Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl review: ambition at a price

[Editor’s Note: Ahead of its release, Digital Trends received a PC copy of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl that was plagued with more technical issues than we typically see in a review build this close to launch. I personally hopped into the Xbox build once our critic started raising red flags and was instantly met with bugs within my first 20 minutes. The PC build received major patches meant to address those issues during our test, which radically altered its performance. We are still testing that build, which does seem to improve performance and fix a swath of bugs, so it’s safe to say that the version of Stalker 2 you will play when it launches will likely look very different from what we tested.

While we have previously declined to run reviews for games still being worked on so heavily during the review process, our critic identified a general instability, in addition to core design woes, that we don’t believe will be quickly fixed by a single update. It’s with that in mind that we have decided to run our review based on what we’ve played. We encourage our readers to do their research beyond this review once Stalker 2 is out to get a sense of how well the launch version is running with additional updates. Here’s our full Stalker 2 performance guide to get started.]

A game like Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is incredibly challenging to review.

I write this after installing a third enormous prerelease update, this one a 135 GB whopper that patched and reinstalled over 145 GB worth of files. On one hand, I can applaud developer GSC Game World for its dedication to perfecting its first-person shooter before it launches. On the other hand, I can’t help but worry. Massive changes like this so close to the wire are the textbook definition of a red flag.

Even with those patches, though, Stalker 2 still presents a mountain of frustrations that aren’t so easy to pave over. Some of these frustrations were caused by bugs — from minor annoyances to major ones that wasted plenty of time during my playthrough. Others were due to problems with the user interface (UI) and quest objectives. Some will likely be fixed by future patches. Others may just be the developers’ vision. It’s not always clear which is which.

Is it fair to review a game when I’m still downloading massive patches for it? Whether you believe that answer to be yes or no, the headache-inducing roadblocks that I encountered while playing the highly unstable Stalker 2 have made for a disappointing playthrough. After nearly 15 years of waiting for the next mainline series entry, the game feels less like a groundbreaking continuation and more like a world full of missed opportunities.

Back to basics

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl combines first-person shooting, survival horror, and open-world exploration. Set several years after the events of the original trilogy, the Exclusion Zone (the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disasters) has become a thriving region with numerous disparate factions vying for control. A relative newcomer, Skif, arrives for his first assignment, only to get betrayed by his comrades. Thankfully, Skif manages to survive, and it’s up to you to help him settle the score.

Action gameplay in Stalker 2 is your standard first-person shooter (FPS) affair. You can equip two primary weapons and one sidearm, as well as select upgrades and add mod attachments. You do need to keep weapons in tip-top condition, since wear-and-tear causes them to jam. Weapon variety is something worth praising thanks to all the available options. This allows players to fine-tune their armaments to suit their needs. My current favorites are the Saiga D-12 shotgun and AS Lavina rifle, since both deal high damage and can have suppressor attachments.

Open-world exploration, meanwhile, will earn praise and frustrations in equal measure. Praise because the Exclusion Zone is bigger and badder than ever before, and frustrations because fast travel is limited to a Clear Sky-esque taxi service. Basically, you need to chat with guide NPCs in specific settlements, and you can only fast travel to settlements with other guide NPCs. Certain incidents caused me to lose guide NPCs or a means of leaving areas. It turns navigating the massive world into a slow slog.

I understand the idea behind this, since it’s meant to add a layer of difficulty as you further explore and brave the dangers in the Exclusion Zone. However, there’s a fine line between difficulty that comes from a challenge and the difficulty born from inconvenience. Stalker 2 too often falls into the latter category.

As for campaign progression, it’s mostly a semilinear affair in that there are specific quest chains that you must complete and lead to the next portion of the story. However, there are also major decisions that create diverging paths, such as certain factions that you’d side with. Likewise, a few characters from the original trilogy make their return in Stalker 2. Scar, Trapper, Nimble, Sultan, and more surprises all show up, which will be a surefire treat for longtime fans.

Story shenanigans

One of Stalker 2’s biggest missed opportunities is its narrative, which fails to deliver a concise or coherent story. While the campaign has some promise, it’s bogged down by a plodding narrative arc, where the objectives you tackle and the conclusions you reach are often repetitive and unsatisfying.

Quest chains in several regions can be summed up as meeting a couple of important leaders; going to one or two locations to gather, activate, or disable MacGuffins; fighting a few mutants; and encountering some anomalies. You then return to leaders after this roundabout way of doing tasks, only to be told that your main objective is in the next region.

This “Princess is in another castle” approach might work in some games, but not when we’re talking about a massive open-world game where fast travel is extremely limited. In the same vein, this is a game where you spend most of your time walking around, so there has to be a satisfying conclusion to each mini-arc. Otherwise, it just feels like a 40-hour campaign that should have ended 15 hours earlier.

There are segments that almost feel insulting. Case in point: A long mission chain where I had to walk all the way to the southeastern part of the map to clear a Monolith-controlled factory. I then had to assault the faction’s base, but I had to skirt around the area lest I get instantly killed by “invisible snipers.” Shenanigans ensued, so my comrades and I had to retreat. Next, I was asked to advance with other NPC soldiers, but we had to retreat again. I would then receive a radio call telling me to travel to the northeast because I had to grab a new MacGuffin.

For the entirety of the two hours I spent on that quest chain, I did not see a personal stash so I could keep items for later instead of throwing them away if I got too encumbered. I also did not see a single NPC for item selling or repairs. The quest chain felt thrown together as an afterthought without any regard for the player.

Compounding those woes, the faction system isn’t as detailed or interactive as I’d hoped for. In the original trilogy, certain factions may be neutral or hostile by default, and you can join a select few. I expected Stalker 2 to expand mechanics like that. That’s not the case, leaving my imagination to run wild with features that could have helped deepen my playthrough — perhaps a faction menu or panel where you see all the groups, their bosses, rivals, members, available quests, merchants, and notable rewards.

Anomalies, artifacts, and adversaries

Similar to its predecessors, Stalker 2 is a game where the environment is a character in its own right. The devastating events that have transpired in the Exclusion Zone have made it a land of nightmares, filled with abandoned facilities, empty fields, and derelict buildings. It’s also crawling with numerous mutants, including the camouflaged Cthulhu-esque Bloodsuckers and psionically-gifted Burer. In my first few hours of playing, I felt the rising tension as I explored areas at nighttime, worrying whenever I heard a low growl or a thrumming noise in the background.

The Exclusion Zone is also teeming with countless unstable anomalies, from gouts of flame spewing from the ground to poisonous pools with acid bubbles to semi-transparent air pockets pushing you through a dimensional field. There are even terrifying weather disturbances like Emissions that turn the skies to a bloody crimson hue, as well as lightning storms that can strike trees and start a fire. These mysterious phenomena hold both an ethereal quality, which sometimes made me stare in awe, and unrivaled danger, as I know that one wrong move could spell my character’s doom.

Getting close to danger even yields rewards since some of these anomaly fields hide artifacts. All I had to do was bring out a scanner, walk around until the lights blink rapidly, and watch as the artifact materializes from an anomaly. These artifacts can then be equipped to gain bonuses to resistances and other stats.

This feature is something that’s present in previous Stalker games, but Heart of Chornobyl doesn’t expand on it in any meaningful way. New mechanics, like artifact upgrading, combinations/infusion, or even perk/skill trees or on-use abilities, could have helped to freshen up a formula that was in need of a tune-up. Regrettably, much like factions, this concept barely feels changed from its original inception over a decade ago. That leads to an experience that feels stuck in the past.

Technical troubles

Regardless of how I feel about Stalker 2’s story and world, I can’t stress this part enough: I experienced notable performance issues during my testing on PC. I have an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU, Intel i9-10900K CPU, and 32GB RAM. I have a native 4K resolution TV and, given the enormous file size and requirements, I knew that this would be a very demanding game. Unfortunately, even with DLSS-Performance and medium graphics settings selected, I was still experiencing major frame rate drops, sometimes below 20 frames per second (fps), especially in bases like Rostok and Slag Heap.

Stutters and slowdowns were fairly common in my playthrough, as were related issues. For example, the game might slow down to a crawl while talking to vendor NPCs. At times, my button inputs wouldn’t get recognized at all due to the delay. If I needed to open the map, sometimes the interface would get stuck. If I needed to heal myself with a medkit, the animation wouldn’t trigger and I’d have to access my backpack to right-click on the item. There were also instances when locations, terrain, and NPC models took a while to fully load.

These little tidbits were just the tip of the iceberg. The earlier review build that I’ve been playing has had a litany of technical troubles. Some were just minor hiccups, like floating and T-posing NPCs, muted gunshots and other sound effects, and Skif’s voice sounding like he’s on the other end of the radio instead of being the actual player character. Fortunately, these problems don’t occur as frequently after the most recent update.

Others were more egregious, such as “dead spots” in swampy terrain. If I so much as waded into these spots, I wouldn’t be able to move or jump back on solid ground. Some areas caused my character to fall through textures. Certain quests couldn’t be finished either due to bugs – one, in particular, had an NPC that prevented me from exiting a building, leaving me with no choice but to reload an earlier save. Another bug caused a facility to become permanently locked. There was no indication that I had to enter it immediately, so I started looking for nearby loot. The building became inaccessible as I moved farther away from it.

In a different instance, the dialogue was super confusing and a UI bug prevented the NPC’s icon from appearing in the compass and map. I wondered if I was supposed to scour the vast wasteland just for one person. I later discovered that he was hiding in a nearby shed, and his marker wouldn’t appear unless I was standing a few feet away. Additionally, a dialogue sequence with an NPC even caused my controls to stop working, so I had to restart the game. Stalker 2 also compiles shaders every time you launch it. Good luck with restarts in case of glitches or crashes, because this process can take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes.

It’s a beefy game that crumbles under its own weight, but those technical ambitions don’t always feel worth the effort. Take A-Life 2.0 for example, which the game’s official website touts as a “life-simulating system that builds a holistic live environment where the player’s actions have an impact on the world of the Zone.” On paper, it would be akin to seeing NPCs, mutants, and anomalies reacting to one another to make the Exclusion Zone feel alive.

This is far from what actually goes on in my playthrough. At best, I can describe it as the AI Director from Left 4 Dead sporadically throwing enemies my way. Sometimes I’d clear a small area as part of a repeatable quest. Just when I thought there were no enemies left, a squad of bandits would suddenly spawn, even though there was no inkling that they even existed or were near the location. I figure this might be why some generic NPCs have randomly generated names; they were made to spawn in that spot so you could at least encounter someone or something.

Missed opportunities

Believe me when I say that I was rooting for GSC Game World to succeed, especially with the circumstances surrounding the Ukrainian studio that made it and which have caused this title to get delayed and pushed back several times. Those circumstances have even caused the developers themselves to forgo their jobs so they can valiantly fight for their country. The story behind Stalker 2 is more important and harrowing than the one on screen.

Unfortunately, Stalker 2 is plagued by issues, from serious technical troubles to questionable design choices. Another delay might not have been feasible, but it still could have used one.

I can’t help but focus on the missed opportunities. There are concepts that just aren’t fully fleshed out, and certain features feel entirely absent. Stalker 2 relies too heavily on existing ideas from the original trilogy that came out 15 years ago, perhaps to appeal to longtime fans. The downside is that very little was done to expand on those concepts. If we look at numerous open-world adventure/survival games that have been released in the past 15 years, we can see a wealth of features and innovations that make players’ time feel well spent. Stalker 2, similar to its predecessors, essentially has enough engaging mechanics for a sleek 12-hour story, but far too little for a 100-plus-hour open-world offering.

If you’re really really eager to dive into Stalker 2, keep your fingers crossed that some of these more egregious technical issues have been ironed out by the time you start playing. If you’re still on the fence, you can wait until more fixes are in place or try it out first if you have an Xbox Game Pass or PC Game Pass subscription.

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl was tested on PC with a code provided by the publisher.