STALKER 2 Review - Flawed, Yet Compelling

In an alternate future, former Soviet scientists inadvertently created a dangerous region filled with mutants and strange phenomena. It has been 15 years since we've last had a chance to step foot in the Zone — in this STALKER 2 review, I'll explain how GSC Game World has succeeded (and failed) at bringing this classic survival game into the modern era.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is the latest entry in a niche subgenre of survival games. As is tradition, players take on the role of someone new to the enigmatic "Zone" — the region surrounding the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant that exhibits strange, physics-defying "anomalies" and is filled to the brim with deadly mutants and even deadlier men.

Stepping Into the Zone

Each STALKER game gives its protagonist a burning motivation to explore the Zone. Our hero "Skif" has managed to sneak in after the Zone quite literally reached out and touched him, depositing a mysterious artifact in his apartment's laundry basket (and leaving a hole in the wall, to boot).

Skif's naivete and inexperience with the Zone make him a perfect audience surrogate. Neither he nor the player truly knows what to expect, and you're carefully guided through the potential hazards you'll encounter in the first hour of gameplay: strange anomalies, deadly mutants, and merciless bandits.

There are several competing factions in the Zone, and your actions and choices could make a faction completely hostile to you.

The prologue is very much on rails, but the time after it represents the heart of STALKER 2 well — you could opt to head straight to the nearby town of Zalissya, you could chase down some nearby side quests, or you could also disregard these options entirely and start exploring the Lesser Zone region of the map on your own.

As someone who played some of the original STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, I was initially impressed by STALKER 2's presentation. It seemed to be everything that a fan of the franchise would have wanted: a stable, relatively bug-free representation of the unique STALKER experience in a modern engine. Sadly, that sense of wonder didn't last for long.

Flimsy Guns Falling Apart

The first major issue I noticed with STALKER 2 was with its guns. Firing a few dozen rounds would absolutely tank the condition of your firearm. The durability damage to weapons and armor alike is simply far too harsh, especially with legendarily resilient weapons platforms such as the AK series of rifles.

To illustrate this point, one of the final story missions features a running gun battle through a large underground facility. My high-quality, unique sniper rifle was in perfect condition at the outset, and it was practically falling apart at the halfway point of the mission. I had to pick up guns from dead enemies to have a fighting chance.

Adding insult to injury is the need to pay Technicians to maintain and repair your weapon for you. These repair costs were frankly absurd at launch (and have since been toned down in a post-launch patch), but the durability issue remains a seriously annoying problem.

There's no way to repair or maintain your weapons in the field, either, despite the fact that Skif shows off his ability to expertly reassemble an AKM-74S in under a minute during an early-game cutscene. Either the durability of guns needs to be substantially increased or there needs to be a mechanic to repair them a small amount in the field.

Enemy Spawns Are a Farce

Gun issues aside, I fully embraced the spirit of a clever, cautious Stalker as I explored the Zone. I'd carefully check my corners and sweep rooms before moving forward, lest I be ambushed from behind. Unfortunately, the game was rigged from the start.

The STALKER franchise was once renowned for its "A-Life" system of interacting NPCs. You could be trodding along a relatively safe path and happen upon two groups of men in a gun battle or a group of mutants attacking a lone Stalker. That happens here, but the way these events and NPCs spawn is, frankly, atrocious.

Enemies would simply pop into existence within my line of sight. Sometimes, they would appear within a few meters of me! This didn't always happen, but the game does a poor job of hiding random enemy spawns much of the time. STALKER 2's handling of enemy spawns is downright clumsy.

This is especially frustrating in confined spaces. In one side mission, I went into a junkyard maze of crushed cars. I activated a side objective and was immediately set upon by two groups of bandits, even though I had checked all approaches and there was no one in sight. It shattered my suspension of disbelief then and there.

Factional Friction

As with previous STALKER games, STALKER 2 requires you to make choices that will affect the world around you and, ultimately, which ending you get. There are several competing factions in the Zone, and your actions and choices could make a faction completely hostile to you. None of this is communicated as clearly as it should be.

For example, some major choices are presented to the player with a unique interface showing a choice on either side. Each choice shows a particular symbol, but there is no easy way to know which faction these symbols represent or what the effects of your actions are on the world, nor is there any way to see your overall standing with a faction.

These same symbols are shown on the major bases (that is to say, towns) on the map. I intuited that the funky B symbol represented the Ward, but what faction is represented by the radiation symbol? How will my choices benefit them or harm them? I had no idea and no real way to find out.

I could imagine asking any character about a particular faction and they'd be able to tell me anything I wanted to know, but that's simply not an option

Identifying these factions and what their motivations are is difficult, and this has consequences for you. I found myself completely cut off from several major bases simply because I opposed the Ward. In a game with limited fast travel, that made exploring certain regions of the map a downright ordeal.

There is no recorded in-game information for mutants, anomalies, or other zone phenomena, either. I only learned the names of Bloodsuckers and Poltergeists after I killed a truckload of them and happened upon their names through random NPC dialogue or mission objective text.

STALKER 2 needs a way to clearly find out this information and a section of the PDA to catalog what you've learned about the Zone. I could imagine asking any character about a particular faction and they'd be able to tell me anything I wanted to know, but that's simply not an option. This lack of information made it difficult to truly understand the world I was in.

STALKER 2 Review | Final Thoughts

I spent close to 200 hours thoroughly exploring STALKER 2 at a fairly relaxed pace. While it has its flaws, most of these are minor issues that are easily fixable; gun durability could be buffed a bit without too much work, and GSC Game World has already addressed the problem of outrageous repair costs and paltry payouts for mission rewards.

The more substantial issues such as a lack of information about factions or the janky enemy spawns can be fixed, too, although that will probably take a little more time. Thus far, the developers have shown a commitment to ironing out the rough edges and I believe that they'll make the overall experience much smoother in time.

Still, I can't help but love the Zone and its colorful cast of characters. There are no good guys or bad guys, there are just guys, and they all have their own motivations for the actions they take. It's up to you to hear them out and decide which choices will be best for you, the Zone, and all of the odd people (and mutants) who dwell within.

If you can get past these flaws, STALKER 2 is a unique flavor of survival game that can be enjoyed by veterans of the franchise and new players alike. If you can't stand the occasional jankiness, though, it would be best to wait a few months and see if GSC Game World can iron out the more serious problems.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl was reviewed over approximately 198 hours of gameplay on PC via Steam with a key provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken during the review process.