Recent reviews by dev_reimu

This should've been an update. Instead, now I spend twice as long launching the game.
Also, my keyboard inputs keep getting stuck.

"I'm sure she looks VERY scary when using her full power - we just never got to see it in the game."

Me reading that after spending hours on the last 5 levels alone, sweating, huffing and puffing like I defeated a god.

Greatly immersive and artistically beautiful game that always stands out in my library of games.

The game has sadly fulfilled the things it was trying to warn us about, and the rights to it's intellectual property have essentially been swept from under the original creators. I recommend you experience it, but please do so through a method of piracy.

You will hear a lot of negativity regarding this game's balance and community. For one, while the questionable balancing can be improved, it is ultimately impossible to fix entirely, and it's what makes this game fun in the first place. Secondly, me and all my friends have only had positive experiences with the community.

However, I am deeply disappointed with how badly the game's technical side is lacking:
- You can't change graphical settings individually, they're all grouped into one.
- The game relies on Temporal Anti-Aliasing, offering no other option, which leads to a 40% loss in detail.
- If you use a proper mouse DPI setting outside of the game, such as 1600, the sensitivity in game will always be too high, as the game doesn't permit you to multiply that with values smaller than 1.
- You have very few options for capping your FPS, as it uses a drop-down instead of a slider. None of my computers can get consistent frame rates as a result, as they are always too weak to hit 60 FPS or 120 FPS. If only I could choose 45 FPS for my laptop, and 90 FPS for my desktop.
- Motion Blur can only be turned off on the lowest general graphical setting I mentioned previously. This technology was created to smooth out lower frame rates, such as 30 FPS. This means that the people who need the lowest graphics will not benefit from a smoother image, and the people who need a crisp image will get the blurry one. You guys ensured that Motion Blur will always be used for the exact opposite target audience!

Great game that understands the thrill of going all out and living in the moment. I believe it does this to a fault however, as your success also depends on the items you are randomly given. Getting the two 1 million achievements becomes incredibly frustrating, as you sometimes just can't win no matter what. This mostly happens in rounds with 2 health points. Even if you play the best combination you can, the items can be dealt in such a way that the dealer can take you out in one go. I wish the game was deterministic, but alas, if you need to 100% every game you own, this one will most likely be difficult.

Great representation of the Linux experience!

Spare your money. You won't be able to run this game.

The game suffers from poor CPU optimizations. No matter how blurry you set the graphics, no matter how many frames you get on average, the experience will be interrupted by massive stutters almost every second.

Once an enemy detects you and starts moving or aiming at you, you'll stutter so hard you'll be wondering if an anomaly hit you for real.

One very important gripe with the gameplay is the player's clunky body that doesn't rotate 1:1 with your head, making you miss taking your gun out more often than not.

Despite my review, I want to make it clear that this game is still worth your time if you're planning on completing the series. It just felt weak, and like it didn't try enough.

I will first nag on the technical side of the game:
- The mouse is way too fast, and there is no option for Raw Mouse input.
- The Field of View is low, which is good for consoles, but not so much for a PC game. Thankfully, the game is designed around this, so even with this low FOV, you still manage to see properly.
- Very, very long intro videos that show the companies responsible for this game.
- The hardest difficulty (the one that disables your HUD) is broken. You can still interact with the menus, they're just invisible. It's hard to tell if you're using bullets that you've looted or the kind used for currency. The only way to count your bullets is by reading your objectives.

Now onto my thoughts regarding the plot and characters:
- The plot of the game focuses on a faction being evil in a very one-dimensional way, to a degree that makes it cartoonish, which you could consider to actually be a positive, since it's not unrealistic. I did also love how they played Pavel. I genuinely cared about him.
- This game seems to follow in the books' steps by treating women like their only purpose is to fall in love with men. There's a few completely useless sexual scenes, placed at every few chapters, making it feel like there's a lot more of them. They serve no purpose for the plot of the game, and just took me out of the experience.
- Anna, the love interest of the main character, Artyom, only serves the purpose to fall in love with him. I hear she's actually fleshed out in Exodus though.

- It's a game that doesn't run on any hardware.
- It's a game that looks terrible.
- It's a game that misunderstands its guns.
- It's a game that butchers factions and their aesthetics.
- It's a game with busted gun animations.

It's a game that, out of necessity due to the pandemic and war, got released in a less-than-half finished state.

Even after a massive financial success, 8 months later:
- It's a game that doesn't run on any hardware.
- It's a game that looks terrible.
- It's a game that misunderstands its guns.
- It's a game that butchers factions and their aesthetics.
- It's a game with busted gun animations.

If you want to play a genuine Stalker 2 experience, you have Anomaly and GAMMA to turn to. If graphics is really what you care about, comparing this game to those mods is like a 20 year difference in fidelity. I am playing that figure down, by the way. Had to edit the figure from 15 to 20 years, and that's STILL playing it down, just less so.

This was not a short hike lmao