Metro Exodus is the third installment from the Ukrainian-Maltese developer 4A Games, following Dmitry Glukhovsky's excellent post-apocalyptic novels of Metro. After the controversy regarding Deep Silver's decision to switch from Steam to Epic Games Store services, it is known that the game was received with review bombing, regardless to eventually be quite successful same as its predecessors.

My PC: Windows 10 | Intel Core i7-6700K, 4.00GHz | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 | 16GB RAM

The Good:

• Excellent story. The characters received much more in-depth personalities and reactions to different events.
  
• Different ways to accomplish your objectives, for good or worse.
  
• Good voice acting in English, but even better in Russian. Recommend to play the with Russian dub and the sub of your native language.
  
• Open environments for you to wander, meet new characters, explore for resources, and getting into combat situations almost all the time.
  
• One of the best-looking games with graphics and environments.
  
• New features: dynamic weather systems and day-night cycle.
  
• Combat and weapons customization are very fun, both for guns blazing and stealth.

The Neutral:

• Some glitches, not so much of game-breaking, like enemies stuck in objects, or walking/running on some landscape where you find yourself floating in the air a bit.
  
• Some lengthy loading times may occur, depends on the PC hardware and the video settings.
  
• Playing on the hardest difficulty disables the manual save game, which means you need to rely on autosave and checkpoints.

The Bad:

• Main downside: performance issues with FPS drops, even on high PC specs and lower video settings.
  
• FULL DIVE game mode, disables all HUD elements expect for what you see in your backpack and workbenches... for realism purposes. Not recommended as it eliminates important and necessary gameplay and story-related intractable functions (like QTE) that may make youfrustrated.
  
• Does not have much of the claustrophobic and horror feelings like before. Yes, there are still some stages that take place underground, and yes, there is a bit of scary situations, but it doesn't feel the same as before (in my opinion).
  
• A bug with the subtitles, when a dialogue line from one of the characters may get stuck on the screen for the remainder of the game until you either load a previous save game before that same dialogue line occurred, or restart the entire chapter.

After the “good” ending of Metro: Last Light, Artyom has developed an obsession that there are more human survivors living outside the borders of Moscow, and often leave his home station to search for them, much against Anna’s and Miller's wills, only to return with lethal radiation doses, lack of oxygen, or bleeding after combat with the creatures.

One day, Artyom and Anna leaves the home station together to recon the surface again, and to their amazement to suddenly find a train that travels outside of Moscow's borders. Instead, they are kidnapped and later rescued by their squad mates, a special forces team of Spartan Rangers commanded by Miller and close friends to Artyom, as well as capturing the train.

At this point, Miller reveals to the whole team that the occupation forces of NATO continued to advance through Russia even after when the nuclear bombs hit the country, therefore the remaining portions of the Russian government decided to jam all communications to the outside world and prevent from more bombs to fall, only to stay hidden from NATO and remain in shelter.

From here on, the crew nicknamed the captured train "Aurora", and are now crossing the country while seeking for a safe place to live... never go back underground.

The game retains the basic gameplay mechanics from the previous installments, but with much more kick to it:
The developers wanted to let the players explore the lands outside Moscow by switching from the linear-style of the claustrophobic and dark underground metro tunnels, to sandbox-type environments that resembles open world, but the game does not really feature open world-style of gameplay as seen in the Fallout series for example. The maps are rather larger, letting you wander around more freely. Basically, the game features both the classic linear stages and the newer sandbox stages (where all the fun is). While in the open stages, you can now breath fresh air (sort of) while wandering around to meet many different characters, locations to explore, encountering numerous amount of enemies (both human and non-human), and from time to time just enjoying the views, the dynamic weather systems, and day-night cycle.

We are introduced with the new mobile inventory and crafting system – a backpack containing equipment and materials to craft, repair, and customize your gear and weapons as you play, anywhere you want. This is a cool feature that saves you much time to prepare yourself in between engagements, although you can’t perform every action with the backpack, as some things (like crafting explosives and cleaning your weapons) must be done using workbenches that you can find scattered around the maps, or on the Aurora.

While exploring the open maps, you can find safe houses where you can prepare your gear and use a bed to regain your health and pass the time through sleep.

The combat mechanics are very similar, but can be a bit more challenging, especially if you play on higher difficulties. While it’s fun to play stealthy and sneak pass enemies, take them down using a knife or knockout, or blasting them from close range using powerful weapons and send them out of the planet, you can still encounter some glitches, like enemies that you kill may get stuck in objects, and if you kill them stealthily using takedowns, then you could get stuck with them, rendering you helpless, with the only two ways to free yourself is by moving a lot or load a previous save. Also, in very few cases the enemies can clip through walls/doors and shoot you through them.

As you progress through the story, you will get to see many amazing scenes of action, explosions, creatures and other enemies coming out of nowhere just to make you act quickly before you may be get killed. All the scenes related to the story could also take your breath away.

The game features beautiful and rich vistas as well as detailed models and remarkable textures. Unfortunately, even with high PC specs the game still suffers from performance issues, FPS drops occur almost all the time. I had to play the game on very low settings, which keeps the graphics still kind of nice but not as much as with the high settings of course.

Like in the previous installments, the sound quality is excellent, all for characters, atmospheres, weapons, music, etc. From time to time there are some cases where characters may be dubbed overlay each other but it's not a game-breaking.

Metro Exodus is one of the best-looking singleplayer games 'here it debuted a new and improved take on gameplay mechanics and level design to much more open levels for free movement. While it suffers from numerous glitches and performances, at the end it turned out to be quite successful. I hope that the next installments of Metro (if they may ever exist) will retain the beautiful aspects of Metro Exodus, but get more attention to the mentioned unnecessary glitches and performance issues.

[h1][b][u]Introduction[/u][/b][/h1] [b][i]Metro Exodus[/i][/b] is the third installment from the Ukrainian-Maltese developer [b]4A Games[/b], following Dmitry Glukhovsky's excellent post-apocalyptic novels of [b][i]Metro[/i][/b]. After the controversy regarding [b]Deep Silver[/b]'s decision to switch from [b]Steam[/b] to [b]Epic Games Store[/b] services, it is known that the game was received with review bombing, regardless to eventually be quite successful same as its predecessors. [b][u]My PC:[/u][/b] Windows 10 | Intel Core i7-6700K, 4.00GHz | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 | 16GB RAM [h1][b][u]TL;DR Review[/u][/b][/h1] [b][u]The Good:[/u][/b] [list] [*]Excellent story. The characters received much more in-depth personalities and reactions to different events. [*]Different ways to accomplish your objectives, for good or worse. [*]Good voice acting in English, but even better in Russian. Recommend to play the with Russian dub and the sub of your native language. [*]Open environments for you to wander, meet new characters, explore for resources, and getting into combat situations almost all the time. [*]One of the best-looking games with graphics and environments. [*]New features: dynamic weather systems and day-night cycle. [*]Combat and weapons customization are very fun, both for guns blazing and stealth. [/list] [b][u]The Neutral:[/u][/b] [list] [*]Some glitches, not so much of game-breaking, like enemies stuck in objects, or walking/running on some landscape where you find yourself floating in the air a bit. [*]Some lengthy loading times may occur, depends on the PC hardware and the video settings. [*]Playing on the hardest difficulty disables the manual save game, which means you need to rely on autosave and checkpoints. [/list] [b][u]The Bad:[/u][/b] [list] [*]Main downside: performance issues with FPS drops, even on high PC specs and lower video settings. [*][b]FULL DIVE[/b] game mode, disables all HUD elements expect for what you see in your backpack and workbenches... for realism purposes. Not recommended as it eliminates important and necessary gameplay and story-related intractable functions (like QTE) that may make youfrustrated. [*]Does not have much of the claustrophobic and horror feelings like before. Yes, there are still some stages that take place underground, and yes, there is a bit of scary situations, but it doesn't feel the same as before (in my opinion). [*]A bug with the subtitles, when a dialogue line from one of the characters may get stuck on the screen for the remainder of the game until you either load a previous save game before that same dialogue line occurred, or restart the entire chapter. [/list] [h1][b]Storyline (9/10)[/b][/h1] After the “good” ending of [b][i]Metro: Last Light[/i][/b], Artyom has developed an obsession that there are more human survivors living outside the borders of Moscow, and often leave his home station to search for them, much against Anna’s and Miller's wills, only to return with lethal radiation doses, lack of oxygen, or bleeding after combat with the creatures. One day, Artyom and Anna leaves the home station together to recon the surface again, and to their amazement to suddenly find a train that travels outside of Moscow's borders. Instead, they are kidnapped and later rescued by their squad mates, a special forces team of Spartan Rangers commanded by Miller and close friends to Artyom, as well as capturing the train. At this point, Miller reveals to the whole team that the occupation forces of NATO continued to advance through Russia even after when the nuclear bombs hit the country, therefore the remaining portions of the Russian government decided to jam all communications to the outside world and prevent from more bombs to fall, only to stay hidden from NATO and remain in shelter. From here on, the crew nicknamed the captured train [b][i]"Aurora"[/i][/b], and are now crossing the country while seeking for a safe place to live... never go back underground. [h1][b]Gameplay (7.5/10)[/b][/h1] The game retains the basic gameplay mechanics from the previous installments, but with much more kick to it: The developers wanted to let the players explore the lands outside Moscow by switching from the linear-style of the claustrophobic and dark underground metro tunnels, to sandbox-type environments that resembles open world, but the game does not really feature open world-style of gameplay as seen in the [b][i]Fallout[/i][/b] series for example. The maps are rather larger, letting you wander around more freely. Basically, the game features both the classic linear stages and the newer sandbox stages (where all the fun is). While in the open stages, you can now breath fresh air (sort of) while wandering around to meet many different characters, locations to explore, encountering numerous amount of enemies (both human and non-human), and from time to time just enjoying the views, the dynamic weather systems, and day-night cycle. We are introduced with the new mobile inventory and crafting system – a backpack containing equipment and materials to craft, repair, and customize your gear and weapons as you play, anywhere you want. This is a cool feature that saves you much time to prepare yourself in between engagements, although you can’t perform every action with the backpack, as some things (like crafting explosives and cleaning your weapons) must be done using workbenches that you can find scattered around the maps, or on the [b][i]Aurora[/i][/b]. While exploring the open maps, you can find safe houses where you can prepare your gear and use a bed to regain your health and pass the time through sleep. The combat mechanics are very similar, but can be a bit more challenging, especially if you play on higher difficulties. While it’s fun to play stealthy and sneak pass enemies, take them down using a knife or knockout, or blasting them from close range using powerful weapons and send them out of the planet, you can still encounter some glitches, like enemies that you kill may get stuck in objects, and if you kill them stealthily using takedowns, then you could get stuck with them, rendering you helpless, with the only two ways to free yourself is by moving a lot or load a previous save. Also, in very few cases the enemies can clip through walls/doors and shoot you through them. As you progress through the story, you will get to see many amazing scenes of action, explosions, creatures and other enemies coming out of nowhere just to make you act quickly before you may be get killed. All the scenes related to the story could also take your breath away. [h1][b]Graphics (8/10)[/b][/h1] The game features beautiful and rich vistas as well as detailed models and remarkable textures. Unfortunately, even with high PC specs the game still suffers from performance issues, FPS drops occur almost all the time. I had to play the game on very low settings, which keeps the graphics still kind of nice but not as much as with the high settings of course. [h1][b]Audio (8.5/10)[/b][/h1] Like in the previous installments, the sound quality is excellent, all for characters, atmospheres, weapons, music, etc. From time to time there are some cases where characters may be dubbed overlay each other but it's not a game-breaking. [h1][b]Final Conclusion (8.5/10)[/b][/h1] Metro Exodus is one of the best-looking singleplayer games 'here it debuted a new and improved take on gameplay mechanics and level design to much more open levels for free movement. While it suffers from numerous glitches and performances, at the end it turned out to be quite successful. I hope that the next installments of [b][i]Metro [/i][/b](if they may ever exist) will retain the beautiful aspects of [b][i]Metro Exodus[/i][/b],[b][i] [/i][/b]but get more attention to the mentioned unnecessary glitches and performance issues.