Recent reviews by shadowmar

Post-Patch 1.1:

They do seem to have begun to properly fix/implement A-Life with this update which I'm very relieved about. It's still not exactly in a state where I would recommend the game but it's definitely feeling like an actual STALKER game now.

Also the game is pretty fun now that enemies don't spawn on top of me regularly. Another A-Life update on par with this one and I would be a lot more comfortable re-reviewing and recommending the game. I only wish the game had launched in a better state.

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Original Launch Review:

They made a Far Cry game instead of a STALKER game. It just feels like a cash grab using the STALKER IP with no soul or passion put into it, especially when you read interviews and realize A-Life 2.0 was never intended to work like Call of Pripyat's A-Life.

Unless they fundamentally rework the entire system, the patches they claim will fix things won't actually do anything to solve the root issue that the zone feels completely dead outside of a bubble surrounding the player.

A-Life was always an illusion of a living world but they didn't even bother maintaining that illusion in STALKER 2. Maybe I'm wrong and A-Life really is just bugged but I don't understand how something like that could make it past QA and into the full release.

put 40 hrs into the playtest before writing this review and its definitely worthy of being called a successor to Elona

edit: its still really good

the devs would much rather spend time and resources on making an insane amount of DLC than making their game better or having actual controller support

hardcoding marriage to be exclusively heterosexual so that modders cant even add same-sex marriage is really weird, man

$30 early access game decided to add a F2P-style cash shop before even hitting 1.0, good job!

one of the most frustrating sequels to a game i love that i've ever played. the combat was improved but they reduced the amount of skills you can equip which made every fight feel samey and heavily nerfed mages and sorcerers. the map is bigger but there's almost zero enemy variety, and even worse, barely any new enemies from DD1. not to mention the fact that there is almost ZERO reward for exploration. the vast majority of your gear will come from shops, you're not gonna be finding any cool armor or weapons in caves and dungeons. you're just gonna find the exact same crap.

despite the lack of enemy variety, the game throws hundreds and hundreds of enemies at you any time you go anywhere which is even more frustrating because by the time you get 20-ish hours into the game, there is absolutely zero difficulty left aside from fighting a dragon (maybe). its just a slog to go through a thousand identical and impotent goblins every time you need to travel somewhere.

dragons dogma 1 was unfinished but it was understandable considering the circumstances. dragons dogma 2, which had more time and budget, should not have felt like 30% of a game stretched out across 60-80 hours.

really fun golf game, the physics are actually some of my favorite of any golf game i've played, good mix of fun but with some difficulty to improve against

no seriously, stay away from this game. its not worth it even if you got it for free.

they'd rather waste time and effort adding overpriced cosmetics in early access than actually make the game engaging for longer than 5 minutes

it's dwarf fortress, you should already know it's amazing