izigame.me

An under-cooked game with the infrastructure to be great

I will start with some pros and then dive into the cons, which are numerous.
Pros:

Beautifully crafted, seamless open world that gives the biggest and best open world games to date a run for their money. Well made weather effects that successfully impact the environment and your perception of it.
Satisfying gun-play with well made animations, solid sounds, and a general feeling of satisfaction when blowing away your enemies. A decent amount of weaponry to choose from as well.
An improvement in storytelling immersion with Bethesda/Bioware style NPC conversations vs. the typical text box style of NPC communication from previous games.
A continuation of GSCs attention to detail with items: tons of ammo types, food, drink, meds, armors and artifacts to fill your stash with.
An engaging story line 12 hours in, with well crafted cut scene sequences that breathe life into characters.
Re-imagined and modernized mutant types with new and challenging abilities that would be a blast to fight if not for some horrible balancing issues (see cons).

And so the list of pros runs rather short, although what we have is a game that can reach its full potential once the following cons are addressed by devs and/or modders (many of the cons below have already been addressed by the incredibly active modding community).
Cons:

My specs for reference: 7800X3D processor, 32GB DDR5 RAM, 4070 Ti 16GB. I am running the game on all EPIC at 2K with DLSS and frame generation. The optimization in the game is subpar. Memory leaks that slow the game to a crawl and require a restart, tanking of frames in NPC hubs, HUD glitches which require reload, and occasional CTDs on startup are the four specific issues I have experienced myself when it comes to optimization and performance.
Texture flickering is egregious. Textures on many building walls will flicker, in some areas so noticeably and on so many textures that it breaks immersion.
The lighting is bad, specifically the eye adjustment feature in the game. The game often renders indoor environment dark as night during the middle of the day and absolutely pitch black at night even with the use of the flashlight. You will need a flashlight to see clearly indoors during the day.
Speaking of the flashlight, it seems to have time traveled from its invention date of 1899 and absolutely pales in comparison to what the flashlight from previous STALKER installments were capable of illuminating. With a dim yellowish tint and about a 5 meter distance the flashlight is a disappointing tool in the Stalker's arsenal and proves ineffective in almost all circumstances outside of illuminating indoor environment during the day. Player flashlight also casts no shadows.
The day night cycle is far too rapid with the light part of a day seemingly just a half hour of game time in length. This breaks immersion and serves no benefit to the game play loop (mods have addressed this).
You can sleep but you cant choose for how long. The intention with sleeping is typically to skip a dark period such as night, but when you have to sleep twice to do so, and inadvertently waste some precious daylight it is a frustrating experience.
The loot in the game is completely unbalanced. Food is ridiculously abundant, to the point where you can have stacks of 100s of food items in your stash early on. This breaks some immersion and works against any sort of satisfaction in the game play loop for finding survival items. The same goes for meds which are so abundant you will be sitting on 500 bandages and a 100+ medkits shortly after the opening zone or two. On the other hand, finding ammo on slain opponents is far too rare. In previous STALKERs you would typically find about a magazine's worth of ammo on an enemy; in this game just 2-6 rounds (sometimes a single round). All in all, looting feels unbalanced and unsatisfying.
The quest economy coupled with the cost of repairs is so laughable you will wonder if GSC had even managed a single play test of their game before release. Quests offer such minuscule monetary rewards that in almost all instances you will be spending more in ammo and repair costs to complete a quest than you will be rewarded. Repairs cost so much its shocking, often times resulting in armor repairs from moderate damage (70-80% quality) costing more than all the quest rewards combined for the opening zone (mods have addressed this).
Mutant balancing is abysmal. On Stalker difficulty it will take 2-3 complete magazine unloads to down a single bloodsucker who cannot be flinched or delayed in his rapid advance towards you. Coupled with a stun lock you receive from his initial strike this results in frustrating encounters that feel unrewarding and unnecessarily punishing. Not to mention, the rate at which bloodsuckers are encountered, often in closely packed groups of 3-4, take any and all novelty out of fighting the fearsome creatures. Every bloodsucker fight ends up in a wild sprint and dodge fest while attempting to unload your ammunition into him as quickly as possible as he strikes you for 50-80% damage. This is just one mutant, but they are ALL bullet sponges at about 4x what they were in previous games. The Psydog is ridiculous as well but I won't dive into details. (mods have addressed some of this).
Cover for emissions seems inconsistent as many enclosed structures provide no cover, while others do. There are zones where no cover is available at all.
A lack of any statistics or details when it comes to factions and reputation, along with no easy way to identify NPC factions. A feature in all three previous games is obfuscated and lacks data for the player in this game. No Stalker rankings and so many steps backwards from information which was accessible through the PDA in previous games.
Laser beam enemies who will not miss which really hurts the feeling of chaos and realism in combat situations. Enemies can see through foliage and in pitch black situations with ease.
Speaking of enemies seeing you with ease, there is no element of stealth in this game. Forget about sneaking the game is simply not built to support that feature at the moment.
No night vision in suits or as an upgrade for head wear. Truly baffling in a game which consists of half dark nights and tunnels/caves. A feature in all previous STALKER games.
English voice acting is 1/3rd eastern euro, 1/3rd cockney brits, 1/3rd midwesterner, an odd choice
Now the biggest issue: the spawning controller in this game is an absolute mess. From speaking to modders it seems that any attempt at spawning enemies in the world to patrol and NPC scheduling (A LIFE as its known) is simply not in the game. You will never encounter an enemy further than 100m (most of the time within 50m or less), and often times will see enemies spawn right in front of you, if they don't spawn right behind you. This is by far the most frustrating part of the game and explains the omission of binoculars (it also renders sniper rifles useless). Coupled with the lack of stealth you will often see the indicator for the enemy spotting you briefly appear when walking around indicating that an enemy has spawned nearby and you will soon be in CQB. Enemies seem to only spawn in zones of interest, everything in between is dead.

STALKER 2 is a beta/early access release, make no mistake. Performance and balancing issues point to a severe rush on GSC's end. There are numerous enough issues where I've decided to put the game down for now, while waiting for the devs and modders to work their magic. At the moment I cannot recommend it, but I do recognize that the foundation for something great is here. Check back in 6-12 months for a better game at a cheaper price