it’s okay as an open world survival shooter, but so far (just got to the point where I can leave the first/tutorial zone) it’s been pretty basic. There aren’t many deviations from the standard formula, you go to a place because you got a quest, investigate anomalies, kill or talk to people/mutants, and then go to another place to do the same. By default there are almost no random events happening on the roads, and if you are scared of enemies on the road, the empty space near the road has been perfectly safe so far. The common anomalies have been very nonthreatening and have an extremely simple solution, the only difficulty with them is quantity. I honestly think I might go back to fallout 4, but I also might finish stalker 2 eventually.

It has Azov nazis doing voice acting.

Somehow it’s even buggier than the original games, which is an accomplishment

I typically check out some streams before I commit to downloading anything anymore. Both people I’ve watched have closed it while I was watching they just gave up and said it was a boring mess.

Habent played it but from everything ive read they probably should have kept it in the oven for another year.

I’ve been playing it a fair bit the last two days. Prior to learning in this thread that there were Nazis among the voice cast (which truthfully I’d suspected would be the case before the game came out) my only issues were that the controls could be smoother and the frame rate is pretty choppy. I haven’t run into any serious bugs yet, but I’m still pretty early in the game.

As for it being boring, I think that’s going to be subjective. It plays like I expected it to so far: a somewhat polished version of OG STALKER (or, like the better Fallout 4 that never was, minus the retrofuturism aesthetic.) I like them both for the same reasons. If you liked the original, I can’t see why you wouldn’t like this one as well (though of course, I’m a masochist who played it vanilla, a modded experience could be far superior for all I know.) But I’m far from the most avid player of the original games, so my word is only worth so much.

Edit: I should note that I’ve been playing the game on Xbox gamepass via my girlfriend’s Xbox account; I might have a less favorable opinion if I’d actually payed for it lol

Further edit: Spoke too soon. I did encounter a bug when switching weapons that locked the camera and trapped me in the weapon select menu, and I had to restart. Also, the combat is very unbalanced. Bloodsuckers in particular have been a major problem, even in the early stages of the game. They’re everywhere, and they’re incredibly bullet spongey. Scripted encounters with them also tend to be incredibly unfair. In one early story quest, you encounter one in a very tight cave, at a time in the game when you likely haven’t progressed very far and don’t have very powerful weapons. It wrecked my shit like 10 times before I decided to just juke it and hope it didn’t follow me further into the cave.