![]() ![]() Several of the stash locations required some thought to get to as well. I like the incentive to roam previously conquered areas and engage with respawned enemies (who can in turn drop more stash coordinates), and it’s also good in that it prevents metagaming on repeat playthroughs where you rush to the best gear from the beginning. Otherwise I’d feel an incessant compulsion to poke around every corner looking for tiny briefcases, rather than getting on with my life. ![]() I’m not saying you couldn’t have a more traditional system that works well, but in SoC it was honestly nice to have clear direction on when exploring was worth my time. I actually like the cache system in SoC, where stashes only contain loot after you obtain their GPS coordinates from bodies. I appreciate that only a few traders will purchase guns and ammo, so you aren’t encouraged to sell off every enemy’s gun to nearby Stalkers. I wish I had felt a real pull to hunt for artifacts and complete jobs to survive. Even on Master, I always had more problems being overloaded with valuable items than I ever did running low on anything. I could find everything for free in the world, so there was never a need to purchase anything. The economy is a complete joke - I literally bought nothing but a single loaf of bread (my player character got hungry during Lab X-16) until the end and dumped my 200,000 rubles on an Exoskeleton before slowly marching into Pripyat. The progression is satisfying, but there’s no real choice. Artifacts are the same - just grab a setup with decent protection and endurance and go. Weapon degradation doesn’t matter at all (rates are too “realistic”), but at least armor degradation makes it worth swapping gear from time to time. Only at the end did I feel like I had some options with at least 3 viable assault rifles and a handful of sniper rifles and shotguns - of course, I still just went with the scoped assault rifle with the highest accuracy. Sure you have assault rifles with slightly different stats, but you’re basically just choosing tweaks in a given tier. You’re pretty much just grabbing the best gear at any given moment and rolling with it. My biggest disappointment is the lack of genuine playstyle freedom. Too bad stealth is unreliable - why my character has to loudly cycle the action every time I want to equip a gun is beyond me. There was a surprising amount of variety in how even the most linear fights could play out. Enemy inaccuracy makes it reasonable to sprint between makeshift pieces of cover, after which you have cool micro-positioning with lean and two states of crouch as enemies try to flank. Once I got the hang of some of the hidden mechanics (ADS accuracy boost takes time to activate, only get bonus damage on headshots when waiting between shots) I enjoyed peeking around cover and decisively popping enemy heads. After getting some decent assault rifles the combat can be pretty fun. ![]() Honestly I think the game would be better with higher accuracy on the shitty starter guns, as enemies would have them too and early combat would be less of a slapfest. I didn’t realize just how extremely dependent the game would be on gear - artifacts, armor, and better guns make a bigger difference in encounters than aim and even positioning, as I found myself needing to savescum much less as the game went on. Genuinely more frustrating than the much-bitched-about final section (though the rocket launcher guys guarding the power plant can fuck off), which was pretty reasonable with endgame equipment. It was pretty miserable in the beginning, and not in a particularly interesting way that tested resource management or tactics, just savescum until the AI pulls a dumb dumb and you get lucky headshots. There was certainly room for improvement in a lot of aspects, but I was overall impressed with the core gameplay and world design. trilogy, and found it pretty enjoyable overall. I recently finished the first game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I’ve also been streaming some games (Castlevania, Dead Cells, Blood 1997 coming up soon) at I thought I’d post some impressions and mini-critiques for what I’ve been playing over the last few months. ![]()
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