S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

I played the absolute ♥♥♥♥ out of the original trilogy and then S.T.A.L.K.E.R. GAMMA a couple months back and had such a blast that I couldn't wait to delve into Stalker 2. The game seemed to run mostly fine, a few hiccups here or there but nothing major. Then I arrived at the first major town and the game ♥♥♥♥ itself to the point that it became unplayable by my standards (sub 30 FPS) and changing graphical settings made little difference because the performance hit was clearly coming from the CPU side. I can make the game look like a poop slideshow from high/ultra graphics and gain maybe like 5 FPS? Then outside of towns it runs mostly fine. It's just too frustrating and irritating to deal with insane frame drops and to treat NPC populated areas like they're the killzone outside a battle royal circle. Maybe my CPU is a little dated, sure, but how come it can run most all other games just fine? We know this is a major problem with stalker 2, and I can't in good faith recommend this game from the franchise that I have grown obsessed with in recent months because it just needs to be better, and I really hope it gets there.

Зв'яжіться з цим музичним виконавцем. Його музика підходить до вашої гри https://youtu.be/eDLxdSs9BY0?si=noZmGypRDzQAsgXu

I'm really sad about this one. I'm a fan of stalker. But this ones performance is terrible. I tried multiple mods that attempt to fix this issue, it runs fine for about 3 minutes after start and then starts stuttering like crazy while running at 160fps on my 5070ti. Getting a refund on this one...

На русском/россійськой Игра просто лютая имба затягивает, атмосфера просто топ и еще много плюсов правда тут немного багов, но на них можно забить, надеюсь когда выйдут новые патчи игра станет еще лучше ну и оптимизация нормальная, советую поиграть тем, кто любит атмосферу и исследовать места На украинском/українськой Гра просто люта імба затягує, атмосфера просто топ і ще багато плюсів правда тут трохи багів, але на них можна забити, сподіваюся коли вийдуть нові патчі гра стане ще краще та й оптимізація нормальна, раджу пограти тим, хто любить атмосферу та дослідити місця

Why even make dialogue options when they don't give anything at the end of it, in terms of lore. Side quests having dialogue like "why don't you do it?" and the awnser will shock you. Talking about shocks, there is this new shock anomaly which will chase you and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ kill you, how do you counter it? You just don't have any artifacts equipped and how is someone supposed to figure it out? No one tells you this or if it has, it hasn't been made obvious enough, they had multiple pop-ups for weapon attachments, but not this ♥♥♥♥??? Another great anomaly design, the floating glass shards, how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dare you to run across an open world map, get shredded. Poltergeists are the worst enemy design, they are invisible, good luck trying to hit that hitbox, tank damage (I am only playing hard) and they are allowed to have noclip projectiles, like you can't be serious. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ starting hour of the game, you encounter one at a boat, instantly detected and then you get wallbanged, who thought that this is fair and good game design? The dogs also got weirder and their attack animations, ramming or headbutting? The main character is also weird for suddenly knowing things which they haven't encountered, especially since this is the only game in the stalker series where we go in the zone as a complete newbie. Anyway, it was snorks, I haven't encountered snorks and yet protag knew about them, it was literally a side quest in the second area (garbage). Met Scar and he was so annoying and cringe out of all things, ending the conversation with "I'm not saying goodbye." put my final brain cell to rest. Anyway, our main motivation as protag is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ridiculous. The intro cutscene of the meteor hitting our apartment building is apparently enough anger to go out to the zone hunting someone, like what the actual ♥♥♥♥? Never before have I missed peaking with a knife and you can't even peak with grenades or bolts or unarmed, gotta love those sequels that are half assed. And ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, the amount of times you are talking that end with a shootout are such bs. That the player can start combat, but has to pack out their weapon again, meanwhile they are surrounded, yeah ex military in your dreams. This game literally forces to break sequence and shoot after talking, so F5 then F9, which doesn't matter, because everyone has a PDA to advance to the next objective anyway. Another thing, in a main story quest, there are dialogue options to be vague to stay undercover, but for one guy the main character just spills the beans without player input and then of course the guy just starts combat, like how can you mess up this bad? Oh and weapon bashing can explode red barrels...

just ♥♥♥♥♥... stay away from this one.

The game is 40% fun, 60% frustrating. I'd still continue to play because I really love the gunfights, but I have to push through so much agonizing content in game. Let's see; — AI is like Superman. They detect you really fast even if you stealth. They have x-ray vision. They can scent you like houndogs. They will shoot through walls. They have autobot headshot aim and will shoot you perfectly 100m away with a shotgun. — Game is so buggy. I lost my marbles trying to find artifacts, only to find out they can clip through walls/terrains. Sometimes important stuff you need won't spawn or clip through anything, you will even have a hard time getting items on boxes because the collision shoots stuff to the metaverse. — Sooooo many visual glitches. You'll see your screen flickering very often. You'll see things become blurry af. You'll see lighting twitching like mad. — Stare into the abyss on daylight and watch yourself get headshotted by an enemy npc in the dark bcz your flashlight feels like a mini-penlight. There's something fundamentally wrong with the darkness in game, it takes so long for your screen to adjust to the brightness of light and dark. Also, NPCs can accurately shoot and see you in the dark without any flashlights on. — This game is an unoptimized hell. You'll see memory leaks left and right, it'll randomly play at 5fps in your playthrough and you have to restart to fix it. Even DLSS can't save their game's mess. Honestly, even if an AI fps generator can't provide the game even an ounce of fps, you know it's bad. I still have a ton of hours to go through in this game, but it already has so maany issues in early game. Those stuff I listed apparently gets worse in later stages, especially on performance in populated areas so goodluck to me. To anyone who wishes to play and buy this, do it with precaution. The game can still be fun tbh it really did have potential, but the negatives can outweigh the good. This game really needs to be patched up bcz it feels like a deep laceration treated by bandages. Until then, just wait and see if the devs will live through their promises or fix the core issues of the game. Hence, I can't really recommend the game for its price when the older Stalkers and the modded ones feel, and play better. P.S. I recommend an indie game called Road to Vostok. It performs better and also has intense gunfights, it's insane how that game is developed by one person. It looks really beautiful too. It's also 1/4th of the price of Stalker 2.

alright game terrible boss fights just not fun

Game looks great, decent immersion and has the right atmosphere. Sadly cannot recommend the game for 1 reason, enemy spawns. Why enemies just randomly spawn behind you or around you. It just breaks the immersion completely and is not fun! One example, which was the point I uninstalled. Exited building, looked both ways, clear. Crouch walked to next building while again checking both ways, enter next building. Instantly shot in the back, turn around 3 enemies shooting me and another one running to help out. There was no way those enemies could have come from anywhere but random spawn in the middle of the path I travelled. It happened numerous times throughout the 6h I played. pack of mutant dogs just spawning around me when exploring. One second it's clear, next 4 of them 10ft around me🤬 I may give the game another shot in a year or two. Most likely gonna have to find a mod to remove the enemy spawns tho😒

I waited so long for this game to come out and it was worth the wait. Playing along and suddenly finding myself in familiar locations is a crazy nostalgia trip every time. The game runs very well on Bazzite Linux as of July 2026. Runs great on my Intel Arc B580. I give it a 9/10, I only removed a point because Jupiter Factory isn't in the game (yet).