DLCS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Deluxe UpgradeLoading store offers
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is aimed at players who want broad single-player exploration with factions, mutants and a branching story. At ≈ $31.50 from 
Kinguin, the purchase makes sense when this blend of FPS combat, horror and survival systems matches your plans.
The Steam PC edition has 81% positive reviews from 107,902 reviews. More than 30 weapon types, modifications and artifact hunting provide concrete ways to shape a trip through the Zone. With Steam at $59.99, the offer is ≈ $31.50 at Kinguin; the next announced Steam sale window begins on Dec 17, 2026 – Jan 4, 2027.
Loading store offers
Wishlist price
Set a target to receive an email when an eligible offer in your selected region is at or below that amount.
Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $30.102025-12Current Low Across Stores~ $53.99AllYouPlayvs. Historical Low+79%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
Editions
EditionS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Deluxe EditionView prices →
EditionS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Ultimate EditionView prices →
EditionS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl — Standard to Deluxe UpgradeView prices →
EditionS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl — Deluxe to Ultimate UpgradeView prices →
EditionS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl — Standard to Ultimate UpgradeView prices →
01About S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
As a lone stalker, explore a 64 km² radioactive Zone where factions, mutants and deadly anomalies compete for your attention. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl blends first-person shooting, horror and immersive sim systems with survival mechanics, dynamic weather and a day-night cycle. Its nonlinear story follows multiple routes toward different endings. More than 30 weapon types can be combined with extensive modifications. The Steam PC edition supports mods. Rating: 81% from 107,902 reviews.
Credits
PRODUCER
Serhii Hryhorovych
Ukrainian video game designer
Developer
GSC Game World
Publisher
GSC Game World (worldwide) · SEGA (Japan) · 4Divinity (China and South East Asia)
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$30.102025-12-30 · AllYouPlayBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Traditional Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Show 14 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Ukrainian | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Arabic | Yes | Yes | — |
| Czech | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish-Latin America | Yes | Yes | — |
| Turkish | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Game scope
The Steam PC edition combines first-person shooting, horror and immersive sim elements in an open world with nonlinear storytelling, survival mechanics and mod support.
Languages
Confirmed interface languages are English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Subtitles are listed for these supported languages.
Mode and input
A single-player category is listed for the Steam PC edition. Controller support is not confirmed in the supplied data.
03Frequently asked questions
What does the game involve?
You explore a 64 km² radioactive Zone containing factions, mutants, anomalies and artifacts.
How branching is the story?
The story is nonlinear, with multiple paths leading to several endings.
How does weapon customization work?
More than 30 weapon types can be modified into hundreds of combinations.
Is multiplayer included?
Multiplayer is planned as a free update after release.
Latest news about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
Looks like Metro's dad finally came back from getting milk and cigarettes And the Moment of silence for those STALKER fans who have passed away before they could've seen this including Vladimir Yezhov, the original dev for STALKER, passed away recently fighting in Bakhmut. Dude was a commander for an air recon unit.Show moreShow less
0.1 hours at review9,211 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Alright, Stalkers, you've been waiting this game for a long time, just like everybody else. So, let me tell you what you're getting, after 54 hours into the game: Pros: - Game looks very nice and it is quite atmospheric Cons: - The A-life system doesn't work. The world doesn't feel alive, because it isn't. There's no activity happening on the map, as the A-life system promised it would. At best, some mutants and humans will spawn in your vicinity (extremely rarely, maybe once every 2-3 hours) and will fight it off. - There is no real threat on the map. Mutants don't spawn anywhere, except in designated points of interests (like some small settlements, buildings, whatever.) You will be on edge for your first hours, running through the howling wind at nighttime, until you realize that there's actually no threat to fear. No mutants, no humans, no nothing. - Mutants don't give you any reward for killing them. You cannot loot them for parts, you don't get reputation, you don't get literally anything. So, there's no incentive to hunt them down, they're there just to make you waste bullets. Which links to the next point: - Mutants have obscene health pools. One bloodsucker takes around 250-300 bullets to kill, because you will also miss some. This is one bloodsucker. Just one, in one instance. If you encounter another one, 10 minutes later, that's 300 more bullets. You don't have that amount of bullets with you for a long time. I've read somewhere that bloodsuckers have 800 health pool. And that chimeras have around 2.500. Which makes chimeras literally unkillable. - You will only fight bloodsuckers. Ok, so this is my personal experience. Ever since I've started the game in lesser zone, I would only fight bloodsuckers for some reason. Rarely would I get any other mutant, like a pair of boars or some skinny dogs. In 90% of the time, I would get 1-2-3 bloodsuckers at once that would take up to 800 bullets to kill. Which would force me back into town to get more ammo. Great experience. This carried over to other areas of the map as well. Only bloodsuckers would spawn for me for some reason. - The economy is busted. When I say "busted" I mean "broken". It's unusable. Getting a pack of 260 bullets costs around 3.500 coupons. Repairing your weapon if it's moderately damaged, costs around 2.000 coupons. Doing a quest gives you 200 coupons. Sounds fair and balanced, right? Oh, you think it's gonna get better? Later on in the game, you will get 1.500-2.000 coupons per quest. But, at that point, repairing the armor takes around 12.000-25.000 coupons. You never have money for anything. - Weapons break far too fast. There's no way you can play the game at a reasonable pace. Guns break as if they're made of fcking wood. And if that doesn't sound bad enough, when they break they also become more likely to jam, which forces you through a 5-second unjamming animation. I don't mind the concept of jamming, it's actually quite nice and immersive. But I do mind when it happens so often that it completely ruins my gaming experience. - The fcking hunger. Skif, for some reason, has the digestive tract of a newborn. He needs to eat every minute, as if the food just slides through his digestive system from one end to the other with no down time. So, be ready to constantly chew on that unsheated salami every 200 steps. - The stamina is awful. Skif also smokes a lot. Or he has pulmonary cancer or something. Something is up anyway, given that he can't really run for more than 15 meters without going out of breath. So, you need to chug on energy drinks as often as possible. Which brings us to the next point: - Energy drinks don't do sht. They instantly fill your stamina bar, and then you get lower stamina decrease rate for about...fking 10 seconds? Which means that you can't really run more than 15 m anyway, because you either run out of breath, or you need to stop for 3 seconds to chug the energy drink. - Puzzles suck. You sometimes get into areas that have some buildings with a code on the door. And you need to figure out the code by checking your surroundings. If you're a more aware and witty person, this could take you 5-10 minutes. Or 50 if you're like me. The point isn't this, but the reward you're getting after finally hacking your way into the building. Which is usually a locker with 2 energy drinks, 3 anti-rad pills, 30 bullets, and a big, fat, juicy salami. Yea, thx. - Fckd up spawns. You enter a building complex, kill the bandits inside, start to loot, and then the bandits shoot you from the back. Where did they come from? You didn't hear them and you've cleaned the base. Nobody was anywhere near you. They're literally spawning behind you and the same story repeats in pretty much all points of interests that have humans around. - Reach Zaton. Ah yes, this is the swamp area. Let me tell you. Never have I seen a more poorly designed map area in all my 2+ decades of gaming. The entire area is almost empty of threats. No mutants almost anywhere, only some bandit patrols once in a while, always spawning around 30 meters from you. Around 50% of Zaton is covered in water. If you ever get yourself in some knee-deep water, you will be slowed down by around 99.99%. Same for turning speed. You will constantly check your PDA to figure out how to go around the numerous pools of water, because you cannot see sht. There are some paths here and there, but they're hidden in the bullsht vegetation. The entire swamp area has 2 bases where you can sell stuff and upgrade your gear. Both of them are close to each other at the beginning of the area. But the area is massive and you'll often get quests and points of interest 1.5km to 2.5 km away from the bases. This is great news for people who enjoy having to navigate the map with their PDA up all the time because there are so many pools of water that they're forced to. And that's not the only problem. The other problem is that: - You can't carry sht. Skif has the physical capabilities of Christian Bale in the Machinist. Which is a amazing to see, given how much he needs to fking eat all the time. You would think that all that salami and tuna cans he's ingesting would amount to something. Nope. Your maximum carry weight is 80 kg, which isn't a problem in the Lesser Zone, when you can easily reach any of the nearby towns to sell your stuff. But in the swamp, you don't have that luxury. So, you'll always be overweight, which will drain your stamina even more. Run 5 meters, rest for 10 seconds. And I was using the mod "No weight for pistols, meds, and ammo" Yea. "Oh, but then don't loot enough to be overweight". Yea, that's also an option. But you need to make money, right? Remember the point about the fked up economy? Also, just a heads up, you don't become overweight when you reach 80 kg. No, that's when you stop moving completely. You actually become overweight when you reach around 60kg. And it's very easy to reach that point, given all the meds, food, ammo and loot you might collect. Without any external loot on you, you're already at around 30 KG, which only accounts for the food, meds, and ammo. And any occasional artefacts you might find. EDIT: Yes, I have dld and played the game for about 20 more hours after the 1.02 patch, just to see if they've fixed anything. Map is still dead, carry weight is still an issue, game is still unplayable without mods. Uninstall. EDIT 2: I've played the game again after they've posted the latest patch with some 1.2k improvements and this time I was determined to give it a fair try and finish it. I managed to get to Prypiat and got bored out of my mind along the way. At one point, I managed to run for 45 minutes from Lesser Zone through Garbage, Rostok, and into Yantar without running INTO A SINGLE ENEMY, MUTANT OR HUMAN. I also had 22 mods installed to make the game playable. Have fun I guess.Show moreShow less
173 hours at review2,756 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
1. Atmosphere and sound - Amazing 100/10 2. Bugs - didn't find anything critical 3. Optimization - it's just bad. Waiting for patches. 4. A-LIFE - there's no A-LIFE. Game just spawns enemies within 50-100 meters. Hope patches will make it work like in previous games, because without it it's not STALKER and the world is empty and lifeless without it. 5. Enemies are just sponges for bullets. Need rebalance. 4 mags to kill a bloodsucker? Really? Other things to mention that I would like DEVs to change/add: - Day/night cycle is too short - No sleeping bags - It costs a fortune to repair weapons and suits - No dymanic shadows from the flashlight - eneimes just spam you with grenades all the time - would be cool to have more food/drinks options and cook monster parts like in GAMMA or order some meals in the bars - weapons/suits condition goes down waaaaay to fast (shot 2 mags from AK and got -3%. Whaaaaaat?) - when you sit at the campfire you cannot eat/drink/open PDA/inventory etc. - you get hungry every 5-10 minutes. I assume longer day/night cycle would be a great option as well to fix the issue. - mutants AI is strange. If you're being chased by the mutants and jump of the car for example they just run away. When you get down they appear again. They don't try to jump or at least swarm around the car waiting for their meal. For now the game is medium rare. Waiting for the DEVs to cook it properly and then it will be the game of the year for sure.Show moreShow less
6.6 hours at review4,409 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
As a long time fan of the series, this sequel feels hollow. One of the defining features of the series was it's living world. NPC's would wander around, fight over territory, and have their own radio chatter about local events. That system is gone now, and replaced with a generic spawning system. As an example, I cleared a camp of enemies, looted it, walked a few feet outside of it, and enemies immediately spawned back in, shooting at me. Another example, a friendly group spawned in, helped me fight a mutant, I turned away to open a stash, turned back around, and they were gone. There also doesn't seem to be any faction relations, or even randomly generated jobs for other stalkers. The stealth in this game is a joke, with enemies being able to see you through walls and foliage with hawk-like perception, and once they do spot you, they will always know where you are even if you break line of sight. The game, like the older games, warns you to lower your weapon around other stalkers, except in this one, they don't actually care. Equipment wears out incredibly easy, and is very expensive to repair (at least in the early game). For example, I got in 2 gunfights and had to drop 2000-ish to fix up my gun. None of this even touches on the bugs, granted, outside of crashes here and there, there hasn't been anything gamebreaking that i've ran into. Just a lot of npc's phasing through floors or levitating, and the combat AI performing some... questionable tactics. The optimization isn't great but it's UE5 so nobody is shocked. I got around 70 fps with some dips in large safe zones. I hope that one day this game lives up to it's name, but right now, it falls incredibly short in what made the series unique in the first place. Hopefully the issues with the game are fixable, either by mods or the devs making changes. But in it's current state, I can't recommend it.Show moreShow less
21.8 hours at review2,180 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
A moment of silence for our fellow stalkers who passed away before they got here. . . . See you in the Zone, Stalker!Show moreShow less
0.1 hours at review3,930 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I've had enough with all this b*llshit I don't feel any big changes, they took a full YEAR to put nvg's, didn't add multiplayer as promise, the A-life still isn't the best, guns customization is lame af, performances are still not great, and the list could go on and on. The game is basically still in beta state since the "official release"... And instead of hard working on their game and gives us what was promised, they auto-promote their garabage expensives cosmetics and "upgrades" for an unfinished game. We don't give a sh*t about your deluxe upgrades, we just want a fonctional game and what was promise Wake up devs, y'all looks like fools and greedy little goblins right now. EDIT: Stop defending this studio, I know their country is at war, but as I said in a comment on this review, they have delocated a part of GSC studios outside of Ukraine, they are not coding in trenches (like writing a code line, taking an AK, shoot, and go back to coding). They were aware of the state of this game but decided to release it anyway, THIS IS THEIR CHOICE. I'm a fan of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe. I would love to see this game being as good as the first ones. But right now I simply cannot recommend y'all to pay this game at full price considering the state of it. We need to wait and see, and sadly I think we'll have to wait a bit before the game become what devs sell us before the launch. For now it's all broken promises and lies...Show moreShow less
67.7 hours at review2,075 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
It's aight.Show moreShow less
35.3 hours at review3,635 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
First things first, I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, it's a magnificent attempt at creating a truly expansive, open-world experience. The story, the animations, the lore, the oppressive and lonely atmosphere & sound design: the world building is astonishing and almost photo-realistic to the real exclusion zone, a masterpiece in almost every way. The gun-play leaves nothing to be desired and the exploration is rewarding and satisfying. Quests are both well-written and well-acted and feel extremely rewarding to play and complete. Artifact hunting is fun and deadly, though a tad on the easy side with anomalies giving plenty of time to dive in and out without any risk for a seasoned Stalker.. Lastly, no changes in the environment from Emissions, as Artifacts respawn once a day if collected. As a long time S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fan with over 10k hours across the original 3 titles & the Misery Mod combined, I'm a bit flabbergasted, so here come the bugs that should have been hunted down and fixed by the Monolith prior to release. For reference, I am running on a PC I custom built myself for 3D Design & VR using mid-tier gear to run high-end gaming efficiently: - Z390 Aorus Pro Wifi - i5-9600K CPU @ 3.70GHz (6 CPUs), ~3.7GHz - 16384MB RAM - 3060 Ti 8GB RAM The game runs flawlessly performance wise Low to Epic on 1080p, though the game sadly, crashes Audio Drivers and causes other games to run at 12-40 FPS until a system restart. I find no fair reasoning for a company to release such a broken technical mess. The game is nigh unplayable for me. I have 127.4 hours on the game, 23 of which are ‘Compiling Shaders’ and loading to avoid issues. I have covered literally every inch of the entirety of the zone. 332 Bugs and Glitches to be exact, though for brevity, I will only list the ones that truly need to be fixed. 1. - Crashes when saving the game or exploring. 2. - Memory leaks in Rostok are the most egregious, though every town does this. 3. - Blue-screen at the ‘In Search of Past Glory X-5 Controller boss room,’Avoid the trigger that forces your eyes to close when you touch the floor, hiding the enemies spawning in: Jump onto the wall ledge on the right → container → Run and Jump onto the pillar. 4. - When siding with the Ward, NPC's outside the barricaded Ward Headquarters in ‘Zalissya’ welcome you in, although you aren't allowed in. 5. - It is extremely obvious that if A-Life ever existed as an implemented feature, it sure never hit the release window. Ai literally spawn in around corners & from behind LITERAL TREES / 5-20 feet away, sometimes popping in my peripheral view while scoped in on enemies & NPC's disappear in front of me in towns, etc. In Prypriat Ai spawns pairs of Blood Suckers 60 seconds after killing the last pair. It gets old, really really fast. 6. - Ai ESP & Wall-Hack, never forgetting where the player is. I've had NPC's turn their guns and shoot at me while the NPC model itself was looking in a completely different direction! 7. - Ai will stop hunting the player, even if an inch from the player, when the player leaves a 50-100 foot radius from where the Ai spawned in. 8. - Ai having no self-preservation: I.e., spawning in front of a Tesla Anomaly at ‘Malachite Checkpoint’ ; Ai walking into anomaly's at Rostok near any of the POI's. 9. - Soft-locks / sequence break by dropping into X-5 sewer exit via the hole between 'Ahroprom Research Institute' and 'Ahroprom Factory' falling onto the beam. 10. - Soft-locks when climbing up the ladder at Ahroprom Factory and entering the window above the door to get the SSP-99 before being on the X-5 Quest. 11. - Every main quest requiring a keypad code can be hard-locked by sequence breaking if an NPC hasn't given you the code. 12. - Entering Jupiter early Soft-locks the game. This can be done just north of the ‘High-Capacity Integral-A magazine’ pickup location in Yaniv, slightly to the East of the small compound with the Monolith soldier in a watch tower using a barrel. 13. - Arena Quest in Rostok can be glitched and abused by dropping gear (locker gear, too) on the ground, talking to the NPC, and repeating this until after using the locker by the stairs. 14. - Infinite Money Glitch. 15. - Permanent psi-emission that cannot be quelled by Psi-Blockers from 'A Minor Incident' after aligning the mirrors: Fix by leaving the area quickly. 16. - Permanent psi-emissions (that CAN be temporarily fixed by downing a Psi-Blocker for 1 minute each) from Controllers. 17. - NPC's like Gary from Yaniv do not reappear after fast travel. 18. - Fixing Arch-Anomalies from removing their Point of Interest map marker from the map (or becoming a ? question mark randomly. 19. - Weird Water Arch-Artifact glitched out completely in my game at the Dancing Lights Arch-Anomaly. 20. - South of ‘WSD Base’ the player can get permanently stuck under the train car by crouching and walking under it. 21. - In Cooling Towers Region, south of the east graveyard, can reach the tower via the truck with the open back in the North East corner and jumping onto the fence. The player cannot get back over the fence. 22. - Gravity Anomaly South of ‘Pontoon Depot’ and East of 'Lodochka's Lab' on Wild Island has a chance to permanently glitch the artifact under the mesh on the Middle of the Northern Rocks. 23. - East by South-East of the ‘Zaton Gas Station,’ the ‘Cave Network’ Fire/Thermal Anomaly has a chance to spawn artifacts under the mesh. 24. - Three Captains mission in Zaton will sometimes glitch out if you keep Beard and Owl alive. To sometimes fix: walk to the Sultansk after hunting down and clearing the 3 assault squads of Mercenaries (idle in their spawns). 25. - Icarus base has a locked door in the Medical Building that has a stash you cannot reach if you don't help the doctor in a specific main mission quest but still get a PDA showing the location. 26. - See above issue with Stashes: In Duga, if you side with the Ward, you will see a stash between ‘Duga Substation’ and ‘Duga Comms’ that you cannot reach. 27. - Enemies have a script to spawn in at the ‘Sphere’ in the Lesser Zone during a main quest mission, they spawn early if you clear the area out before the main mission. Sphere always grants ‘Clear out a base silently,’ achievement from simply going loud and killing everyone outside the ‘Sphere’ location. 28. - Military spawn in front of the players at the Military Checkpoints & Army Warehouses, breaking immersion.. 29. - SIRCAA has *INSANE* Memory leaks throughout. 30. - See above: ‘Yantar Production Complex’ in Yantar. 31. - Wild Island region ‘Stone Village’ has a chance to remove the POI from the map, even after discovering it. 32. - Empty stashes appear on the map after you have looted them before getting the location from a PDA. 33. - Guns spawn in your inventory and replace your secondary gun slot. 34. - Dying then reloading can Disable Horizontal controls, movement, ducking, and sprinting, leaving the player hard-locked. This glitch persists across all save files, old and new. To fix: Exit the game completely. 35. - Reloading a save after a creature dies on top of the player can break the ability to run. Players will be forced to walk everywhere! Must restart the game to fix this glitch. 36. - Revive Canadian at 'Bridge to LYMANSKI'!!! (Just kidding on that last one :P) Long Live Canadia eh! There are hundreds more, but these are the main ones I personally think should be fixed. I prefer to be as in-depth as possible. So, to conclude, with the amount of bugs and glitches in the game, I truly feel like I paid to be a beta tester. I was truly looking forward to playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl and I truly worry for the future of the gaming industry if a game can release in such a horrible state and be praised by fans, top online personalities, and game journalists alike. Truly a great game, but it doesn't deserve a positive review, at least not from me.Show moreShow less
127.4 hours at review2,063 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Entered underground, fought mutant rats, almost got mugged by gopniks, exited underground, drank vodka to cleanse my organism, got overcharged by a local trader, almost got mugged again. After all that I got back home and played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, it was good! Living in NYC is toughShow moreShow less
0.7 hours at review3,248 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
You've waited this long Stalker, but you should wait just a bit longer. Fans are praising a game for the IDEA of what it could one day become, but the game's state right now is rough. I can't in good faith blindly recommend a game just because I'm a fan. Stalker 2 needs more time, it honestly needed some testing that would reveal all of the problems listed below. Underneath all that is a spirit of the original Shadow of Chernobyl, but just like that game had a rough launch and ran poorly, history repeats itself with the new one as well. Positives +feeling like the original Stalker, random hidden loot stashes, side quests with rewards, roaming gangs of enemies and mutants attack you out of nowhere +difficulty options, on hardest (Veteran) enemies are quite accurate, mutants deal a lot of damage, guns jamming in middle of fights make it bit more challenging (easy difficulty dumbs the game down for I'd say complete FPS beginners, aka what's shown in game trailers) +a lot of different anomalies which are deadly, different weathers, even zone emissions that kill NPCs that for some reason stand outside, when they're right next to a house - free loot I guess +story is interesting, even when sometimes it's not exactly comprehensible, some actions have consequences, but a lot of them are softer than you'd expect +screenshot worthy moments Negatives -TLDR: poor performance - you must use DLSS or FSR to have playable FPS of 40-60, bugs, glitches, missing features, AI spawning out of thin air or forgetting that you're fighting them, low carry weight limit, very expensive repairs for damaged gear and weapons, no mixed audio of English and Ukrainian for main and side quests, so you either play completely with subtitles and miss key info because you were randomly attacked or you'll have American English for ALL NPCS -NPCs must reach their final destination to let you talk to them, if you talk to them earlier, they reply generic comment + you risk bugging the mission -when looting dead enemies, you don't see their faction or rank, just a nothing saying name -no loot from mutants, can't loot their body parts to sell them -unable to use uniform of a faction as camouflage to blend in, they will attack you anyway -can't see the standing with faction going up or down when doing certain actions, like killing the members of that faction -no night vision and no binoculars, pitch black areas -mutant AI can't figure out how to combat player standing on any tall object - all then run in corner and sulk there, sometimes get stuck or run in circles like mad -bloodsucker AI on Veteran (hardest diff) runs at me, hits me for 80% of my HP, cloaks up and runs away to repeat it again -later on mutants and bosses on Veteran are total bullet sponges, patch lowered HP for some of them, but Chimera and Pseudogiant are still even with best moded guns just tanking shots, often their AI bugs out and they get stuck in one spot, allowing you to actually kill them -enemies seem to randomly spawn out of thin air, several times they've spawned right in front of my eyes, when running through empty fields game likes to spawn behind me bandit gang or random bloodsuckers / there's been few infinite enemy spawns -enemies randomly forget that they're in a firefight with me, they'll stop attacking and go back to their routine of walking around, hilariously at this moment game allows me to Quick save because the threat is gone -headshots from a pistol deal randomly more damage than headshots from an AR - I've cleared an entire army base and most of those kills were with a pistol, because it killed the soldiers sometimes in one hit, sometimes in two or three, vs several scoped in aimed hits with an AR, very strange -a LARGE amount of healing supplies - on Veteran I didn't expect to have 25 medkits and 30 bandages just by going around and looting some bandits and stash or two, I've started to sell healing supplies because they increase total weight and I won't use so many, plus I keep finding more and more, especially before big fights -inability to remove attachments from special weapons - I've found an AK in a stash with scope, it was for the first several hours the only gun with a scope that I've had, the repairs were too expensive and I couldn't just remove a scope that literally just slides at the top of the rails -almost every gun that I loot from any enemy that was using it as broken and marked as red - I can't sell it, I can't do anything with it except unload ammo and drop it - overview that's supposed to show the durability before you pick up a gun often doesn't work, it feels like there was supposed to be a crafting system and this is its remnant -enemy gun floating in the air upon stealth kill with a knife, dead getting up and then falling back into their dead position (not zombies), enemies T-posing and then instantly attacking you, enemy holding invisible gun etc... -lighting in rooms - sometimes when looking into a room from outside, even when it's not sunny, the room is pitch black, like the lights forgot to work ? and when looking outside from a room, the whole outside is blown out like a sun erosion, extreme brightness -sound effects sometimes break, so you don't hear your gun or weather sound breaks up every few seconds -weight limit - the original game had quite a strict weight limit, here at least money has no weight, but after looting few enemies you'll be too heavy to run properly, stamina will deplete extremely fast and overall it worsens your playthrough - and yet, looting is a core mechanic, getting excited after a gunfight, finding a new gun in decent condition, only to be forced to slow walk -there are suit upgrades, but even after finishing the game, I haven't found all -majority of artifacts have -radiation as negative trait, making you literally unable to use them, until you find an artifact with +radiation / it can take you 20+ hours like it did for me, truth is, most artifacts are sadly just eye candy -after the first killed enemy, AI instantly knows where you are and uses half broken guns like laser sniper rifles, perfectly hitting you across dozens of meters and even through cover -sadly you either play in one language or the other, so side quest NPCs and even random bandits will be either talking in English or Ukrainian, it's not mixed that main quest would be in English and rest in Ukrainian, either all or none -no dynamic lighting - a key feature that was in the original Stalker and has allowed it to preserve its atmosphere well, some rooms look simply too dark -easy difficulty in my opinion makes the game so easy that it loses its own identity and essence, it was clearly used for production of several game trailers, where enemies miss shots like they're Stormtroopers in a tunnel -veteran difficulty is good for humanoid enemies, but mutants are painfully bullet spongy, bosses in several fights had insane HP while dealing near instant kill dmg to best upgraded armor you could get at the time -lastly, game has crashed many times and I've had to reload saves to get out of bugs To all the joke and fake positive reviews...Being a fan is okay, excusing everything because of your love for a franchise is not however. You're not doing your beloved game a good service by lying to others about the current state of it. People blinded by your review will try it, refund it and possibly never touch it again. The zone will not gain new Stalkers, it'll lose more of them this way. So please, consider writing fair, honest and helpful reviews. To be honest, for how long this game was in development, how many times its release date was pushed back another year and what we've been shown in trailers, I was expecting a more finished and polished Stalker experience, than something janky that you could compare to game from 15 years ago. A lot of people are disappointed by the AI's intelligence and refuse to continue playing, others have broken saves.Show moreShow less
72.2 hours at review1,849 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/14/2026.