Fans are praising a game for the IDEA of what it could one day become, but the game's state right now is rough.
I can't in good faith blindly recommend a game just because I'm a fan. Stalker 2 needs more time, it honestly needed some testing that would reveal all of the problems listed below. Underneath all that is a spirit of the original Shadow of Chernobyl, but just like that game had a rough launch and ran poorly, history repeats itself with the new one as well.

Positives
+feeling like the original Stalker, random hidden loot stashes, side quests with rewards, roaming gangs of enemies and mutants attack you out of nowhere
+difficulty options, on hardest (Veteran) enemies are quite accurate, mutants deal a lot of damage, guns jamming in middle of fights make it bit more challenging (easy difficulty dumbs the game down for I'd say complete FPS beginners, aka what's shown in game trailers)
+a lot of different anomalies which are deadly, different weathers, even zone emissions that kill NPCs that for some reason stand outside, when they're right next to a house - free loot I guess
+story is interesting, even when sometimes it's not exactly comprehensible, some actions have consequences, but a lot of them are softer than you'd expect
+screenshot worthy moments

Negatives
-TLDR: poor performance - you must use DLSS or FSR to have playable FPS of 40-60, bugs, glitches, missing features, AI spawning out of thin air or forgetting that you're fighting them, low carry weight limit, very expensive repairs for damaged gear and weapons, no mixed audio of English and Ukrainian for main and side quests, so you either play completely with subtitles and miss key info because you were randomly attacked or you'll have American English for ALL NPCS
-NPCs must reach their final destination to let you talk to them, if you talk to them earlier, they reply generic comment + you risk bugging the mission
-when looting dead enemies, you don't see their faction or rank, just a nothing saying name
-no loot from mutants, can't loot their body parts to sell them
-unable to use uniform of a faction as camouflage to blend in, they will attack you anyway
-can't see the standing with faction going up or down when doing certain actions, like killing the members of that faction
-no night vision and no binoculars, pitch black areas
-mutant AI can't figure out how to combat player standing on any tall object - all then run in corner and sulk there, sometimes get stuck or run in circles like mad
-bloodsucker AI on Veteran (hardest diff) runs at me, hits me for 80% of my HP, cloaks up and runs away to repeat it again
-later on mutants and bosses on Veteran are total bullet sponges, patch lowered HP for some of them, but Chimera and Pseudogiant are still even with best moded guns just tanking shots, often their AI bugs out and they get stuck in one spot, allowing you to actually kill them
-enemies seem to randomly spawn out of thin air, several times they've spawned right in front of my eyes, when running through empty fields game likes to spawn behind me bandit gang or random bloodsuckers / there's been few infinite enemy spawns
-enemies randomly forget that they're in a firefight with me, they'll stop attacking and go back to their routine of walking around, hilariously at this moment game allows me to Quick save because the threat is gone
-headshots from a pistol deal randomly more damage than headshots from an AR - I've cleared an entire army base and most of those kills were with a pistol, because it killed the soldiers sometimes in one hit, sometimes in two or three, vs several scoped in aimed hits with an AR, very strange
-a LARGE amount of healing supplies - on Veteran I didn't expect to have 25 medkits and 30 bandages just by going around and looting some bandits and stash or two, I've started to sell healing supplies because they increase total weight and I won't use so many, plus I keep finding more and more, especially before big fights
-inability to remove attachments from special weapons - I've found an AK in a stash with scope, it was for the first several hours the only gun with a scope that I've had, the repairs were too expensive and I couldn't just remove a scope that literally just slides at the top of the rails
-almost every gun that I loot from any enemy that was using it as broken and marked as red - I can't sell it, I can't do anything with it except unload ammo and drop it - overview that's supposed to show the durability before you pick up a gun often doesn't work, it feels like there was supposed to be a crafting system and this is its remnant
-enemy gun floating in the air upon stealth kill with a knife, dead getting up and then falling back into their dead position (not zombies), enemies T-posing and then instantly attacking you, enemy holding invisible gun etc...
-lighting in rooms - sometimes when looking into a room from outside, even when it's not sunny, the room is pitch black, like the lights forgot to work ? and when looking outside from a room, the whole outside is blown out like a sun erosion, extreme brightness
-sound effects sometimes break, so you don't hear your gun or weather sound breaks up every few seconds
-weight limit - the original game had quite a strict weight limit, here at least money has no weight, but after looting few enemies you'll be too heavy to run properly, stamina will deplete extremely fast and overall it worsens your playthrough - and yet, looting is a core mechanic, getting excited after a gunfight, finding a new gun in decent condition, only to be forced to slow walk -there are suit upgrades, but even after finishing the game, I haven't found all
-majority of artifacts have -radiation as negative trait, making you literally unable to use them, until you find an artifact with +radiation / it can take you 20+ hours like it did for me, truth is, most artifacts are sadly just eye candy
-after the first killed enemy, AI instantly knows where you are and uses half broken guns like laser sniper rifles, perfectly hitting you across dozens of meters and even through cover
-sadly you either play in one language or the other, so side quest NPCs and even random bandits will be either talking in English or Ukrainian, it's not mixed that main quest would be in English and rest in Ukrainian, either all or none
-no dynamic lighting - a key feature that was in the original Stalker and has allowed it to preserve its atmosphere well, some rooms look simply too dark
-easy difficulty in my opinion makes the game so easy that it loses its own identity and essence, it was clearly used for production of several game trailers, where enemies miss shots like they're Stormtroopers in a tunnel
-veteran difficulty is good for humanoid enemies, but mutants are painfully bullet spongy, bosses in several fights had insane HP while dealing near instant kill dmg to best upgraded armor you could get at the time
-lastly, game has crashed many times and I've had to reload saves to get out of bugs

To all the joke and fake positive reviews...Being a fan is okay, excusing everything because of your love for a franchise is not however. You're not doing your beloved game a good service by lying to others about the current state of it. People blinded by your review will try it, refund it and possibly never touch it again. The zone will not gain new Stalkers, it'll lose more of them this way. So please, consider writing fair, honest and helpful reviews.

To be honest, for how long this game was in development, how many times its release date was pushed back another year and what we've been shown in trailers, I was expecting a more finished and polished Stalker experience, than something janky that you could compare to game from 15 years ago. A lot of people are disappointed by the AI's intelligence and refuse to continue playing, others have broken saves.

[h1]You've waited this long Stalker, but you should wait just a bit longer.[/h1] [b]Fans are praising a game for the IDEA of what it could one day become, but the game's state right now is rough.[/b] I can't in good faith blindly recommend a game just because I'm a fan. Stalker 2 needs more time, it honestly needed some testing that would reveal all of the problems listed below. Underneath all that is a spirit of the original Shadow of Chernobyl, but just like that game had a rough launch and ran poorly, history repeats itself with the new one as well. [b]Positives[/b] +feeling like the original Stalker, random hidden loot stashes, side quests with rewards, roaming gangs of enemies and mutants attack you out of nowhere +difficulty options, on hardest (Veteran) enemies are quite accurate, mutants deal a lot of damage, guns jamming in middle of fights make it bit more challenging (easy difficulty dumbs the game down for I'd say complete FPS beginners, aka what's shown in game trailers) +a lot of different anomalies which are deadly, different weathers, even zone emissions that kill NPCs that for some reason stand outside, when they're right next to a house - free loot I guess +story is interesting, even when sometimes it's not exactly comprehensible, some actions have consequences, but a lot of them are softer than you'd expect +screenshot worthy moments [b]Negatives[/b] -TLDR: poor performance - you must use DLSS or FSR to have playable FPS of 40-60, bugs, glitches, missing features, AI spawning out of thin air or forgetting that you're fighting them, low carry weight limit, very expensive repairs for damaged gear and weapons, no mixed audio of English and Ukrainian for main and side quests, so you either play completely with subtitles and miss key info because you were randomly attacked or you'll have American English for ALL NPCS -NPCs must reach their final destination to let you talk to them, if you talk to them earlier, they reply generic comment + you risk bugging the mission -when looting dead enemies, you don't see their faction or rank, just a nothing saying name -no loot from mutants, can't loot their body parts to sell them -unable to use uniform of a faction as camouflage to blend in, they will attack you anyway -can't see the standing with faction going up or down when doing certain actions, like killing the members of that faction -no night vision and no binoculars, pitch black areas -mutant AI can't figure out how to combat player standing on any tall object - all then run in corner and sulk there, sometimes get stuck or run in circles like mad -bloodsucker AI on Veteran (hardest diff) runs at me, hits me for 80% of my HP, cloaks up and runs away to repeat it again -later on mutants and bosses on Veteran are total bullet sponges, patch lowered HP for some of them, but Chimera and Pseudogiant are still even with best moded guns just tanking shots, often their AI bugs out and they get stuck in one spot, allowing you to actually kill them -enemies seem to randomly spawn out of thin air, several times they've spawned right in front of my eyes, when running through empty fields game likes to spawn behind me bandit gang or random bloodsuckers / there's been few infinite enemy spawns -enemies randomly forget that they're in a firefight with me, they'll stop attacking and go back to their routine of walking around, hilariously at this moment game allows me to Quick save because the threat is gone -headshots from a pistol deal randomly more damage than headshots from an AR - I've cleared an entire army base and most of those kills were with a pistol, because it killed the soldiers sometimes in one hit, sometimes in two or three, vs several scoped in aimed hits with an AR, very strange -a LARGE amount of healing supplies - on Veteran I didn't expect to have 25 medkits and 30 bandages just by going around and looting some bandits and stash or two, I've started to sell healing supplies because they increase total weight and I won't use so many, plus I keep finding more and more, especially before big fights -inability to remove attachments from special weapons - I've found an AK in a stash with scope, it was for the first several hours the only gun with a scope that I've had, the repairs were too expensive and I couldn't just remove a scope that literally just slides at the top of the rails -almost every gun that I loot from any enemy that was using it as broken and marked as red - I can't sell it, I can't do anything with it except unload ammo and drop it - overview that's supposed to show the durability before you pick up a gun often doesn't work, it feels like there was supposed to be a crafting system and this is its remnant -enemy gun floating in the air upon stealth kill with a knife, dead getting up and then falling back into their dead position (not zombies), enemies T-posing and then instantly attacking you, enemy holding invisible gun etc... -lighting in rooms - sometimes when looking into a room from outside, even when it's not sunny, the room is pitch black, like the lights forgot to work ? and when looking outside from a room, the whole outside is blown out like a sun erosion, extreme brightness -sound effects sometimes break, so you don't hear your gun or weather sound breaks up every few seconds -weight limit - the original game had quite a strict weight limit, here at least money has no weight, but after looting few enemies you'll be too heavy to run properly, stamina will deplete extremely fast and overall it worsens your playthrough - and yet, looting is a core mechanic, getting excited after a gunfight, finding a new gun in decent condition, only to be forced to slow walk -there are suit upgrades, but even after finishing the game, I haven't found all -majority of artifacts have -radiation as negative trait, making you literally unable to use them, until you find an artifact with +radiation / it can take you 20+ hours like it did for me, truth is, most artifacts are sadly just eye candy -after the first killed enemy, AI instantly knows where you are and uses half broken guns like laser sniper rifles, perfectly hitting you across dozens of meters and even through cover -sadly you either play in one language or the other, so side quest NPCs and even random bandits will be either talking in English or Ukrainian, it's not mixed that main quest would be in English and rest in Ukrainian, either all or none -no dynamic lighting - a key feature that was in the original Stalker and has allowed it to preserve its atmosphere well, some rooms look simply too dark -easy difficulty in my opinion makes the game so easy that it loses its own identity and essence, it was clearly used for production of several game trailers, where enemies miss shots like they're Stormtroopers in a tunnel -veteran difficulty is good for humanoid enemies, but mutants are painfully bullet spongy, bosses in several fights had insane HP while dealing near instant kill dmg to best upgraded armor you could get at the time -lastly, game has crashed many times and I've had to reload saves to get out of bugs To all the joke and fake positive reviews...Being a fan is okay, excusing everything because of your love for a franchise is not however. You're not doing your beloved game a good service by lying to others about the current state of it. People blinded by your review will try it, refund it and possibly never touch it again. The zone will not gain new Stalkers, it'll lose more of them this way. So please, consider writing fair, honest and helpful reviews. To be honest, for how long this game was in development, how many times its release date was pushed back another year and what we've been shown in trailers, I was expecting a more finished and polished Stalker experience, than something janky that you could compare to game from 15 years ago. A lot of people are disappointed by the AI's intelligence and refuse to continue playing, others have broken saves.