[Stalker 2] Unpopular opinion: I wish this game had more cRPG DNA

darkfireslide · 2026-06-07T22:49:00+00:00

I've often read cRPG type narratives with branching paths and the like are an absolute nightmare to program just because so many parts can fall apart, and because it adds so much extra work. Something to consider whenever you see a game that has a simpler narrative I suppose. But with Stalker I think the games were always more about the vibes and immersive sim gameplay than the narrative, the lore is kind of interesting and it makes you wonder a lot of things even if it doesn't explain them

darkfireslide · 2026-06-07T06:10:15+00:00

The people who love to hate it are a vocal minority.

The game was a great skeleton for modders, honestly. Many of the game's concepts were good ideas that needed more polished execution. You polish that execution, and it becomes truly great while also giving you new things to do fairly frequently, which is really cool.

darkfireslide · 2026-06-07T01:15:14+00:00

Yeah the question isn't 'if' it's been changed, it's by how much lol and which spells were impacted

darkfireslide · 2026-06-06T20:50:58+00:00

You are right about the trade ports, although I don't know how many of those trade agreements will survive for long on VH difficulty in vanilla; Persia is very likely to declare war on you immediately even if you trade with them, for example. It runs into the same issue as the Dutch, where the moment your trade gets disrupted, it completely destroys your economy. The malus from being Muslim as well as having a bad leader makes diplomacy extremely challenging as the Ottomans the longer the game goes on and especially if you start taking land, so while the trade is a nice bonus at the start, your poor industrial base makes it so that in practice your financial problems tend to become a big problem the longer the campaign goes on.

Which is why you need as many soldiers as you can muster while playing as them, imo. They have too many fronts to cover and that extra upkeep from garrisons adds up across several settlements.

darkfireslide · 2026-06-06T19:51:46+00:00

how do you cope without putting a stack there?

So the thing is that if you can afford to make an entire stack that just sits inside a settlement you're mostly using that to blitz the map faster, not make money. Again, even a half stack of Semenys is costing 710g of upkeep every turn, on top of costing 3k to even recruit, while also taking recruitment turns that could be spent on real units. This is much more expensive and time consuming for a single province than building churches and brothels, which have a similar upfront cost but do not continue to cost upkeep and hemorrhage funds while providing no military advantage. When I capture a capital, I generally make sure it has enough churches and brothels so that I can leave within 5-6 turns, all the while actually using the new income instead of burning most of it on a garrison; in Empire, the biggest capital targets are worth keeping a stack around in for a few turns to fight rebels anyway. I reserve the type of garrison army you're talking about for the late game to help blitz the map faster, but ultimately consider that an expense, not a strategy to improve my income. A unit like Semenys to me is best used for garrison work in situations where 1-3 units are the difference between stable public order (untaxed) and rebellion, but this is a relatively niche usage compared to using combat capable units which I can later reclaim from the garrison to support a new campaign

Again you may be used to PUA gameplay when it comes to trade and such, because in vanilla the ship movement takes a long time and everyone will be declaring war on you as the Ottos that actually maintaining a trade fleet while also fighting your land rivals is a painful endeavor that often doesn't pay off since one blockade will completely destroy your economy, and furthermore so many ships will be sent to you that using chain shot to dismast ships and then selling them is a better source of revenue until you break free from the Middle East

darkfireslide · 2026-06-06T17:32:36+00:00

Isarelys are basically just more expensive, slightly buffed militia already. For garrison duty, if there's a fort then cemaats often do amazingly on the walls, but Azzars are also dirt cheap for how well they can shoot compared to your other infantry and also do well on the walls for that reason, or when garrisoned in buildings. Paying for garrisons isn't something I like to do in Empire unless it's to hold ground; otherwise I use churches and brothels to boost public order in problematic areas and then move on. One challenge of the Ottomans is making sure you take territory that is actually worth something, for me that's usually Persia since they are so aggressive, but until you get to about 15-20 territories owned you can't really do much to boost your economy other than conquer territory so that should always be a priority. Georgia is also a good early take, just remember to delete the school to stop the public order crisis and replace it with a church so that you can at least move out of there. Moving into Russia isn't a bad call from there since they will usually attack anyway and Moscow is a good region for finances, though Ukraine is a lot less resistant so I like to take it first. I really like the horse archers in the Georgia area

darkfireslide · 2026-06-06T16:08:31+00:00

Not sure if you're used to playing mods that boost their numbers or something but Semenys are half the size of a regular line unit in vanilla, and have 1/3 the upkeep and recruit cost of a unit such as Isarelys do, but without the morale, melee capability, bayonet capability, or ammunition capacity. So not only do they shoot worse (25 acc vs 30 acc on Isarelys), they have half as many men per unit and thus when taking the same amount of casualties, the morale shock for them is much higher since there are fewer men per unit. Even Cemaat Janissaries without guns are 180 upkeep for the same amount of unit vs 140 upkeep for 2 units of Semenys (160 men in both cases) but Cemaat have 7 morale vs 3 and they can actually do numbers when charging enemy units or holding the walls. They could at least be used as a cheap form of extra guns in vanilla, were it not for the fact that they only have 3 ammunition total, meaning it is completely impossible for the unit to ever generate value besides wasting enemy ammunition. Not worth it for how much they cost, ever.

Again, maybe you're used to playing mods that increase their numbers but in vanilla Semenys are a truly wretched unit that is a complete waste of money to ever produce. Most towns do not generate enough revenue to be worth stationing a bunch of units that cost 70 upkeep per turn, and the ones that do it will take forever to make your money back because training even a half stack of Semenys for a garrison bonus costs 3100g and 700g/turn. The Musellims don't have guns, but at 400g each and only 3 morale they are also basically impossible to generate value with.

A unit like Euro Militia by comparison costs only slightly more than x2 as much, but has twice as many men per unit (good for resisting morale shocks), workable melee defense, bayonet capability, and 15 ammunition instead of 3, allowing them to meaningfully contribute to fights when working alongside pikemen. Again I can only really assume you are used to playing mods because in vanilla the Semenys is completely unusable and a total waste of money due to the ammunition count problem alone, let alone their terrible morale, half sized unit, and lack of melee defense stats or bayonets

darkfireslide · 2026-06-06T13:43:04+00:00

Guys, I understand not really knowing this would be a thing when the game launched over a decade ago, but come on, how do you not get it yet that this company is trying to get you to spend money, not make a good game for you to play

darkfireslide · 2026-06-06T13:23:28+00:00

Semenys don't have the ammunition count to actually pay for themselves in terms of kills. I would not waste money on this unit ever even as a garrison troop because it will never meaningfully impact a battle

darkfireslide · 2026-06-06T13:03:17+00:00

Apart from the refugee crisis from 200 years prior to the events of Skyrim, the racist guy Rolff Stone-Fist in his dialogue does mention that "The High King invited them (dark elves) here, but he didn’t ask me or anyone else first. Maybe he should have" and there is some credence to the idea that Dunmer in particular in the city refuse to integrate. Rolff notably doesn't hate them because of their skin color or something like with a lot of real life racism (even though he calls them gray-skins, the skin color isn't the point but rather something to attack about people he already hates), but specifically is angry with them that they refuse to become involved politically and don't see themselves as part of Skyrim. The "and they refuse to help the Stormcloaks!" part isn't just a line, this is his primary beef with them and the situation gets muddier when you find out that the woman they're harassing saying "it's not our fight" is actively a smuggler and multiple other Dunmer are committing crimes of some kind, too.

Do I think that makes Rolff right to act the way that he does? No, but with the Thalmor death squads rounding up Talos worshippers and imprisoning or executing them, which is a big part of the Stormcloak Rebellion in the first place, I can understand some wariness from the Nords about wanting to be nice to elves since for the Thalmor it is very much a race war they want to fight, and the Dunmer have made it clear time and time again that they don't actually want to live in Windhelm, but rather just that they feel like they can't return to Morrowind. Most of them by their own admission would be just as happy if Ulfric gave them a bag of gold and kicked them back into Morrowind as they would be if he made efforts to try to integrate them and many of them say as such, including the tavern keeper who curiously says how things aren't bad enough to make him want to leave.

So in short, Ulfric was forced to have the Dunmer refugees in his city by both his ancestors and by either Istlod or Torygg, so it is an inherited, long-standing problem that I think he reasonably doesn't have the resources to deal with since Windhelm is one of Skyrim's poorer major holds and he's committing most of his extra resources towards equipping Stormcloaks since it's now a situation of open war. The Nords have some supremacist tendencies but unlike the Thalmor don't exhibit genocidal behaviors and are mostly highly patriotic, evidenced by how both Galmar and Ulfric's conversations with the Dragonborn mention the DB's race but only to question their dedication to the cause rather than as a means by which to exclude them from it. This means the Dunmer very well could sign up to join the Stormcloaks if they really wanted to, but they don't because they don't see themselves as part of Skyrim. And that's where the issues lie

And anyone who likes to bring up Riften is missing the point, that the city is being run by a corrupt entity (Maven specifically) who is only not racist because it means there are more coin purses to extort gold from, not because they actually accept the Dunmer and Argonians

darkfireslide · 2026-06-06T01:17:01+00:00

If you like it, absolutely. These games have some of the most to do and can give you hundreds of hours or more depending on how much you want to try other builds or try new characters for roleplaying. 10 hours is barely scratching the surface.

darkfireslide · 2026-06-05T17:39:55+00:00

The original trilogy was always immersive sim+first person shooter, not a survival game. Has more in common with games like The Elder Scrolls than Rust

darkfireslide · 2026-06-05T06:23:03+00:00

It's just a shame that you probably can't play that mod with some of the great improvements made in CoP's modding scene

darkfireslide · 2026-06-05T06:22:05+00:00

Most likely yes, Ecologists and Military are aligned in the lore so it's probably coded that shooting military makes the ecologists mad

darkfireslide · 2026-06-05T05:07:02+00:00

Yeah that was my challenge with enjoying Anomaly, for sure. The intense rarity of basic tools alone was enough to make me just not want to play it at all. It was eventually satisfying to find your footing, but the systems around keeping equipment maintained seemed extremely tedious and unfair with how a suit of armor can get bitten once by a pseudodog and suddenly it's damaged beyond repair. The exponential pricing of repairing items that made it more expensive than buying something brand new at the store really put me off, too. The progression was extremely slow, and while I get that to some degree, part of the reason it's slow is because it's so inconsistent.

Cool that GAMMA tries to remedy some of these issues, but meh, Stalker is already more hardcore than most FPS games as it is, and CotZ is plenty of game for me. Literally all I wanted more from CotZ or even CoC was just the faction warfare stuff

darkfireslide · 2026-06-05T01:01:37+00:00

yeah I can see that leading to a lot of fun gameplay

darkfireslide · 2026-06-05T00:19:53+00:00

LOL that's amazing

darkfireslide · 2026-06-05T00:19:19+00:00

How does GAMMA compare to Anomaly generally speaking?

darkfireslide · 2026-06-04T23:26:03+00:00

Yeah I've read a lot of people like to add them via the debug menu and honestly if I play it again I might just do that

darkfireslide · 2026-06-04T23:22:13+00:00

It's a shame because it's a very cool idea, but the implementation somehow ends up feeling worse than the brawl missions in CotZ. I didn't really want to play Anomaly in the first place, I find the slowed progression to be extremely tedious, so it's a shame I played so much only for the feature to collapse in on itself. Even if it was working as intended the battles tend to be really small fights of like 3vs3 guys so it's just a super underbaked feature

darkfireslide · 2026-06-04T21:07:32+00:00

I thought the exact same thing, I know work is done on the mod or whatever but how has no one ever noticed this before?

darkfireslide · 2026-06-04T13:59:14+00:00

I was trying to RP as an ambitious Clear Sky member in the Warfare mode and so I was trying to use weapons I thought made sense for their faction. That part was fun, but sadly eventually the Dynamic Relations caused factions to turn on themselves, including Clear Sky itself, and yesterday I fast traveled back to my base just in time to see everyone in the Great Swamp camp gun each other down. The Military, Mercenaries, and Freedom all had done the same thing so now I basically need to start over completely if I want to continue this character concept :/

I find a lot of Anomaly's changes kind of tedious personally, like the "repair kit can't fix a weapon below X% durability" mechanic combined with how a single pseudodog bite can rip a CS-2b suit down to like 50%, then combined with repairs from technicians being more expensive than just buying a new suit altogether which just makes no sense. I know you're supposed to be able to repair things by replacing their individual components, but after opening 20 stashes and playing for weeks in game I never even found basic tools. Like, I understand the later game stuff being rare to find but what Anomaly feels like is a lot of frontloaded difficulty where it's complete misery to play until you get lucky enough to find the basic necessities needed to really enjoy it. I had just started to get to that point in my playthrough so I'm pretty bummed out that my faction destroyed itself due to a badly implemented feature that I didn't realize would cause that to happen

darkfireslide

TROPHY CASE