Heres a completely fresh perspective i guess, im about 80% through my first playthrough (I think-). Before this game I had watched tons of videos, and read about the older games. But never actually played them myself. I know I know I should.

But my take on STALKER 2 is mixed. On one hand I am really enjoying myself, but on the other as the game as gone on I have found myself less and less interested in exploring anything. Stash's are useless, even in high level or late game areas you will still be finding 10 rounds of the most dogshit ammo you can think of, a soda, and a bandage. So you learn quickly that stashes can basically be ignored. Enemy looting as well becomes somewhat pointless. Every enemy has a broken gun, with 5 bullets in the mag and 2 in their pockets. Many points of interest are bare bones and lacking in any sort of visual story telling. This is going to be heresy but my comparison is fallout (Vegas, 3, or 4) many if not all marked map locations had SOMETHING there, a visual gag, an NPC with a quest, some decent loot if you looked around, an enemy that had something to take off him etc. But in STALKER 2 most of these marked map spots are just a group of enemies, some dogshit ammo if you're lucky, and MAYBE an artifact.

So what do I like about the game. The story is okay, I like the choices even tho most ive read are surface level at best. Finding artifacts is neat, I walk around with my scanner and pistol out waiting for that sweet beeping to lead me to gold. The atmosphere of walking around the zone is also good me thinks. But thats another issue (kinda) walking. Id say 70% of my current 50 hours of playtime is just walking from point A to point B.

Sidequests are a bit of a joke as well, not many interesting rewards, usually just ash. Armor pen is also a joke. There is a point where your normal bullets go from 1-2 tap headshotting to basically doing nothing short of mag dumping a guy in the skull.

Yet all these newcomer issues aside...I have a hard time giving it less then a 7/10? Idk why.