alright. I have finished the game and done TWO of the endings after 50 hours (by save scumming, because the events to do each of them were practically identical.)

Let me say this: the narrative is alright. A solid 7/10. If you're playing Stalker for a narrative, you might be in the wrong place. It certainly has a story. That is all I can say. The ending(s) i got were very different.

Now if you want to talk about GAMEPLAY? Christ where do I begin?

Okay. The gunplay is GOOD. it's not hyper realism like tarkov, it's not easy like COD, it's clunky as hell and takes a ton of getting used to. Guns hit pretty realistically, you can't snipe someone over 20m with a 9mm, which is nice. (you CAN kill someone, if you try hard enough.) I wish the upgrades made more of a noticeable difference on the guns, like new parts that show up outside of lasers and muzzle brakes. Just a personal nitpick though.

The AI is abysmal. Actually robots 90% of the time. Far Cry level AI. A-Life is damn near non existent and enemies will legitimately spawn within a 50-100m radius of you and that is it. No discovering bodies outside of narrative related cases, no watching factions duke it out or coming across the remnants of a fight. Hell, half the damn time the AI dont even RECOGNIZE enemies and just do nothing to fight them and help you. Friendly or not. It's so horrible. I hope it's just bugged and it can be fixed, otherwise we just have to wait for modders to fix it. Not to mention they hardly miss. They don't do a ton of damage (on medium difficulty) but they also HARDLY MISS. I had to literally mod the aim punch to be REDUCED to 20% of vanilla just to be able to peak and use a sniper rifle. You can always tell when you're entering a populated area or when you're about to enter combat because your frames PLUMMET like the twin towers POST PLANE in 2001. im talkin a smooth 80fps to 45fps at LEAST. At least the game warns you ;)))))))

You want to sprint? I hope you've brought 37 energy drinks and 40 bottles of water, because UNENCUMBERED sprint lasts about 8 seconds before you have to use a drink. Don't even get me started on Encumbered sprint. Actually abysmal. Thank the lord for Nexus. IMMEDIATELY modders fixed it, allowing you to sprint up to 4x as long (so about 12 seconds lol kill me). Ammo isn't as scarce as you'd think on medium difficulty with the amount of AI that is thrown at you, so you'll be carrying about 12 tons by accident without artifacts a lot of the time. I understand carry weight limits, I support them wholeheartedly, I just wish sprinting without being encumbered actually lasted a long time instead of just feeling the exact same as being encumbered.

Map design and level design are mostly top tier. I have beef with VERY specific buildings in VERY specific locations, but that is because I am a MASSIVE APE and try to thug it out instead of using my noggin. The map is huge, and there are at least two locations you won't visit if you follow the main quest. I really want to see those places, but I'd have to either backtrack saves to wayyyy before the ending, OR start a new save entirely. Which makes me feel like there should be a NG+ solely so you CAN explore and do side quests with all your gear after the fact. That's really all I want to do, because once you start the ending you cannot go back (they do warn you). It's just a personal gripe I suppose, but I understand it. Perhaps NG+ in a future content update??? Who knows...

Performance in the end game was terrible. I have a very nice rig that fits the High setting recommendation BETTER than what it was asking for in some places, and I would still get frame drops as low as 22fps and consistently be stuck at 45fps. Not to mention the copious amounts of bugs that prevented me from progressing multiple times, causing me to have to reload a save from an hour ago OR find some absurd workaround to merely progress. NPCs would bug out entirely, preventing them from executing dialogue necessary to progress at times. I don't want to point fingers, but the game optimization and bugs clearly shows this game probably needed a couple extra months. I don't want to even imagine the state the game would've been in with the originally delayed release date of September, I'd probably be dead on my desk from a brain extraction via .45. The diehards use the catchphrase "in stalker there are no bugs, just anomalies". In the business, we call this Copium. Do not let the Copium brainwash you into believing this game is somehow just got "a couple siwwy wittle anomawies :P".

Okay...with EVERYTHING out of the way now, can I recommend this game? Yes. Eventually. It IS good. It IS a lot of fun. But you have to be a STUBBORN ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to REALLY enjoy it (or just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane) ((or maybe coping really hard)) (((<- i'm all of them))).

Is it worth $70? give it a couple months. Is it worth the $110 I paid? Maybe to me, but I can't say you, the consumer, should pay that price unless you REALLLLLLLLY want to support the devs and REALLLLLLLLLLLLY like free loot in game and can rationalize an extra $40 for a bunch of stuff that you can totally use in multiplayer when it is added "eventually".

tl;dr give this game like 6 months to a year and it'll probably be kino, but until then buy at your own risk


pc specs:
4070Ti ZOTAC
64GB RAM DDR4
Ryzen 7 5800X3D
(this is all the important ♥♥♥♥ obv)

Played on High with DLSS on Balanced and Frame generation.