1 person found this review helpful
Recommended
6.4 hrs last two weeks / 85.9 hrs on record (79.5 hrs at review time)
Posted: 28 Jan @ 12:20am

Stalker 2 is possibly the best experience of a shooting focused RPG in a long while. Modernizing what was clunky with its predecessors whilst making the zone more beautiful and mysterious than ever before. While it does still (at the time of writing this) suffer from some occasional performance issues, none of these (baring one exception) have made the experience any less enjoyable.

For those not familiar with the series, STALKER is a sudo modern alternate reality where the Chornobyl power plants explosion occurred, scientists moved into the exclusion zone in order to perform experiments out of eyesight, then due to their meddling with the noosphere (basically an alternate plane of reality based on humankinds collective morality/emotion) cause a second explosion that warps and twists the reality of the zone.

It is into this setting that you are thrown into, and while fans of the series will recognize mechanics updated and refined from the previous games, STALKER 2 does a great job at introducing these mechanics to a newcomer at a reasonable pace to get them up to speed. The story does not require that the player have experienced the previous titles, but certain scenes , locations, and characters hit harder if you did.

The Zone is massive. truly dwarfing the size of previous games by combining functionally all previous maps, expanding the areas those maps comprised of in all instances, and adding entirely new regions on top of that. Plus regions that were previously "fudged" to make the story work have been updated to reflect their real world counterparts more closely. Exploring has never felt better.

The games limited survival aspects still feel mostly "tacked on". Eating food ends up being more of a "light heal" than it ever is for avoiding hunger. Sleep (newly added) does occasionally force you to rest and I suspect is a clever way the game allows certain areas to "reset" alongside emissions.

Ive seen some people criticize the implementation of the worlds ALife 2.0. For those unaware, Alife was functionally AI programming that made NPCs go out and act on their own accord with their own objectives. After playing through all 3 of the previous games, I can safely say that I think Alife was blown slightly out of proportion for how good it was via nostalgia. The reality is that previous games in the series either had functionally no AI (shadow of Chernobyl) or extremely trigger based ones that created the illusion of a smarter AI. This was most notable in Clear Sky where factions were actively at war and effectively fighting over predetermined places on the map. The Ai would send a squad to capture these points and radio calls could go out alerting the player to these attempts (both defending or attacking a point). This led to the world feeling more alive and active (if you ignored the seemingly endless manpower all the factions had). STALKER 2 does not have the faction wars in this sense and has reverted to SoC/CoPs "spawn AI at predetermined locations". where the AI will fight rivals they might encounter, but these are functionally scripted events. STALKER 2s initial problem was that the AI could spawn in so close to the player, the immersion of running into these fights was lost. While I do think it would be cool to implement some kind of faction war, I think the community at large is fooling themselves as to what "A-life" actually was.

STALKER 2 bills itself as a non-linear story and that is a half-truth. The game has 4 distinct endings, and 2 "faction paths" based on who the player aligns with during the campaign. these diverting mission paths do add some replay value, but it doesn't change the outcome and the story isnt as freeform as a traditional RPG game or even previous entries in its own franchise (CoP had endings that varied based on who you sided with and what quests you followed through on in the fashion of fallout new vegas end slides). Here, based on a very obvious binary tree, you get your ending choice. Nothing you've done prior, is brought up or made relevant, which feels like a huge miss for the wealth of side quests and chains the game has.

Despite these minor complaints, the sheer scope of the zone and its inhabitants simply make just wandering and exploration a treat. The comparable bethesda games pale in comparison with each location, despite being a collective of eastern European abandoned factories, warhouses, apartments, and so on, feel so real compared to the same copy and paste settlements of fallout 4. While the story is linear, its also the best presented in the stalker series by far, especially in the character department.

TL:DR
If you've never played a Stalker game, this is a great one to start with.
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