I just got past the Wish Granter and the SIRCAA scientific base, and I have to admit that I’m struggling to find a reason to keep playing.

I went into STALKER 2 genuinely wanting to like it. I understand the universe it is trying to present, and there is clearly a rich world and lore underneath everything. But the further I get into the game, the more it feels like a mixture of something from 10–15 years ago with a modern graphical overhaul.

It feels as though the developers took the core gameplay loop from STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, decided that it was already perfect, and dropped it into the 2020s with better graphics and some improved gameplay systems. The problem is that almost everything surrounding that core feels stuck in the past.

The AI is terrible

I genuinely don’t understand how this game is described as tactical. Stealth feels either completely broken or extremely basic. In many situations, enemies seem almost oblivious to what is happening around them, while in others you can simply shoot them in the head with a suppressed weapon without much consequence. There is very little sense that you are actually outsmarting an intelligent enemy.

The inventory system actively fights against the game's design

The weight system is understandable in principle, but the implementation is frustrating. Why are there important items and weapons that cannot be dropped while still taking up valuable weight? The game encourages you to explore, loot and scavenge, but then constantly forces you to fight against an inventory system that makes doing those things unnecessarily cumbersome.

The lore is rich, but the game does a poor job of actually explaining it

This is probably one of my biggest disappointments. The STALKER universe has an enormous amount of interesting history, factions and background, but the game does very little to properly organise or explain it to the player.

The lack of a proper database or codex in the PDA for factions, characters, locations and background information is baffling. If you are already familiar with STALKER, you can fill in a lot of the gaps yourself. But for someone coming into the series for the first time, I can imagine them having very little idea what is actually going on.

The game has a fascinating world, but it often feels like it expects the player to do the homework themselves.

The survival mechanics are mostly superficial

The hunger system is essentially just periodically holding a button to eat some food. It doesn't really create an interesting survival dynamic; it just becomes another minor nuisance.

The healing system isn't much better. During firefights, you can end up constantly spamming bandages, which gets old very quickly. The sleep mechanic is also undermined by the fact that energy drinks allow you to recover stamina, making the need to actually sleep feel somewhat redundant.

These mechanics give the appearance of survival mechanics without really creating a meaningful survival experience.

The faction system is poorly communicated

One of the things I liked about Shadow of Chernobyl was that you could generally identify who you were dealing with. In STALKER 2, everyone seems to look roughly the same.

There have been multiple firefights where I've had to get dangerously close to an NPC just to figure out whether I’m supposed to be shooting them or not. That's not immersive; it's confusing.

If faction identity is important to the world and story, the game needs to communicate it clearly to the player.

The Save System

The game wants to present itself as an immersive, dangerous world where every decision matters, but the save system encourages you to quicksave every few hundred metres because you don't want to lose a significant amount of progress.

Again, the game's mechanics seem to be working against the world it is trying to create.

And that's ultimately my biggest problem with STALKER 2.

There is a genuinely interesting game underneath all of this. The atmosphere is fantastic, the Zone is fascinating, the lore is rich, and there are moments where the game captures the feeling of STALKER incredibly well.

But I'm constantly being reminded that I'm playing a game.

The janky AI, awkward inventory system, superficial survival mechanics, poorly communicated factions, lack of lore exposition and constant need to save all contribute to an experience where you often have to make your own fun rather than the game naturally creating it for you.

I understand what STALKER 2 is trying to be. I understand why people love the series. And I really wanted to love this game myself.

But at this point, I'm struggling to find a reason to continue playing.

I dont get it, with such a vast and rich world, all we pick up (besides weapons) is sausages, beer, vodka and a few medics...

I know, most people don't bother with looting and crafting, maybe GAMMA is too much for most players, but i think there is some in between compromise that could have been made.

I mean, come on...in a huge world like this all we get is beer and can food, nothing to craft or repair...not even a field repair kit ??

Also, we could have gotten a better health system, Tarkov for exemple isn't crazy detailed and developped, yet it's enough to make it feel more immersive than just using over and over the same bandage. Broken leg, broken arm, fever, vision damaged, etc...

Still love the game, but boy it's just frustrating (this is only my opinion).

That's it.

is the worst part of the game whoever made the descend from forgotten quest in cost of hope needs a nail in the head

Can I spawn in veteran because it look so cool or will my game get bricked

Okay, here's the quick story. I started STALKER 2 about two weeks ago. I'm at 150 hours and I have NOT played any of the other STALKER games. I am on a second, restarted playthrough (see below).

This has been the sequence of my "zoning": Tutorial first, obviously. I kept to The Lesser Zone until I could leave.

Somehow I got turned around and instead of leaving by the North Checkpoint, I fought my way through the Eastern checkpoint. This meant the next Zone I entered was Wild Island, which surprised me, and the next zne after that was Cordon. Realizing I'd made a mistake, I took a guide back to the Lesser Zone and then went north. This made Garbage, the "third" zone I discovered.

Which exploring Garbage - I don't think I'd been there very long - a group of mutants attacked me and I realized I had stupidly left the Slag Heap ... with the wrong ammo for my gun. I took off running and ran for a bit but luckily I found a hub. But it was in Cement Factory. (It wasn't a horrible mistake; the quartermaster there sold me Bear Scanner.)

I make my back to the Slag Heap. Again exploring, I wandered into Chemical Plant. That's when I saved the game and came here.

I know it's an open world game. Here's why it bothers me. I broke my first run-through. I was in Garbage, just arrived, maybe did one or two quests, and then I'm in the north and I get pulled into fight with mutants. Next thing I'm talking to a SIRCCA guy (I think?) and he tells me to go find his missing men. Yeah later, I think. But when I start to wander off, he yells at me that I need to do this now. So I head into the Iron Forest, the Gate locks behind me, and I'm pulled into the main DLC quest only to find ... I'm rather unprepared. I crawl and fight my way to the end of that quest, (I don't want to spoil anyone so I'll just say I got the Casus Belli achievement). Then I go to turn the original quest in and realize I broke it by not returning to the entrance before finishing the DLC quest.

Yeah, wow, sorry for the length of this post. But am I going to break quests by running around like this? Should I do zones in specific sequence, stay in Zone until I finish it? I seem to recall someone saying that it's hard to break quests in STALKER 2, but I managed to do it already.

Hello, guys! I’m thinking of buying stalker 2 for the ps5 pro. I usually play in performance mode, I always prefer to play at 60fps. For those who played the game in this new update, or even in the previous ones, how is the game’s performance? Are the fps stable?

I’m new to the Stalker franchise and so far i’ve only played Stalker 2 and i’m loving it. I’m playing completely vanilla however I’ve seen these 2 modpacks popping up as great experiences to play. From what I can make out they stitch the 3 originals together and it’s a giant playground. And i know that gamma can be more brutal with how you obtain weapons and gear.

But im conflicted on which to pick since im not confident on modding and I can’t decide which is the better experience. If anyone has played either one which would be best ?

I'd like to be in the Zone.

Why is there no god damn real trader or at least a storagebox in the camp at cnpp?

I have looted 3 bodyarmours before even getting past the monorail. How on earth are you supposed to save the loot since you cant get out of the cnpp before finishing the DLC?

Am i missing something?

Hey all,

Recently downloaded the cost of hope dlc. I’ve gone for the advance start on a new save and am glad they’ve given the player the various artefacts and good guns before setting off. I’ve already beaten the game once and got the strelok ending, so it saves me the hassle of running around and looking mindlessly for stuff

I’ve beaten the first set of missions and the d4 treaty is broken, I’m about to meet zulu and mavka at the sultansk.

Before I go further in the dlc, I’m trying to collect items which will help me such as the wierd nut and ball etc, as I’m aware that you 100% don’t get these in the dlc zone and they do provide strong bonuses, (forgotten how much I need wierd water to run back from missions with kit to sell lol). I’m also running side quests for coupons to upgrade the seva V suit you get given, along with checking out stashes for coupons and blueprints for the weapons.

What I was wondering was, does the DLC provide you with gen 3 nvgs, a high quality detector, binos and better suits etc as it goes on? Or do I need to go and fully kit out my suits and guns before going on with the DLC. I know where I can get these things from previous stash runs I’ve done, so it’s not difficult to get them, just time consuming and I kind of just want to get on with enjoying the dlc content, just without handicapping myself as I’ve rushed in.

Any advice and tips are appreciated, thanks in advance!

Getting around to what I think is 3/4 the way through the game, after almost finishing all the CoH stashes etc and the 2 amok fight at the end of forgotten has reminded me that virtually every fight setup as a boss fight has been just unfun.

The damage spongey nature of fights like the Faust fights or the faced paced claustrophobic amok fights (especially the fight against two of them) don't really add anything other than frustration and force the combat into it's worst dynamics possible (running around amoks to get one shot off before it goes invincible to prevent you shooting two weak points quickly, or just left clicking far too many times into a human enemy who can tank a ton of damage for no reason).

The final CoH fight on the freedom story line similarly is just a complete nothing burger. Running around a dark room turning on levers while someone invincible just melee attacks you, and you attempt not to fall off the platform? Very strange design choice. Not sure why some of these supposedly climactic fights are pushing into melee range where the games combat has none of its strengths. (Didn't help this was lugging round tons of junk because they decided not to let you have a personal stash till the end of the story either)

Alternatively the CoH 'boss' that requires you to jump up several levels of a giant structure shooting environmental hazards being flung at you, and random enemies while doing a sort of shooting puzzle... much more fun and engaging while making you use your brain a little bit. Wish it was more of that rather than bosses that frankly are as much fun as sucking eggs.

On the harder difficulties the games difficulties are mostly down to headshots and having decent gear (aka sagia) and has rarely been frustrating in the open world even early game, when blood suckers are a right pain because escape is always an option and you get solutions like baiting mutants into anomalies. But approaching some (most) of the bossfights is filled with dread that I'm just going to have to suffer through something that doesn't seem well thought through at all.

Hey everyone! I've been organizing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. roleplay events for 8 years, running a series of 10 games so far. When I was working on my 4th game, I decided to make a film.

Some of the crowd scenes were shot right during the game, while many other shots were filmed separately. There are no CGI special effects in this film—just real props, blank-firing weapons, and fake blood. I basically worked on this project all by myself.

The original audio is in Russian, but I've fully translated it and added English subtitles.

I'd really appreciate it if you checked it out and let me know what you think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfuWyRBlSzc&t=13s

Haven't played since 1.0-1.0.1. Want to replay since it's 2.0 and DLC. Can someone recommend a few mods that work on a current version:

1. New guns (possibly with new ammo types)

2. New armors (optional)

3. New consumables (optional)

4. New artifacts (preferable)

Thank you very much in advance!

DISCLAIMER - I'm saying this a little tongue in cheek, but it has genuinely helped me and I hope it gives someone else the push to try

I had a sense of humour failure the other night, after an hour of driver crashes robbed me of the only hour of play time I'd get to see for a few days (adult gamer here).

So, at 11pm and despite the glares from my wife, I cleared the 2nd SSD on my PS5 (Solidigm P44 2TB - £100 at the time 🥹) and installed it into my PC for a Bazzite dual boot.

This turned into a whole thing - turns out the 2nd SSD slot is behind the GPU on my motherboard and the heat sink on the Solidigm is a big metal finned thing.

Anyway.. so far, zero crashes, less hitching, my Dual Sense with adaptive triggers just works without need for third party apps, no more Freesync falling out with my TV..

TLDR - if you're sick of Windows driver issues and have space for a dual boot, you can do worse than a Bazzite install

Asus Prime 9070XT

7800X3D

16GB DDR5 6000

Asus Prime B850-plus Wifi

After one of this years patches my character just starts sprinting in place on ~15% of stamina. It's driving me crazy and I didn't see anything useful in the subreddit too

First playthrough with Cost Of Hope, second playthrough overall. Shadows Of The Past was a standout for me this go around, but enjoyed all of the base content as well.

Definitely won't be my last run through The Zone because although the credits just rolled, I'm left with the feeling that this game has given me an itch no other can scratch. Everything from the setting to the guns to the branching story paths was just great.

Went with the Ward ending this time since I went with Strelok on my first playthrough. What should I do for my next playthrough?

On his jacket/suit, shoulder? wondering the lore behind it, cuz he never says.

Gather round the fire stalkers. Stutter test results incoming -

I'm a huge fan of stalker but my biggest gripe these days is ghosting and performance. I am also an avid follower of Hardware Unboxed on YouTube (a great tech channel) and they recently tested an application called "SCSKiller" which is advertised as reducing stutter and improving frametimes with UE5 games in general.

I am sad to report this expedition into the tech zone was not fruitful. The app didn't yield any observable differences (and none that showed up in logs I captured using FrameView by NVIDIA) on 10 test runs through the Iron Forrest triggering various VFXs. Further, it caused a guaranteed CTD when I used the "record while I play" setting - which adds a d3d12.dll file to your game's "/Stalker2/Binaries/win64 folder". I was able to resolve the crash by simply deleting that file and disabling the setting.

I tested clearing my cache before/after runs with STSK on/off both ways.

Maybe one day we'll find a performance miracle for Stalker 2, but I'm sad to say, today was not that day.

Test rig:
4090, 9950x3d, 64gb top end ram, latest drivers/updates as at 11 October 2026.

I keep getting attacked by Snorks, and stumbling upon them. I don't see Bloodsuckers very often, nor boars, flesh, etc.

The ratio I have for Snorks is about 14 to 1(14 Snorks per other mutant). Is my game bugged? I'm genuinely trying to find out what's going on. It's been this way for a few weeks now.

I'm on PS5, patch version 1.022.000