What's Your Personal Ranking of All Maps?

[JohnnyRyu]

Please use bullet points and brief explanation.

1. Taiga. A self-contained maze that can be replayed multiple times. An open but "Metro" design.

2. Dead City. A map that is very reminiscent to the original 2033; "we are back in our elements".

3. Volga River. A well-balanced sandbox that showcases everything new in Metro Exodus.

4. Yamantau. A reused asset; the story, however, is both familiar and refreshing to both fans of the game and the novel.

5. Moscow. A tutorial level that is simply too short. The player didn't even get a chance to explore the Metro system or say goodbye to Exhibition!

6. Caspian Desert. Caspian sounds good on paper, but failed miserably in execution: the enemy variety is extremely poor (40% human, 40% zombie, 15% K9, and only 5% for everything else); the car is functionally useless (it does nothing save attracting attention); the map is unnecessarily big (to fit the car, obviously); and the encounter placement is outright laughable (four monster lairs right next to each other is just uninspiring). It's almost like the devs are expecting you to run & gun through the whole map and forget about what elements make a good Metro game...

Bonus: it seems the devs are not building the game around Ranger hardcore anymore. Some in-game interactions make no sense without the UI turned on; you cannot check your ammo on-the-fly; and the auto save system is actively working against you if you are not following the script (I lost 56 mins of progress once because I didn't use the right boat on Volga river). Performance issues/bugs aside, this discovery let me most disappointed.

[Derrame]

Moscow: great map, in tunnels and in surface, a bit short, loved the intense cutscenes

Volga: nice post apocaliptic landscape, interesting and fun the first time but it gets a bit empty and lifeless, great interiors

Yamantau: great environment, story, action, exciting, great from beginning to end

Caspian desert: too much like Mad Max, a bit empty and lifeless, but it's somethng different, so it's ok. Nice underground level.

Taiga: beautiful map, linear, great environments, forest, plants, swamps, spider tunnels, very immersive and atmospheric

Dead city: great in all aspects, surface and tunnels are very intense, deadly radiation and cld, new mutants in tunnels, gorillas are ridiculous, normal monsters or librariasn would have been better. Excellent metro level.

All maps and environments are very atmospheric and immersive.

[JohnnyRyu]

Originally posted by Derrame:

Moscow: great map, in tunnels and in surface, a bit short, loved the intense cutscenes

Volga: nice post apocaliptic landscape, interesting and fun the first time but it gets a bit empty and lifeless, great interiors

Yamantau: great environment, story, action, exciting, great from beginning to end

Caspian desert: too much like Mad Max, a bit empty and lifeless, but it's somethng different, so it's ok. Nice underground level.

Taiga: beautiful map, linear, great environments, forest, plants, swamps, spider tunnels, very immersive and atmospheric

Dead city: great in all aspects, surface and tunnels are very intense, deadly radiation and cld, new mutants in tunnels, gorillas are ridiculous, normal monsters or librariasn would have been better. Excellent metro level.

All maps and environments are very atmospheric and immersive.

Yes, they are all very immersive :) Can't wait to see what they are planning to do with the DLCs.

[Jig McGalliger]

Originally posted by Sakamoto Ryuichi:

Some in-game interactions make no sense without the UI turned on; you cannot check your ammo on-the-fly; and the auto save system is actively working against you if you are not following the script

This is exactly like the prior titles' Ranger mode. Don't like it? Don't use it.

[planescaped]

I found the Taiga a bit of a wash. It's practically one giant stealth segment and there is little reason to explore, and few enemies you can feel good about killing.

The Volga was fun the first playthrough, very slow and began to drag near the end, and near the beginning on a second run.

The Caspian was fun, but it actually had too much combat, and it too began to drag near the end.

The Dead City didn't really feel climatic enough, and as a result, the ending felt like it snuck up on me.

I sound like I didn't like the game but I really did... I just noticed some flaws with it upon retrospection.

[DELTA]

Volga because its slimply beutifal and i hated leaving it along side it being a great sandbox with plenty to see and do along side being able to talk to all the villagers and it also felt refreshingly differnt but still metro.

Dead city, a true masterpeice of a linar level, i'd rank this on the same level as the volga but for differnt reasons as this is pure metro in its finist fourm minus having no human enermys and it sorly lacked a clam down level afterwards leving you on the end of the high with nothing after

Yamata is 3rd for me as i liked the outside setting and stuff that happened in the bunker supprised me as i wasent expecting it to be like it was.

Tagia a great level with exclent story and setting though it felt too short as i wanted to explore the town on the other side of the dam and such because it felt alot bigger than it really was. only thing i didnt like was losing my gear and being forced to use the crossbow till i found an AK on a bandit.


Moscow, for a tutorial level it was to long and for a liniar level it was too short. personally i think it should have been a two part level with the first part being a linar tutorial and then expanding into a open world explore a little bit of moscow before closing off.


Caspian, car was fun and the oil rig at the end was legit intersting but you couldent really interact with it and honestly i feel like most of it was like that. Cool but not much interaction and honestly i could do without seeing any more desrts in games as they are rutienly the most boring and uninstiering part of the game aside from in say spec ops the line.



There badly needed to be a open world city map, basicly moscow would do, i thought looking at the map that dead city would be but it wasent which was a shame though the level its self more than made up for that

[Snow]

Originally posted by DELTA:

Volga because its slimply beutifal and i hated leaving it along side it being a great sandbox with plenty to see and do along side being able to talk to all the villagers and it also felt refreshingly differnt but still metro.

Dead city, a true masterpeice of a linar level, i'd rank this on the same level as the volga but for differnt reasons as this is pure metro in its finist fourm minus having no human enermys and it sorly lacked a clam down level afterwards leving you on the end of the high with nothing after

Yamata is 3rd for me as i liked the outside setting and stuff that happened in the bunker supprised me as i wasent expecting it to be like it was.

Tagia a great level with exclent story and setting though it felt too short as i wanted to explore the town on the other side of the dam and such because it felt alot bigger than it really was. only thing i didnt like was losing my gear and being forced to use the crossbow till i found an AK on a bandit.


Moscow, for a tutorial level it was to long and for a liniar level it was too short. personally i think it should have been a two part level with the first part being a linar tutorial and then expanding into a open world explore a little bit of moscow before closing off.


Caspian, car was fun and the oil rig at the end was legit intersting but you couldent really interact with it and honestly i feel like most of it was like that. Cool but not much interaction and honestly i could do without seeing any more desrts in games as they are rutienly the most boring and uninstiering part of the game aside from in say spec ops the line.



There badly needed to be a open world city map, basicly moscow would do, i thought looking at the map that dead city would be but it wasent which was a shame though the level its self more than made up for that

Are you seriously from/living in Britain? This just hurts. I am not the grammar nazi type, but damn. This hurt my brain in more ways than one.

[Flint Weastwood]

Originally posted by Derrame:

Moscow: great map, in tunnels and in surface, a bit short, loved the intense cutscenes

Volga: nice post apocaliptic landscape, interesting and fun the first time but it gets a bit empty and lifeless, great interiors

Yamantau: great environment, story, action, exciting, great from beginning to end

Caspian desert: too much like Mad Max, a bit empty and lifeless, but it's somethng different, so it's ok. Nice underground level.

Taiga: beautiful map, linear, great environments, forest, plants, swamps, spider tunnels, very immersive and atmospheric

Dead city: great in all aspects, surface and tunnels are very intense, deadly radiation and cld, new mutants in tunnels, gorillas are ridiculous, normal monsters or librariasn would have been better. Excellent metro level.

All maps and environments are very atmospheric and immersive.

I thought those gorillas were supposed to be librarians?
They always kinda looked like gorillas the me anyways.

[JohnnyRyu]

Originally posted by Jig McGalliger:

Originally posted by Sakamoto Ryuichi:

Some in-game interactions make no sense without the UI turned on; you cannot check your ammo on-the-fly; and the auto save system is actively working against you if you are not following the script

This is exactly like the prior titles' Ranger mode. Don't like it? Don't use it.

Yeah, shut up. I played over 600 hrs on the previous entries, 100%-ed all of them, and I am telling you the current Full-Dive experience is not working. No, not because the designs are bad, it's simply due to the fact that Exodus has many more new elements and key-bindings that to do these actions in full-dive has become cumbersome. The devs need to rearrange some UI/on screen display, that's all.

[Terminator01]

Moscow: Was nicely made for a tutorial level. I just wish you could explore it a little bit more and that at least one more chapter was playing there, before you escape from there.

Volga: I personally don't like the map really, at least on my first playthrough. Mostly because if the female Shrimps who spit their ♥♥♥♥ on me, while I was on the boat. In general, this map is nice for exploring, but for my taste, you're too much dependent on the boat to move around the map.

Yamantau: Really nice looking area when you're close to the bunker. The facility itself is something like a D6 2.0 from 2033, which is nice. I really liked the combat.

Caspian: I guess I'm alone with that, but it is my 2nd favorite area. I always liked desert levels. I know they're easy to make, but you can still see, that some effort was put into it.
The car was something nice to have, but I still was on foot most of the time(at least when I was exploring the map before I continued with the story).

Taiga: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ beautiful area, really. Objectively the best looking one. I mean, just look at this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1659704211

Unfortunately, this map is the one who killed my FPS at the most. Especially at the beginning I went down up to 20 FPS on medium settings. But it got better the further I came. The bear boss fight was nice. But I still don't know the exactly pattern of it how to fight properly. But the bear uses the same attack pattern like Big Momma from Last Light. Maybe that's the trick.
And ♥♥♥♥ Spiderbugs, if the game forces your flashlight being off.

Novosibirsk: My personal favorite and highlight. I got the fully original Metro 2033 flashback in there. Sure it's just a linearic level, but we're used to this from the series. Finally the Nosalis aren't autistic children anymore with their attacks and the whole atmosphere was just perfect for me.
I was just sad what happened to Miller, if you get the good ending. But overall, my personal highlight.

[Seaplace]

Moscow, nice but way too short, and I generally get frustrated by the number of times during the game you get "knocked out, down or otherwise incapacitated"

Volga: By far the most enjoyable map for me. interesting objectives, a base to return to and diverse.

Yamantau, well on ranger its a nightmare, no real stealth options and very linear. probably the least enjoyable one for me.

Caspian; had its charms, far too much nothing though and until you get the motion tracker the damn cannibals are a real "!#¤# in the ass. I wish er had more positive encounters and chance to speak to people. The Barons hideout is really cool and I feel like they wasted opportunity here. Especially would have been nice to be able to actually side with the Baron - but no matter what you do it leads to same "throne-room fight" - I really enjoyed the Satcom bunker though.

Taiga: Even more wasted opportunity, basically a long "duck and cover" linear mission with neither chance to customize your gear, explore or in any other way have fun. This map simply sucked and felt like the Devs ran out of time and money. The story was also horrid, and any peaceful interaction impossible. The FPS also dropped hugely with every animal fight especially bear - dont know what they did but here was the only performance problem during my play-through. I was hugely disappointing by this level.

Dead city: Hmm, well it starts off well enough, but the linearity is ♥♥♥♥. Again stealth seemed like not really a option with frequent mutant rushes and the HORRID water level, where worms keep shooting you from afar. Even with sturdy gasmask I reloaded 100+ times due to it breaking and there being no way to neither repair it or find a replacement. It was creepy and looked good.
Most of the level you just run though, trying to save filter time, not really looking at details.
This would have been awesome as a real open map like Volga! - imagine having to scout out dead city and find upgrades, return to base to increase rad resistance, go out again and slowly pick map apart one area at a time! <3 - Id love it, and was also generally disappointed here. :(

All in all I feel Metro Exodus was falsely proclaimed "open world" which clearly most levels are not. We also still have no choices to speak off, but thats generally a problem in Metro.

I like the upgrade system, the backpack and the fact you have to choose UPGs, but lament that "heavy stock" is always best no matter what, where sniper or assault would be better for different tasks were it up to me. I did overall enjoy the game and spent round 30 hrs on ranger.

Ultimately Id like to be given a open world, ability to travel between areas by world map, and more random encounters in maps, also making my own character with strengths and flaws would make this outshine Fallout by far.