12/9/24
STALKER 2 is a complicated game, much like the franchise itself. Talking about it in full, especially without referencing my experience with SoC, is impossible. TL;DR: I’ve grown to appreciate the series much more, but now I have a genuine love-hate relationship with it. Giving it a simple thumbs-up would feel pointless.
The game has the potential to be as broken as Arkham Knight or AC Unity and might even surpass them if we are talking about the standards of modern games.

I only played SoC for the first time about a month ago. I knew of its fame (or infamy if you will) for being difficult, and to an extent, it is. But it’s more about the irritating core game design: bullet physics trashing early-game weapons to unplayable degrees, overall world and level design and not being able to read the room clearly etc. The pistol was borderline useless as much as your trusty knife.

I died—a lot. Countless reloads just in the CNPP (veteran). But it was no TeW’s Akumu mode or Halo ♥♥♥ 2. The gaming world isn’t short on brutally psychopathic modes either, Wolfenstein II’s Mein Leben (permadeath, btw) is just insanity, with enemies spawning behind you and wielding hitscans, iykyk.

CNPP section was utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It was essentially a full frontal assault, you were clearly against the odds. Early on, I had to hug a wall just to survive, or you’d get sniped by gauss rifle ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, helicopters and an APC came in, trashing your saves because outrunning hits became impossible, leading to potential mini-softlocks until you restarted the mission.

The mission was so chaotic I barely knew what was going on. I was doing just fine until then. The devs must’ve realized how devilish it was because they added radiation zones near the wall and anomalies to spice things up. I was managing radiation, dodging and spamming medkit, and running between covers. The whole section was a 180 degree turn from what made STALKER great: the ability to set your own pace and experience tense, atmospheric conflicts. I infiltrated a military base in the pitch dark being able to deduce where the enemies were only by their headlight flashes. When it peaked it went downhill from there to be a MoH wannabe.

Amen to that, STALKER 2 couldn’t resist pulling the same stunt. GSC must have a fetish, but let’s be honest, they don’t have the tools to make nonstop linear action missions work. This time, though, they didn’t softlock you. Instead, they gave you everything: suits, unique weapons, military-grade medkits, and enough ammo to kill a ♥♥♥ god. All these are given because you are needed to square off against a room of Granite squad wearing gauss rifles. A very usual day for a stalker.

I know some STALKER fans are quick to counter anything you direct at the game. I’ve seen it firsthand when I went aggressive on SoC to provoke some thoughts (or just stir the pot). Love what you will—nobody can take that from you. But it’s crucial to understand what might be a complete experience breaker for others.

The anomalies in STALKER 2 are a huge letdown, mostly because of the huge ass large map filled with dead zones. Anomalies are static, not RNG-based, so after running between points A and B a dozen times, you memorize them. Unlike SoC’s thermal anomalies, which were genuinely weird, I rarely died to anomalies here. The only challenge was running through glass shards at night, and after a while it was not a problem at all.
Artifact hunting is fun. Compared to SoC, where artifacts were easy to farm and not hard to miss, this feels more engaging. Navigating anomalies for artifacts, especially archartifacts, was a highlight. These artifacts would occur in predetermined areas though.

Fast travel and shared stashes are very welcome. Streamlines things but sacrifices SoC’s oppressive atmosphere. Though thinking about otherwise shakes to me to my core given the map is about 70sq^2 and most of the traversal are just some dull down time.

Early on, scarcity forces you to rotate weapons to avoid breaking them or melting down ammo. But as you progress, that tension disappears. The increased carry weight is nice, but the stamina management is infuriating. Even with artifacts and consumables, managing stamina for 30+ hours before exos&hercules get in the picture becomes tiresome. Free-roaming without a stamina cost would have been a better solution simply by allowing players to free roam unless they run into a conflict or limiting inventory to not weight but spaces and giving less resources to players.

You don't really need to carry consumables besides medkits and antirads early-on because every single enemy drops them. And radiation (expect the one from artifacts) is almost non-existent. So, grab a few military grade medkit and a few hundred AP slugs and you'll be doing just fine.

Combat feels dumbed down but remains visceral. Bullet physics aren’t as complex—you can reliably land headshots by centering your crosshair and have point blank shots, which was much harder in SoC. Pseudogiant/Chimera are sponges, yes, but managable considering how they act. Very easy to outrun too.

Bloodsuckers certainly feel less threatening and this is coming from a person who skipped Bloodsucker Village in SoC due to a temper tantrum. Human enemies are semi-aggressive but lack the flanking tactics that made SoC oppressive. UE may have a role in that although GSC have their own fork of it however, despite some people calling SoC AI was bad I truly disagree. It aged relatively fine and being stationary is often punished compared to here where there is even an artifact that encourages standing still. So, the bottom line is that enemies indeed cannot punish you. And that is if AI doesn't get completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. That literally happened in the Korshunov (frozen AI) fight and I was unable to kill him until I reloaded.

Is what we say when we talk about the large pool of possibilities running into bugs. I have seen plenty from a scale of quirky things to game breaking ones. The game was not well (play) tested after SIRCAA. That's where I first got locked out from progressing as I fell off from the elevator and the save was trashed. After a few reloads I was able to solve that. Then I got locked in a damn room where there was no exit but I luckily had a save not so long before that. Like everyone else I got locked out of Zalissya mission as well as Sultansk. Enemies would spawn in the middle of a base and allies would turn to hostile in some of the bases. Weapons would not only spawn in my inventory but also in my ♥♥♥ hand. Just have a look at reddit for more instances like these. It's so bizarre that you don't only have to go through from a set of in game systems that doesn't work as intended but also all these plethora of ♥♥♥♥, praying for the game to not break down.

Keywords: Lumen, RTGI, UE5, crowd density, CPU bottleneck. These tell you what you should know. It's a game that is undeniably pretty to look at but it's costly. PSI emission and dynamic weather really do wonders aesthetically. Hell you get even struck by a lightning! But that's all. Visually dynamic but is a dead world after all.

Must admit I liked the game but it needs time to cook. I appreciate the ambition but when it doesn't work, it simply doesn't. It has an addictive part to it. I really liked using ptm/revolver here. I wished stealth was more of a focus, it's busted. Endings boiled down to the last 2 or 3 choices and were not quite impressive though still better than SoC's. I truly hope it can pull off a CP77 comeback.

★★★½☆☆
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I am giving a thumbs down for several reasons, although it should be noted that this is by no means a terrible game. On the contrary, it is quite fun and engaging, and it is likely best experienced at the Mayhem difficulty. However, as challenging as the game initially appears (due to unfamiliarity with the items, their variations, and the absence of upgrades), it becomes disproportionately easy once all upgrades are acquired. The core gameplay effectively reverses in its challenge curve. Of course you get better as you train for what to look for as well as somehow getting better at memorizing and recognizing stuff but that's only half of the story.

In a traditional sense, upgrades are expected to make certain aspects easier, sure, but this is typically balanced by an (gradual and adjustable) increase in difficulty over time. Here, however, the late game becomes more of a collectathon, where activities such as waiting for stickers to arrive for achievements or pursuing miscellaneous goals (e.g., reaching Day 50) that otherwise you would not be aiming for dominate the experience. Personally, I found this phase quite monotonous and meager.

The mechanic where items rotate when overlapped appears to be the game's way of indicating that an object is stuck beneath another so I am willing to give that a pass. While the game can cloak itself as a sort of hidden-object game that works well during the early game, it gradually loses its appeal and once the management part is gone too you are basically left with nothing at stakes. Playing only to go through ordeals of an officier. With upgrades in place, the chaotic environment dissipates, leaving ample time to analyze each item—though this is rarely necessary. Furthermore, the realization that you can TRASH ANY item fundamentally undermines the challenge. This mechanic, whether intentional or not, allows players to selectively return easily recognizable items while discarding objects with low monetary value or those are hard to spot/pickup. Meaning you are not just a good officer at an airpot who's helping out people to retrieve their lost items but actually making ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ profit off of it. As weird as that sounds, it adds a bit depth and a win condition to the game which is very welcome but that also means many objects in the game are bound to get trivialized and reduced to be red herrings that are only to be there for distracting you and create necessary fail states (you lose money if you can't pick up the items from the conveyor belt in time or fail the game completely if you are unable to return certain amounts of items back to back).

While the superficial economy management aspect is intriguing at the very first glance, it feels undercooked and does not significantly change the longevity of the game. If you asked me, I would remove all the monetary elements and turn the game into a challenge where you must return X number of items each day, with the game taking up on pace more and more as time progresses.

Considering the price point, I believe there are more engaging alternatives that evolve over time as you progress, such as Cat Goes Fishing or Luna's Fishing Garden. Lost But Found can be best described as a quasi-hyper-casual game that is easy to "game" once certain strategies are discovered. That said, the game excels in intuitiveness—most items are easy to identify, which is a commendable design choice. That's best seen on those damn tickets that are specific to each country but you can easily tell which ticket is which because they'd have a certain landmark on term which can be easily judged via common sense & knowledge.

ps: I was unable to locate the Nintendo Switch that is featured in the game's trailers. Given Nintendo’s reputation for aggressively sueing everybody in and out, it would not be surprising if it had been removed from the final release.

Oh, there is a leaderboard too with certainly no cheaters occupying it.

★★✩☆☆☆
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