Alright, waited for months and several patches, is it better?

[Palicai]

Played this non-stop on release, because hey, i love the OG Stalkers, figured this CANT be that much diffrent. It was.

Decided to wait it out, because it had bugs, rather poor performance(4080S,7800X3D,32GB), it ran "fine", but that doesnt mean it ran great, it was playable....sometimes.

A-Life wasnt even there, one of the reasons i bought it, and it was advertized on the storepage...and then it wasnt. Alright, spawning is what triggered me to uninstall and wait this out.

My question now is...i see some threads on here telling me its STILL....not what it was suppose to be? Is A-Life in this game? Atleast simular to what it was in the old games? Does factions "push" eachother alittle, or is it all for show? Does mutants drop loot so theres a reason to kill them?

Is story missions fixed? Because i got stuck on a couple aswell. Can i remove the sticks from my inventory that are story based?Because i had tons of those stuck in my pockets.
did they remove the flashlight shadow...because MAN...that was hideous.

Basicly...is this game even worth my time? Did it improve in performance, bugfixes, AI....or is it still broken? Because if it is, im hiding this in my lib and im marking it off as a waste of time, and a lesson learnt.

And fanboys....i know you are in here, giving this game a 10/10, i see right through you, dont even try it with me, insta block, not worth my time.

[RaNgeR]

None of what you mentioned got really improved whatsoever, still far from being like the original games.

Although I've yet to try them, many mods manage to improve (not necessarily fix) the game much better. If you're willing to give them a try

[Palicai]

Originally posted by RaNgeR:

None of what you mentioned got really improved whatsoever, still far from being like the original games.

Although I've yet to try them, many mods manage to improve (not necessarily fix) the game much better. If you're willing to give them a try

Really? I find that hard to belive...so its almost still like it was when it released? The spawning is still a bubble etc?

[RaNgeR]

Originally posted by Palicai:

Originally posted by RaNgeR:

None of what you mentioned got really improved whatsoever, still far from being like the original games.

Although I've yet to try them, many mods manage to improve (not necessarily fix) the game much better. If you're willing to give them a try

Really? I find that hard to belive...so its almost still like it was when it released? The spawning is still a bubble etc?

I'm literally playing the game up until now since launch and the seeming stuff they claimed to fix or improve is not really true.

The current main issues:
Flashlight is useless
No NVGs
No universal system for weapon attachments
Lackluster UI
AI spawning on top of you
Performance (obviously)
Sound issues (proximity, loop, etc.)

This is simply not OG STALKERs.

[Balder]

I've been playing v1.3 for 20+ hours. As far as bugs go, there have been a couple of side story NPCs permanently stuck in an animation, flickering objects some places, sometimes the FX sound disappears. The big thing obviously is CPU optimization.

For better flashlight, use the flashlight shadow mod. With an A-life mod, the game seems a lot like the old STALKER games to me. GSC just has to implement this stuff, maybe they want to improve CPU optimization first?

This game is totally playable. but GSC should include NVGs and binoculars.

I suspect people starting playing on 1.0-1.2, and patching the game during mid-campaign might have introduced issues (considering the complexity of the game). Starting from the beginning with 1.3 has been surprisingly good.

To me this is GREAT game, I'm having so much fun. But I'm also using about 15 mods to improve various issues. This might influence my opinion of the game. This is a good mod list:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8IYD4OovBw&t=3s&ab_channel=CheekiBreeki

[GrenadeMagnet6]

There is no real significant A-life changes, for whatever you were told it was going to be.

My concern is if they fixed all the "Soft locks" that prevent one from completing the game for the different story-routes. They have fixed a few soft-locks in patch 1.3, but appears there were still more to fix found for patch 1.3.1.

The developers have no idea what else remains to fix for the soft-locks.

The game is fully playable, just no idea to tell if a hidden bug will lock your game or corrupt your saves. But the game-halting risk is likely lower than from the first release.

[Balder]

Using this mod https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/446?tab=files
there are plenty of roaming gangs - sometimes reacting to you, or fighting against each other. The spawning distance is still too low, and needs to be improved.

This game will CPU-bottleneck your graphics card big time though.

[zardoz2]

I really hate this game. That's why I cannot put it down and move on to something else. I finish one ending, one I can live with and then yes, I can put it down. But no, I go to an earlier save and go running around exploring, getting blueprints, named weapons and having a field day with the Gangs/Ward. Case in point: Two bloodsuckers attack and the Ward while not threatening to me, takes them on. OK, that's good I'll just help a bit so I can get that one stash. Bloodsuckers dead, Ward then decides, "Hey, this a**hole that helped us is brandishing his weapon, die sucker." Then game on, crap why do they carry RPG ammo but I cannot find it in their inventory. Yea, game is crap; don't play it, it's addictive. Oh and those artifacts, I must have them all....again addiction.

[shwastar]

I think its in better shape now. I haven't been crashing at all lately. My worst complaint would be random fps drops when looking around with the mouse

[Palicai]

Im almost at a loss for words tbh, but ill see if there are any good mods to fix some of this up, its still crazy this isnt better by now..

[WhiteSnake76]

They improved much, but if you played the original games from the start i am sure you remember they where full of bugs also, especialy CS had game breaking bugs for a long time.

Think the game breaking bug here are fixed now after 1.3.1

But A-Life... yes it is there, one of the resons you encountered dead Story line NPC's at times, but its no where near the scale it was in CoP. (seems to me its radius is limited to like 500 meters around the player, but (de)spawning happens around 150 meters.

Wen you shoot a NPC/Mutant in the old games you could clearly see they where wounded, here there is no change in there behavior untill there dead (NPC's do fall down sometimes, and can get rivived by you or NPC's, but that it)

No Binoculars with Friend/Foe ID
No Night Vision, but both are in the game, you encounter NPC's with it, see them laying around, especaily at high points marked with an Eye Grafity you see binoculars but cant pick them up, and there is atleast one weapon with a NV sight and IR module, but non are functional.

Mutants are no fun, because all you do is waste ammo to kill them (and might receive health damadge, and damadge to gear) but there is no reward, but wen your in Rostok market there is a spot for a Vendor dealing in Mutant Thropies by the looks of it, but there is no one there... Only times its rewarding to kill Mutants is wen a Side Mission quest sends you on a Hunt, but even the ones you might encounter during a Story Line mission wont give you any reward, exept being able to progress the mission.

A.I. sometimes behaves like Idiots, and sometimes it seems they have Thermal Vision to spot you, it was much worse before but stil...

There are still minor bugs in the game but there no where near as bad as before.

Got a nice performance improvment on both my systems (R7 3700X / RX6700XT / 16G and R9 7900X / RX7900XTX / 32GB) from Patch 1.3.

I like the game from all the Stalker games the most even though it has isues, love being able to roam around freely, and like the storyline and side missions much more than in the older ones.
Did 2 playtroughs, wish you could return to the zone after completing the storyline or that it had a New Game+
I saved right before the Point of No Return, and after finishing the story i reloade that and continued to roam the zone and complete side missions i didnt do and explore locations i have not been.

[Balder]

For me STALKER 2 has the atmosphere in spades. I see it as a good foundation for long time modding, More animations and detailed responses from monsters and enemies would be nice, though.

I prefer the lush and green summer setting, and there's a certain grainy-ness to the autumn visuals - maybe from the lack of true hardware supported ray traced shading and GI (using the UE software-based RT). Otherwise the game has that STALKER look and feel to me.

[Jäveln]

well its a bit more stable but for some reason the idiots removed skip cutscenes