FA+
Shop
Stalker 2 review
a year ago
General
DragonStuff.exe has begun.
WARNING : It's long.
NOTE : Posted to Steam Store Page where word limits cut me off, so I've also *added* more >.>;.
So.
Stalker II is a massive, robust game that is plagued by quite a lot of issues, some of which are annoying, some of which are outright game breaking. It mixes with utterly *baffling* design decisions and an imbalance of gameplay elements that drag down the experience unnecessarily.
Would I recommend it? Only at 50% off right now, because while it isn't a bad game, it is an *annoying* one.
THE GOOD :
Graphics are sharp and crisp, UE 5 engine doing what it does best. It's nice to have improves weather, lighting, gun models, NPC models - that good stuff, after a decade plus.
Sound design is *legendary* wind blowing, rustle noises, abandoned place creaks that keep you clenching. Zero complaints here.
Controls are a bit strange but not bad, just need to get used to it.
Loading times aren't super egregious.
The EH
The story isn't much of anything. Perhaps it's told weird with all the factions and things? I mean it's fine but it mostly feels flat and uninteresting, aside from a few key points.
The inventory weight limit is not great. It's a restriction on a player who if correctly kitted out is automatically forfeiting 50% or more of his "acceptable" carrying capacity. Scavenging is not a super necessity, but is also not done super well - every person has fresh bread or sausage or canned food because unlike the original 3, now you *do* need to eat. A lot.
The BAD
Stamina system is total shit. Larger worlds but even under *optimal* conditions, our stamina goes down faster than previous games, recharges slower and the energy drink doesn't take us from 5% to 100% but closer to 80% while making you hungrier. Technically it gives you a "Lowered stamina cost" debuff, but it isn't a great deal, nor does it last long.
Speaking of which, if you find "endurance" (Stamina) increasing artifact - guess what. They only work if you are *standing still*. A sensible way they should work is they slow stam drain on dash use *and*recharge faster, but you don't get that.
Stamina AGAIN : Up to a certain amount, you walk "fast" and run fast, with slower stam drain and faster recharge. Trip it by even 0.1 ? Walk medium, run medium, etc. Scavenging is honestly a pain because of this. You can *and will* absolutely be slogging across long stretches of land to a vendor.
Mutants. The mutants that exist range from "fine" to "infuriating". You're likely to find bloodsuckers early on - apart from having a knockdown move that takes 30-70% hp no matter what, immobilizes you for 3-5 seconds...unless a specific attack hits you and RESETS Your knockdown animation. You are in serious danger of dying when you face 2 ore more bloodsuckers at once because they can and will stunlock you to unavoidable death. The main issue with most mutants is their health. One bloodsucker will take about 7 SPSA\Cracker buckshots to the chest and face to drop. ONE. That is a long time to fire and reload - all the while being pelted, slammed with bleeding to also eventually fix, chugging medkits like candy. If you see a chimera, just don't even. Pseudogiants are a chore too. (I had one bug out during a bandit camp optional objective. It took 14 shotgun blasts to the face and 5 full 30 clips from the Kharod to put one down. All the while it stuns you UNAVOIDABLY, rams you, hurts you, etc.)
Traversal. Traversal *sucks*. As mentioned before, you have LESS stamina for a BIGGER game world, so that is automatically stupid. But you also get slower the more you carry, and you need to bring stuff back to sell to vendors - who are very scarce in the world - to be able to repair, upgrade, or afford gear. It's especially nasty early on. But it's not just that. The game regularly tasks you with just running a straight line for 2-12 (Yes) minutes across the map from where the last objective was. As an example..
Instant death walls. I had an objective near the end of the game to go from one location to - without spoilers - "Duga". This was from Rostok, an approximately 1.4 KM run away (I can run 50M before my stamina depletes, and I need to wait several seconds for it standing still, or slowly walking) . Well, I approaches from the north of 2 entrances, because that's closest and the game doesn't warn you that if you go near that entrance, you simply die. You hear a gunshot, 1 second later full health damage. You're meant to go to the southern entrance without anyone telling you, which would be fine if you were warned about the north or had a chance to not immediately die because...
F5 abuse *REQUIRED* : The game has some issues and instabilities, bad design with things like mutants and enemy accuracy means you will be sucker punched into a death. I've had instances where I just died to nothing, in the middle of nowhere. No anomaly, no enemy, just dropped dead for no reason. If you haven't been pushing F5 every - I am serious - 30 to 60 seconds, you will be losing progress often. Which is a good tip, except...
Bugged save : During a certain mission to go underground to come up at a certain area in the game where you are marked as being near the "Chemical plant" , you will face a Burer - a telekinetic enemy. They now raise eight or so guns to shoot you at once, which is AMAZING damage, and if you are surprised by this like I was, you will die. If you die during this area\mission, your save is "corrupted" - a soft corruption. Load an earlier save, try again without dying, and afterwards it works fine. IF you load a save around that area, you will encounter a stuck loading bar around 75% and that's it.
Fast travel. It is available early on, but costs that hard earned money, and isn't super convenient because you can't go to all the locations you've found. I've tried to go from Skadovsk (Bottom right) to Yaniv (top left) and it simply wasn't an option, so I had to warp twice. Even if I am near where I need to go, I'm not near enough and often still have *minutes* to run. Fast travel could benefit from being more accessible.
Travel speed. In addition to punishing stamina drain, I'm finding the average speed to just be awful. Especially if you incur *any* stamina penalty, you will feel it. In green stamina, you will walk approx 3-4 meters\second, then 2, then...1. The zone has been expanded and the current traversal speed simply isn't good enough. Even worse when you bump into a large swamp you can't just run across (Most of them), that's extra stam and time to run around it. I would increase *all* travel speeds by a flat 25% so I could get between places faster. Either that or make MANY MORE fast travel locations.
Bugged questlines! I had a "Defend zalissya" mission I couldn't do because the enemy never showed up. Apparently they spawn in the town hall building. Which is locked. And you can't kill them, so autofail that quest. Much more annoyingly, a certain character tells you to defend a certain complex very late in the game. I do that but I must have hit a dude from my own faction (They were literally just standing around) and that NPC I'm supposed to talk to to advance the quest?
Permanently hostile. I went away and saw the "They no longer are hostile to me" notification in-game hours later, but that NPC is still hostile & I have no idea how to fix it, or if I even can.
Expectations with no signposting : A mid-late game quest tasks you with trekking across the swamp. About 180 meters from your objective, you will have a Chimera spawn on you, which you should not fight. Not that you are told this. Additionally, and you may not notice (I didn't), a blowout begins, giving you approximately 90 to 120 seconds to get to that house and into a safe spot or you will start rapidly dying. Except there are many hard to see, "slows you down a lot" swampy areas. It was trial and error through and through. Word limit so I have to stop here lol. I'm so far from done, too D=
((New additions below))
STEPS BACK VS the first 3 Stalker games :
- Flashlight is your only way of seeing stuff. And it sucks. You can't see anything at night even within your own grenade throw range.
- NO NIGHT VISION. Zero. You have no night vision option currently - fuck you. Unjustifiable.
- Bleeding. Bleeding just slowly drains your health, and you will bleed from - I am not joking - 80% of all attacks. Pistol nick you? Bleeding. Blunt looking mutant attack? Bleeding. It's kind of harmless in that it doesn't factor into anything but it forces you into a long bandage animation mid combat if you do want to fix it. It's pointless and badly done and gimmicky and overused. Bleeding should be removed - it adds nothing.
- Grenades : Do you want to throw hard, or just kind of tinkle it in front of you? Either way, expect to almost never actually hit anything that isn't a stationary enemy shooting you because anything else WILL move out of the way.
- Generally useless artifacts : Get radiation reduction artifacts and carry weight increasing ones, because almost none of the other ones are worth using. There are some "special" artifacts (A ball that reduces bullet dmg but increases your carried weight by becoming heavier for a few mins in response) but they're in their own category.
- LESS stamina for a BIGGER world with things FARTHER APART. Legendary fail for me here.
- Healing animations, especially in combat. It's just a 2-4 second penalty (medkit VS bandages) for playing the game. It adds nothing.
- Knockdown animations for enemies. Cool in theory, infuriating because they take at least 3 seconds if you are not re-knocked-down to get up, during which you just eat shit and STILL need to spend 2 seconds healing (probably) after. At certain points, you have to face enemies that can do this (Bloodsuckers, somewhat often, Pseudogiant : 1 required so far, 1 Chimera required for main quest so far). The game stops when you are randomly knocked down, you lose 30-70% of your health (Exoskeleton, late-game, high defense) and of course, made to bleed.
- Coupled with the above, mutant health. A pseudogiant will take UNGODLY amounts of bullets - all the while it rams you, melees you (20-50% hp bar, so best 2 sec heal each time), aoe UNAVOIDABLE knocks you down (Animation is of it jumping so you think YOU jumping would save you but no. I get knocked down MID AIR). I have had to put so many clips and shotgun shells into a *constantly* attacking enemy while stopping every 5 seconds to get knocked down, or heal, or *reload my weapons*, and I had to NON STOP DO THIS For 5 minutes to waste my heals and ammo to be able to do the rest of the story. There are no tricks, no tactics, and this is just bad. If you face 2 or more bloodsuckers, you have a very high chance of simply dying due to knockdown spam or getting ganged up on before you can heal.
- Enemy aimbots. When a 2-5 person squad spawns on you (A-life is broken and can only do this right now), they see you and you will be shot. Hide behind a large object to tactically shoot back? Doesn't matter, they will hit you very often. Even tiny bullet caliber smgs will tear through massive defense exoskeleton armor to damage\bleed you rapidly, from way too far away.
- Enemy shots causing camera knocking. So what happens is enemies designate between them 1-2 active shooters who will fire a 1.5 to 3 second volley of bullets, most of which will hit, knocking off your aim, and they can take turns doing this *very* closely, meaning you will not be able to aim right, or miss some\most of your shots. While you are mostly in cover. This is annoying and is another punishment for playing the game. "You take damage now. Wait your turn, try killing 1-2 dudes with headshots before nearly dying from low hp to heal".
- There is one new anomaly that is a giant electric ball. It spawns in set spots, patrols an area and *within that area*, it will unavoidably find you and hit you. You *can* outrun it if you go straight through the area but if you are within a certain set of coordinates, it will home in on you and find you and deal right around 50% of your health bar, forcing the use of a medkit. This discourages exploration, damages your armor and is just incredibly annoying.
- Speaking of which, repair fees. I gave myself 1M with cheat engine thinking that'll be enough because the game economy is fucked. Mid-late game, I had a SEVA-1 suit (high but not top tier) and I got into *one* main story quest. It took 63 THOUSAND to repair just the armor, before the 20+ K to repair my 2 guns. The toppest-tier artifacts which in your inventory say are worth 60K can only be sold for about 15K if you are lucky, and this is the best case find (high value, low weight). Serious problem and brutally unbalanced.
I'm sure there's more, but ....wow. Look at this fucking MOUNTAIN of issues.
I'm sure patches will fix and improve a very select few of these things, but I wouldn't recommend *anyone* pick the game up unless 50% off in its current state. It's playable, but legitimately just kind of barely.
Yesterday, after writing part 1 of the review for steam, I got an objective to run through an empty landscape for 1.4 KM.I timed it.
It took NINE MINUTES of *just running* and walking when low stam or stopping, to reach my destination. After which I had to go and run for another 6 to get to the new destination. 15 minutes of nothing but W and F5 spam.
Really really not great.
NOTE : Posted to Steam Store Page where word limits cut me off, so I've also *added* more >.>;.
So.
Stalker II is a massive, robust game that is plagued by quite a lot of issues, some of which are annoying, some of which are outright game breaking. It mixes with utterly *baffling* design decisions and an imbalance of gameplay elements that drag down the experience unnecessarily.
Would I recommend it? Only at 50% off right now, because while it isn't a bad game, it is an *annoying* one.
THE GOOD :
Graphics are sharp and crisp, UE 5 engine doing what it does best. It's nice to have improves weather, lighting, gun models, NPC models - that good stuff, after a decade plus.
Sound design is *legendary* wind blowing, rustle noises, abandoned place creaks that keep you clenching. Zero complaints here.
Controls are a bit strange but not bad, just need to get used to it.
Loading times aren't super egregious.
The EH
The story isn't much of anything. Perhaps it's told weird with all the factions and things? I mean it's fine but it mostly feels flat and uninteresting, aside from a few key points.
The inventory weight limit is not great. It's a restriction on a player who if correctly kitted out is automatically forfeiting 50% or more of his "acceptable" carrying capacity. Scavenging is not a super necessity, but is also not done super well - every person has fresh bread or sausage or canned food because unlike the original 3, now you *do* need to eat. A lot.
The BAD
Stamina system is total shit. Larger worlds but even under *optimal* conditions, our stamina goes down faster than previous games, recharges slower and the energy drink doesn't take us from 5% to 100% but closer to 80% while making you hungrier. Technically it gives you a "Lowered stamina cost" debuff, but it isn't a great deal, nor does it last long.
Speaking of which, if you find "endurance" (Stamina) increasing artifact - guess what. They only work if you are *standing still*. A sensible way they should work is they slow stam drain on dash use *and*recharge faster, but you don't get that.
Stamina AGAIN : Up to a certain amount, you walk "fast" and run fast, with slower stam drain and faster recharge. Trip it by even 0.1 ? Walk medium, run medium, etc. Scavenging is honestly a pain because of this. You can *and will* absolutely be slogging across long stretches of land to a vendor.
Mutants. The mutants that exist range from "fine" to "infuriating". You're likely to find bloodsuckers early on - apart from having a knockdown move that takes 30-70% hp no matter what, immobilizes you for 3-5 seconds...unless a specific attack hits you and RESETS Your knockdown animation. You are in serious danger of dying when you face 2 ore more bloodsuckers at once because they can and will stunlock you to unavoidable death. The main issue with most mutants is their health. One bloodsucker will take about 7 SPSA\Cracker buckshots to the chest and face to drop. ONE. That is a long time to fire and reload - all the while being pelted, slammed with bleeding to also eventually fix, chugging medkits like candy. If you see a chimera, just don't even. Pseudogiants are a chore too. (I had one bug out during a bandit camp optional objective. It took 14 shotgun blasts to the face and 5 full 30 clips from the Kharod to put one down. All the while it stuns you UNAVOIDABLY, rams you, hurts you, etc.)
Traversal. Traversal *sucks*. As mentioned before, you have LESS stamina for a BIGGER game world, so that is automatically stupid. But you also get slower the more you carry, and you need to bring stuff back to sell to vendors - who are very scarce in the world - to be able to repair, upgrade, or afford gear. It's especially nasty early on. But it's not just that. The game regularly tasks you with just running a straight line for 2-12 (Yes) minutes across the map from where the last objective was. As an example..
Instant death walls. I had an objective near the end of the game to go from one location to - without spoilers - "Duga". This was from Rostok, an approximately 1.4 KM run away (I can run 50M before my stamina depletes, and I need to wait several seconds for it standing still, or slowly walking) . Well, I approaches from the north of 2 entrances, because that's closest and the game doesn't warn you that if you go near that entrance, you simply die. You hear a gunshot, 1 second later full health damage. You're meant to go to the southern entrance without anyone telling you, which would be fine if you were warned about the north or had a chance to not immediately die because...
F5 abuse *REQUIRED* : The game has some issues and instabilities, bad design with things like mutants and enemy accuracy means you will be sucker punched into a death. I've had instances where I just died to nothing, in the middle of nowhere. No anomaly, no enemy, just dropped dead for no reason. If you haven't been pushing F5 every - I am serious - 30 to 60 seconds, you will be losing progress often. Which is a good tip, except...
Bugged save : During a certain mission to go underground to come up at a certain area in the game where you are marked as being near the "Chemical plant" , you will face a Burer - a telekinetic enemy. They now raise eight or so guns to shoot you at once, which is AMAZING damage, and if you are surprised by this like I was, you will die. If you die during this area\mission, your save is "corrupted" - a soft corruption. Load an earlier save, try again without dying, and afterwards it works fine. IF you load a save around that area, you will encounter a stuck loading bar around 75% and that's it.
Fast travel. It is available early on, but costs that hard earned money, and isn't super convenient because you can't go to all the locations you've found. I've tried to go from Skadovsk (Bottom right) to Yaniv (top left) and it simply wasn't an option, so I had to warp twice. Even if I am near where I need to go, I'm not near enough and often still have *minutes* to run. Fast travel could benefit from being more accessible.
Travel speed. In addition to punishing stamina drain, I'm finding the average speed to just be awful. Especially if you incur *any* stamina penalty, you will feel it. In green stamina, you will walk approx 3-4 meters\second, then 2, then...1. The zone has been expanded and the current traversal speed simply isn't good enough. Even worse when you bump into a large swamp you can't just run across (Most of them), that's extra stam and time to run around it. I would increase *all* travel speeds by a flat 25% so I could get between places faster. Either that or make MANY MORE fast travel locations.
Bugged questlines! I had a "Defend zalissya" mission I couldn't do because the enemy never showed up. Apparently they spawn in the town hall building. Which is locked. And you can't kill them, so autofail that quest. Much more annoyingly, a certain character tells you to defend a certain complex very late in the game. I do that but I must have hit a dude from my own faction (They were literally just standing around) and that NPC I'm supposed to talk to to advance the quest?
Permanently hostile. I went away and saw the "They no longer are hostile to me" notification in-game hours later, but that NPC is still hostile & I have no idea how to fix it, or if I even can.
Expectations with no signposting : A mid-late game quest tasks you with trekking across the swamp. About 180 meters from your objective, you will have a Chimera spawn on you, which you should not fight. Not that you are told this. Additionally, and you may not notice (I didn't), a blowout begins, giving you approximately 90 to 120 seconds to get to that house and into a safe spot or you will start rapidly dying. Except there are many hard to see, "slows you down a lot" swampy areas. It was trial and error through and through. Word limit so I have to stop here lol. I'm so far from done, too D=
((New additions below))
STEPS BACK VS the first 3 Stalker games :
- Flashlight is your only way of seeing stuff. And it sucks. You can't see anything at night even within your own grenade throw range.
- NO NIGHT VISION. Zero. You have no night vision option currently - fuck you. Unjustifiable.
- Bleeding. Bleeding just slowly drains your health, and you will bleed from - I am not joking - 80% of all attacks. Pistol nick you? Bleeding. Blunt looking mutant attack? Bleeding. It's kind of harmless in that it doesn't factor into anything but it forces you into a long bandage animation mid combat if you do want to fix it. It's pointless and badly done and gimmicky and overused. Bleeding should be removed - it adds nothing.
- Grenades : Do you want to throw hard, or just kind of tinkle it in front of you? Either way, expect to almost never actually hit anything that isn't a stationary enemy shooting you because anything else WILL move out of the way.
- Generally useless artifacts : Get radiation reduction artifacts and carry weight increasing ones, because almost none of the other ones are worth using. There are some "special" artifacts (A ball that reduces bullet dmg but increases your carried weight by becoming heavier for a few mins in response) but they're in their own category.
- LESS stamina for a BIGGER world with things FARTHER APART. Legendary fail for me here.
- Healing animations, especially in combat. It's just a 2-4 second penalty (medkit VS bandages) for playing the game. It adds nothing.
- Knockdown animations for enemies. Cool in theory, infuriating because they take at least 3 seconds if you are not re-knocked-down to get up, during which you just eat shit and STILL need to spend 2 seconds healing (probably) after. At certain points, you have to face enemies that can do this (Bloodsuckers, somewhat often, Pseudogiant : 1 required so far, 1 Chimera required for main quest so far). The game stops when you are randomly knocked down, you lose 30-70% of your health (Exoskeleton, late-game, high defense) and of course, made to bleed.
- Coupled with the above, mutant health. A pseudogiant will take UNGODLY amounts of bullets - all the while it rams you, melees you (20-50% hp bar, so best 2 sec heal each time), aoe UNAVOIDABLE knocks you down (Animation is of it jumping so you think YOU jumping would save you but no. I get knocked down MID AIR). I have had to put so many clips and shotgun shells into a *constantly* attacking enemy while stopping every 5 seconds to get knocked down, or heal, or *reload my weapons*, and I had to NON STOP DO THIS For 5 minutes to waste my heals and ammo to be able to do the rest of the story. There are no tricks, no tactics, and this is just bad. If you face 2 or more bloodsuckers, you have a very high chance of simply dying due to knockdown spam or getting ganged up on before you can heal.
- Enemy aimbots. When a 2-5 person squad spawns on you (A-life is broken and can only do this right now), they see you and you will be shot. Hide behind a large object to tactically shoot back? Doesn't matter, they will hit you very often. Even tiny bullet caliber smgs will tear through massive defense exoskeleton armor to damage\bleed you rapidly, from way too far away.
- Enemy shots causing camera knocking. So what happens is enemies designate between them 1-2 active shooters who will fire a 1.5 to 3 second volley of bullets, most of which will hit, knocking off your aim, and they can take turns doing this *very* closely, meaning you will not be able to aim right, or miss some\most of your shots. While you are mostly in cover. This is annoying and is another punishment for playing the game. "You take damage now. Wait your turn, try killing 1-2 dudes with headshots before nearly dying from low hp to heal".
- There is one new anomaly that is a giant electric ball. It spawns in set spots, patrols an area and *within that area*, it will unavoidably find you and hit you. You *can* outrun it if you go straight through the area but if you are within a certain set of coordinates, it will home in on you and find you and deal right around 50% of your health bar, forcing the use of a medkit. This discourages exploration, damages your armor and is just incredibly annoying.
- Speaking of which, repair fees. I gave myself 1M with cheat engine thinking that'll be enough because the game economy is fucked. Mid-late game, I had a SEVA-1 suit (high but not top tier) and I got into *one* main story quest. It took 63 THOUSAND to repair just the armor, before the 20+ K to repair my 2 guns. The toppest-tier artifacts which in your inventory say are worth 60K can only be sold for about 15K if you are lucky, and this is the best case find (high value, low weight). Serious problem and brutally unbalanced.
I'm sure there's more, but ....wow. Look at this fucking MOUNTAIN of issues.
I'm sure patches will fix and improve a very select few of these things, but I wouldn't recommend *anyone* pick the game up unless 50% off in its current state. It's playable, but legitimately just kind of barely.
Yesterday, after writing part 1 of the review for steam, I got an objective to run through an empty landscape for 1.4 KM.I timed it.
It took NINE MINUTES of *just running* and walking when low stam or stopping, to reach my destination. After which I had to go and run for another 6 to get to the new destination. 15 minutes of nothing but W and F5 spam.
Really really not great.
