This review is spoiler-free. Main story is completed, about 80% of the map explored.

I was really skeptical about the possible success and relevancy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. Seventeen years have passed since the release of the first game. Most of the people who worked at GSC back then have either left or grown up both in age and ideas/worldviews. Ukraine as a country has changed dramatically, and our ties with post-Soviet culture - a big part of the setting and flavour - have turned upside down. Let’s not forget the fact that many companies have tried to reproduce the magic of the original trilogy, failed hard, or created awful cash-grab monsters, only to collapse under bad management and poor financial decisions.

Why would S2 succeed? I was pretty sure it wouldn’t. I expected it to be an awkward product aimed at nostalgia freaks with the sole goal of milking some quick cash before everyone realized what a scam it was.

What happened instead? The game became a cultural success in Ukraine and worldwide. It dominated the charts, choked the news cycle for a week, and almost killed the speed of all Ukrainian ISPs on release eve. No game release was ever covered this densely in the media here before (or at all). A month later, it’s enjoying a stunning 85% positive reviews on Steam, has gone through multiple patches, and is selling like crazy. I’m super proud that the franchise, which shaped me heavily during my youth, received the sequel it deserved - made by people who genuinely cared and wanted it to be an amazing game and a worthy tribute to the original.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 shook off the chains of the ruzzian influence and became an ultra-Ukrainian product, soaked in our history, present, and future. It screams to the world: “I’m a UKRAINIAN GAME, you guys. Remember it this time!” They definitely will. I hope this game becomes a green light for other Ukrainian developers to prove that our games don’t need to be russified or Americanized to succeed. As long as it’s good, gamers will connect. That’s the main W of S2 in my opinion - it broke free.

Let’s dig into the systems:

The Positives:

Setting and atmosphere: 10/10. As soon as the loading screen is gone, you’re in the Zone. It talks to you, listens to you, and pulls you in completely. It feels impossible to replicate, but they did it.
Hand-crafted world: No lazy terrain textures or overused props here. The environment feels unique, alive, and ready to scare the hell out of you. Think The Witcher 3-level care.
Sound design: This is gold medal/Oscar/world championship-level work. When wind picks up, you can hear leaves rustling, metal creaking, tree trunks rumbling - it’s all unprecedented and widely praised.
Cinematics: Some in-game machinima fights are so intense they’ll leave you exhausted without any QTE.
Graphics: Insanely photorealistic at times, with weather effects and lighting stealing the show. The only weak link is the outdated face animations.
Experience: You gasp, you laugh, you flinch, you curse and scream reacting to the in-game events so the magic is working.

The Rough Edges

Don’t get me wrong, the game is far from being a finished product. It was not a CP2077-level disaster but it was aiming at becoming one at some point, if not for those Week-1 patches that eased the tension a bit. Poor performance on older systems, quest softlocks/hardlocks, crashes, missing assets, RAM leaks, weird balance in economy and difficulty levels and oh so many other things. I personally was not affected too much with performance issues and I was exploring the world so slowly that before I got to the first problematic areas - they were already patched out. But I was following the r/stalker closely and it was a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ there. But what surprised me - people had a lot of faith in the devs (and GSC maintained it with the quick and successful patches) and a huge will to not give up on the game so no drama really happened, but still - there is a lot to improve.

Here’s some things I doubt will be patched out because they are the core design:
- Monsters feel overused and often devolve into bullet sponges. Iconic mutants like Bloodsuckers lose their mystique when encountered in packs so early in the game. In SoC, you were about 20 hours in before your first Bloodsucker encounter. First, you overheard other stalkers around the fire sharing tips on battling them and spooking rookies. Only then did you face them. The same buildup applied to every other notable mutant, like Controllers or Burers but not here.
- Final boss battles come in quick succession. The battles themselves are well-designed, following the approach of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and CP2077 but imagine fighting three Adam Smashers with different abilities in a row? That would feel tedious, wouldn't it?
- The storytelling feels too enigmatic and esoteric for my simple-minded taste. GSC clearly wanted to kill two mutated pigeons with one F-1 grenade, weaving the new story into the previous games’ narrative by reusing old characters and locations—almost to an uncomfortable degree. That said, I’ve seen people drooling over this approach, so maybe it’s just me being boring.

And finally, these points still can be improved with patches or a 2.0 release:
- A-life 2.0 is broken/nonexistent and breaks the immersion hard but was already addressed with a 1.1 patch and I’m sure will be fixed.
- RPG systems fail to communicate their stuff clearly back to players. Gear/artifact stats are vague and outright annoying. One artifact’s “minor” carrying capacity buff gives you +8 kg and other one’s “minor” - gives you +11 kg. It is a part of world exploration and trial and error process, I get it, but still, not everything has to be that ambiguous.
- No binoculars or NVG. This was big on Reddit. I managed to survive without them but on numerous occasions I had to survey a location with my ♥♥♥♥♥♥ scope or bump into enemies at night trying to stealth my way into a base. Don’t give them out in the first area but at least make them available for purchase later or make them a part of some high-end suits.
- Enemy recognition system is bad. Most of the time I wait until fired upon to not screw up my rep with a certain faction.
- Speaking of factions, which are a HUGE part of the world - it is super underdeveloped as a system. You don’t know your standing with all the factions and belonging to one is arbitrary. I can clearly see a patch devoted to this alone coming at some point at time.
- Do we really have to compile shaders all the time? We don’t. I get that the optimization and dynamic fidelity benefits from this but still we probably can cache it and recompile it only after the major patches, graphic settings tweaks or when hardware change is detected. But it’s UE5, maybe it is a bit more complex than that.

Conclusion: A polarizing game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 still requires work but is undoubtedly a solid success. User reviews reflect this, and it will only get better with time.

Don’t mind the hours - I played through the remastered version but wanted to review the standard copy, focusing on the core aspects.

One of the best open-world games ever developed? Note that I didn’t just say “games” or “Action-RPGs.” It took me three attempts to really get into it because, initially, the characters and overall story didn’t grab my interest. The opening hour felt as though it broke all the best practices in game design - no compelling points of interest, no exciting action to hook you in. You’re introduced to an odd tribal storyline, led through the dullest dungeon imaginable, and asked to take down some of the game’s simplest machines. I had better things to do at that time.

But once I got through those early hours in the remastered version, I fell in love with the world and the incredible machines designs. The story itself didn’t captivate me much, but the core gameplay loop was highly addictive. You’re out there exploring stunning biomes, learning how to exploit the unique weaknesses of various machines, and occasionally diving underground to solve puzzles and uncover the lore of the world. It felt like Red Dead Redemption 2 without the emphasis on narrative. Throughout, it had strong vibes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - the story wasn’t the main draw for me there either, but the sheer sense of exploration was almost tangible.

And I have to call out the insane snow tech in the DLC - though that might be a remaster-exclusive feature.

I’ve heard the developers are working on an MMO, and I can see how it could succeed. The world is insanely rich.