Recent reviews by Nikusu⁧⁧Desu

give free respec

Here are my impressions of the game. I’ve played all parts: Anomaly, Gamma, Area, and NLC. I think I have the right to consider myself a veteran or fan of the series and to evaluate it somehow. I have high standards for games—what can I say?

Settings and Visuals:

The interface is convenient for navigation, with a semi-console HUD. (I don’t always enjoy scrolling through those massive wheels with a mouse, but that’s a minor gripe that plagues half the games nowadays.) But why hide stats and percentages for artifacts or weapons? Seeing "Radiation: POWERFUL" (in green) on an artifact tells me nothing. Why oversimplify? Where’s the detailed description we were promised?
Graphics are solid overall. Anomalies look beautiful, and the lighting is excellent. However, as shown in the trailer, the flashlight casts no shadows (even X-Ray had them—look at Gamma graphics). Facial animations are a horror story straight out of Unity. It feels like Skyrim Oblivion says hello—it’s that bad. As for optimization, it’s Unreal Engine 5 (a blessing(no) for optimization). Many players hoping to run this on five-year-old GPUs might not realize that optimizing for such hardware is impossible. On my rig (7900XTX, 7950X3D, DDR5 with heavily reduced timings), I’m getting a rock-solid 160 FPS at 2K epic settings with FSR and frame generation. It launched without crashes—thank you for that at least.

Weapons:

From what I’ve seen and played, the weapons feel excellent. They’re not toy-like. An AK feels like an AK, and I can’t wait to get to the PKM. Modding is interesting too. However, there’s a huge issue that both I and others I’ve spoken to have noticed.

Difficulty:

Firstly, game difficulty (as stated by the developers) only affects loot abundance and incoming damage. That’s it. Damage to NPCs is fine. From what I’ve gathered, there’s a stealth damage multiplier. For instance, if you’re unseen, a headshot from a PM (9×18 caliber) kills instantly. But if you’re spotted, enemies might survive 2–5 headshots from 5.45/5.56 caliber bullets (lol, what? Is bandit armor made of Stalinium or something?).

Mutants:

This is both okay and not. The Stalinium phenomenon also extends to mutants. Two magazines for a poltergeist and just as much for a bloodsucker or flesh—this isn’t okay. You might call it a skill issue, but I’ll respond by pointing out the complete lack of mutant drops. This is a huge gameplay problem because most content creators in the Ukrainian/English segments I’ve seen simply start running away from mutants. What’s the point of fighting a mob that consumes 75–120 bullets, drains your healing items, and drops nothing? Even in vanilla Stalker games, mutants dropped body parts. Adding new mutant abilities is cool—props for that.

No-Life 2.0:

This is the biggest letdown. The charm of old Stalker games on the X-Ray Engine was in the life simulation system. Here’s how it worked in the original games:
Every stalker that spawned had their own life. You could observe their routines—moving across locations, hunting artifacts, fighting other factions. Mutants only spawned when you entered their location. There was even a stalker chat feature where NPCs would post memes, announce finding artifacts (and if you killed them, they’d actually have that artifact). This created an incredibly lively world that old Stalker players will understand.
Here’s an example from Gamma (which retains the old A-Life system):
I took a random Freedom member’s quest to kill a Duty member. At the time, he was at the scrapyard, but after several in-game hours, he moved to Agroprom (i hate this location, a lot of mutants). When I arrived to turn in the quest, the area was swarming with three bloodsuckers, two chimeras, and a burer. The Freedom NPC barely survived (if he died, I’d lose reputation and fail the quest), so I had to protect him. Until all enemies were killed, he wouldn’t even talk to me.
Now, the question is: what’s the point of A-Life 2.0? Mutants spawn right next to you, stalkers change location only after a save reload, their AI is terrible, and they constantly get stuck. This feels more like Dying Light 2. The game world doesn’t feel alive. Developers have acknowledged the feedback and promise improvements, but this is the release version. This is not a beta or a decade-old Unity engine.

Other Micro-Issues:

Hunger: You need to eat every 5–10 minutes (worse than DayZ).
Day/Night Cycle: It’s awful. You spend 95% of the time in darkness (developers insist it’s intentional).
Weapon/Armor Durability: Your gear breaks down absurdly fast—two magazines from an AK reduce durability by 3%.

Anomalies: New ones are interesting, and old ones look good, but the radius of some anomalies is baffling.

Map Design: Decent overall, but some areas feel overly closed-off (e.g., the scrapyard)

Stashes: They now auto-highlight on your PDA. There are tons of them, but they’re highly repetitive. Default loot usually includes vodka, random ammo, and the like. After two hours, I had 70 bandages, 50 medkits, 70 breads, and 50 cans. What am I supposed to do with this unique loot? Some stashes are interesting (e.g., the journalist’s), but they’re exclusive to Ultimate Edition players. Stashes feel empty and lack randomness.

Audio:

The sound design is excellent (tested with DT770 headphones and an audio card). Ukrainian voice acting is top-notch. Music is fine.

Bugs (a nightmare):

Mutants clip into textures, AI bugs out, stalkers whip out their PDAs, soft-locks occur, NPCs vanish and spawns before your eyes, and both mutants and NPCs get stuck in place. A-Life 2.0 doesn’t work. I don’t even want to detail all the bugs—they’re numerous. These are bugs found within 20 minutes of gameplay in the polished Gamescom segment, meaning it’ll only get worse later on.
It feels like the QA team tested this game like Prypoi (a character in Stalker 2 who starves from the start of the game).

Verdict:

A game I desperately want to love but can’t. At least not in this state. Developers are reportedly working on fixes. But who tested this game? Stalker remains Stalker, but we’re stuck with what we have. Many issues are easily fixable, or, as always, give modders the tools, and they’ll fix everything. The foundation for mods is already in place.
It’s unclear how the plot or endgame will play out—we’ll see—but let us enjoy the base game first.

It’s playable, but I’d recommend waiting for at least the first hotfix to improve the experience.
For those with older PCs or who haven’t played Stalker Gamma, go ahead and enjoy it.

I’ve written this review because many people will experience the Stalker series for the first time, and with all these issues, the impression won’t be ideal.

To those who neither smoke nor drink, will die in an anomaly.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Good hunting, stalker.
Written on 21.11.24. Release Patch.

Very simple and interesting gameplay loop. Player friendly economics and friendly grind.

Escape from bard`s drum

No Step Back

Fun. But technical state is very awful, crashes and server issues(500k online moment). Kernel anticheat in coop game. upd. rest in pеnis

The title of "Horror on Unity" was transferred from Escape From Tarkov to the Last Epoch. We had to try to get ahead of the main horror game in terms of the number of bugs. Well done, you did it! Congratulations!

coop 10/10

10/10

2 dollars bruh