A lot has been said about this game already, so I'll just say this: As someone who played all the previous S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, including Anomaly and G.A.M.M.A., I think it's a fantastic game and was a great experience, despite some of the shortcomings and bugs that I experienced. In summary, the atmosphere and immersion this game provides is second to none, and if you've played previous games in the franchise, you understand the special type of feelings these games provoke. It may not be as "deadly" feeling as the older games, but you feel like this is a world where you exist and you really feel a part of it. You can tell they really put their heart into building these familiar places from all the games (like GAMMA did) into a cohesive and immersive world. If you are a fan of the franchise, then you'd be remiss not to play this. If you aren't, then welcome and enjoy yourself, take your time, and just immerse yourself. I do, however, recommend playing this game with a handful of mods and I'll explain why:

1. Grok's Modular Mutants Health - GSC decided to make things bullet sponges, which for me broke a lot of immersion. No living thing should require emptying 200 rounds of 7.62 ammo into it to die. I put this down to 40% and it felt about right

2. Ledge Grabbing (Lower) - It's kind of silly that you can't climb over low fences or grab and pull yourself up ledges that are at your head height. This fixes this without breaking any mechanics.

3. Less outfit and weapon durability loss (50%) - Once again, GSC mechanics don't make a lot of sense here. Me unloading 3 clips worth of ammo shouldn't decrease my weapon durability by 30%. This seems a little more reasonable.

4. Reduced repair cost - The cost for repairs is really untenable, and creates a non-roleplay worthy investment that just detracts from the primary mechanics of the game. If they intended armor to be disposable, then they didn't include enough of it. Vanilla costs more than the armor is worth to repair it.

5. Reduce weight of ammo, grenades, and food/consumables - This is the only mod that I consider is slightly cheating, but I still recommend it, because items are plentiful anyway. It becomes tedious to loot things when you have to always think about how much that extra bandage will weigh. Doesn't detract from the game much at all, just allows you to experience it without a useless headache.

6. Readable Ammo Bundle - This is such a useful mod, as it makes it easier to see which type of ammo is equipped. This is something the game should have provided without a mod, but for whatever reason they did not.

7. These last two are essential IMHO - Better Ballistics and Maklane's Better Gunfights - These fix the lack of immersion and realism of enemies being bullet sponges. Damage to enemies, and to you, is much more lethal. This feels better and more lethal. When combined with Maklanes, it becomes even more realistic since NPC's go from basically aimbots that can see you through any amount of brush and get perfect headshots, to more realistic attempts. If you only use two mods, choose these two.


Overall, yes there were some bugs. Some breaking, and some just visual. The breaking ones I got around using UE_Tools (for example to pass through a door that was bugged). Most of these types of bugs they have fixed in this last big patch. Ultimately, the game was amazing, and I was kind of sad to leave the world once I beat it. I'll be back though, and hopefully they release some DLC.

Incredible masterpiece of a Japanese-style RPG with a lot of unique elements. Overall, I think this is a serious GOTY contender and maybe one of the best games I've played in a very long time. The way I'd describe it is that is plays something like Metaphor (JRPG), but has scaling mechanics like Dark Souls, and some fun QTE that test your reflexes and pattern recognition. Outside of that, the music score, voice acting, and visuals are as good as it gets. 10/10!