review as of 11/14/25: I want to really preface this by saying that I'm a huge fan of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. The games shaped my childhood in terms of appreciation for slavic culture with its gritty atmosphere and very interesting concepts That being said, I've grown disillusioned with the company GSC Game World. A lot of decisions were made in the past year that were not very well received and for very good reason S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a great foundation for a game with loads of potential. Potential that is being wasted away by very unpopular choices and bad decisions on part of both the developers and the publishers The game right off the bat was released in a barely finished state. Constant mission soft locks and crashing as well as consistent memory leaks and poor performance even for those with beefy pc setups. Many of these issues were addressed and fixed, but the time it took to fix even the simplest of issues like desynced subtitles for the intro cut-scene was incredibly abysmal. The game doesn't have as many soft locks and game breaking glitches these days. It's stable in regards of it's scripting and pace. However performance still leaves a lot to be desired I am running on a system that should more than be capable of handing this game on the highest Ultra settings, and while its stable in its metrics for a time. Eventually the game starts to hang and stutter and downright just slow to crawl even with DLSS/Frame Gen and other such dynamic resolution scaling options turned on. It is very obvious that the developers are not familiar with how Unreal Engine works and should have delayed this game to iron out those problems. It should not have been released in the state it currently is Focusing on adding new guns, NVG's and Mutant looting with some A-life updates sprinkled in is all genuinely nice to see, but none of it really matters if the game is still in such an unplayable state. With all this in mind, you'd think GSC would pull a CD Project Red or Hello Games and just work diligently to fix these glaring issues in due time. However its recently been made apparent that GSC Game World would rather target and DMCA indie developers over misunderstandings that could have been resolved instead of callously hurting their sales for the sake of their "interests" As valid as many of the claims were, it didn't change the fact that GSC would rather tarnish their reputation with the disastrous touch of a sledgehammer rather than work the misunderstandings out with the tender precision of a screwdriver~ (End of cringey metaphor) This game promised a lot of things and failed to deliver. Now it is plagued with: An almost non-existent A-life system pieced together by duct tape and prayer Co-op that was initially promised but never delivered upon An unfinished mess that makes the older Stalker games look stable in comparison And a developer spending weeks tarnishing their reputation and hurting an indie developer rather than focusing on making their own game something a Stalker fan would have genuine fun with Despite the 272 hours I have put into this game, I couldn't even get past initially meeting the Noontide in the story because the game always breaks around this point, forcing a restart each and every time with more hours wasted than I cared to further put into I have played the first chapter of this game so much, that I can recite word for word the Ukrainian localization due to how many times I had to slog through it just to enjoy this. By the way, whoever took out the option to skip cutscenes is a sadist. Seriously.. -.- Don't get this game in its current state. Just play Stalker: Anomaly or the Metro games if you want a really good narrative. On sale, this would probably be worth it. Depends on how much is taken off of the final price. I wouldn't even recommend this game at a 30 dollar price tag, let alone a 60 or 110 dollar price! Very disappointing, and I do sincerely hope this game gets better and GSC's practices with it