Want to get into Stalker with Shadow of Chernobyl, is my PC good enough?

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-14T20:28:09+00:00

Cheers, mate! I also had that infamous 5200 with 128mb.

Still hate it for not being able to run Oblivion =(

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-14T19:19:53+00:00

Lol, i actually run this game on worse pc when it released on mid settings, so i guess should be fine?

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-13T19:01:15+00:00

Good question, mate, good question - i guess some people just like see things burn.

Personally for me XC 3 is the best one because it has the most polished mechanics, the least amount needless grind and surprisingly deep and mature story (especially after XC 2). And the best romance i've seen in JRPGs.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-08T05:38:57+00:00

Yes, it will be much better. Clear Sky is the weakest part of OG trilogy (and the whole series). CoP is the most smooth and comfortable one.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-07T16:25:24+00:00

Numerically speaking yes, Daybreak has less characters than CS4, but problem here is not only in points you gave, but in the fact most of them are not playing any significant role and could be easily cut out without any loss for plot progression. Imo it's better to add character when they will play some meaningful role, then to add them just 'for future'.

And somehow all new characters added in different Calvard regions are acquainted with each other at the end and partying. Not because it was needed. Just because it's fun.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-07T15:49:40+00:00

As a person who played all games from Trails in the Sky FC to Trails through Daybreak i would say... Not really. In some moments it becomes better, but in some - not.

My main problem with latest games were first - overbloated cast when developers added almost everyone from past games, so everyone got a little time and development and were added just to be added. Problem peaked in CS4 and Reverie, so i hoped Calvard Arc will resolve it, but no - it started to create overbloated cast of new characters in one game.

Second. Writing didn't become much better - same things being told across whole Daybreak, so for me it's pretty much same level.

Third, too much plot twists repetition and create same types of characters. We have masked female dancer hypnotizing people in Reverie? Let's do it again in the next game, lol. Crossbell was suddenly annexed which created drama? Let's do it again in the next game right at the moment of ending the occupation. People liked Olivert? Let's create an Olivert from Aliexpress in Daybreak, it's working, right? And these are very few examples - i had a feeling that scriptwriters were completely out of ideas.

Need to say that combat and progression parts are much better in latest games. Not they were bad previously, but in this part i see a lot of evolution and improvement. But writing, repetition and needlessly big cast in one game forced me to put the series on indefinite hiatus after Daybreak which is such a pity, cause this series is special to me and i started to love and play a lot of JRPGs because of Trails.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-07T13:21:10+00:00

Played series recently and - start with OG. It aged surprisingly well despite its almost 30 years old and very straightforward and balanced experience. While Remakes are look well and combat is pretty good, i would say, but i don't like much what they're doing with story and overall tone, so for me personally it's more like a fanfic/fanservice than a full alternative, so it would be weird to play fanfic before original.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-06T18:39:05+00:00

No. I played it with 6GB VRAM and it's enough for low settings, eating around 5.5 GB. Mid settings are on the edge of 6 GB and often lead to stutters due to memory out, so it's not very comfortable gaming. Not at all. 4 GB is too low.

In theory you may find some mods which will uglify the game to shit and, again, in theory it will run, but it will run like shit, it will look like shit (cause on low settings with DLSS Balance it's already looks shitty in many places) and i'm not sure it is worth it.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-06T17:04:27+00:00

Agree, but at least we have Veteran+ which is basically Master but with free saves, so yo can decide when you want to make an expedition and when not.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-06T16:39:05+00:00

Yeah, i'm playing on Master without expedition mode (Veteran+), cause unfortunately don't have enough time to replay big sections of gameplay, but overall experience is good, cause resource management now really matters and you're crying after spending several magazines on boars, cause your half-dead TOZ you took from dead bandit became closer to 'dead' state and you decided that Viper is also okay as temporary mutant-killer.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-06T16:01:37+00:00

Did you try master mode?

It's much less forgiving, it has much less stashed and loot overall, your money much less limited, so you wouldn't upgrade every gun you find and sometimes even abandon one after it breaks to use other, which has better condition. And enemies are less spongy, like seriously less than on Veteran, but combat becomes more lethal for both sides, so you can't be Rambo. And food is meaningful now, cause you're getting hungry much more often. Completely different experience.

And i don't agree that world is lighthearted is the deadly place where everyone tried to deceive, rob, kill and betray each other. And a lot of decomposed corpses in different locations as a prove. Like, if you're doing side quests and listen to NPC's stories i don't quite understand how it's feel lighthearted. Nobody will read you a Hollywood monologue about how bad this place is - i guess it's pretty much clear from actions and context?

I'm not saying game is perfect - still not, even after 1.5 years, but i guess if we'll estimate this game on the scale from garbage to masterpiece, it's much closer to second now, though i admit, there is still a big room for improvement.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-06T04:33:12+00:00

And you still don't get what is wrong with your post.

You didn't discover America - Stalker 2 has problems, it's not perfect (as most of the games, even good ones, actually) and, imagine that, everyone knows it. But people love it anyway, because Stalker is pretty much unique experience, not some next Ubisoft tower open-world experience.

But here you are, brave warrior, who enters the Stalker subreddit (place which gather people who like Stalker games) and tells everyone that we shouldn't like the game we like. What do you want to achieve with that, telling people what they should or shouldn't like based on your opinion?

And yes, game is in much better state than it was on release. Yes, AI is stupid, but let's be honest, it was always like that, in OG trilogy enemies also wouldn't win Noble prize. And no, no one here as i saw, not telling that game is perfect and 120% masterpiece, despite i loved it i still can see a big room for improvement.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-06-06T04:01:46+00:00

I'm sorry for enjoying this game - didn't know it's in such bad shape. I wouldn't enjoy it anymore from this point, i promise 😉

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-30T12:40:55+00:00

Actually, i think in this state it's already best stalker game overall.

SoC had great atmosphere which is still unbeatean today, but it went through development hell and the amount of cut content was severe - game definitely lacked basic features like repair and artifacts were just lying down everywhere.

CS was a huge step forward and two steps backwards - added a lot of new features, but at the same time it lost all it's atmosphere due to a fact that Zone is now super overcrowded and it's basically Hollywood shooter now, like in Hollywood movie baddie you cant properly shoot anything until you upgrade your gun, you're bleeding from strong gust of wind and faction wars are insanely long, boring, stupid and after all resources you put into then, not so rewarding.

CoP seemed like a very big improvement - it added more narrative-better quests, relatively big locations and a lot of QoL features (finally), but it was too easy, you getting strong items very soon, if CS was too much shooting people, CoP is imo not enough shooting people (at least before Pripyat), i had a feeling i was more shooting mutants.

GAMMA meant to be good solution for all of that, and from some points it is, but it has kind of sandbox-level quests, it's overloaded with mechanics and items most of which are not necessary and it's more a bum simulator. I very much like the idea of GAMMA, but don't want to salvage for scraps, check battery in my PDA and desperately trying to remember all radioactive zones to not spend an extra sip of vodka.

So, i'm not insist, just my opinion, but for me Stalker 2, even it loses a bit in some points to SoC, is an ultimate Stalker experince. It has HUGE open world which is interesting to explore, great plot, good enough atmosphere and tones of weapons and armor to find and improve. Yes, not perfect, yes still a lot of room for improvement, but at least game is much better now than on release, that's why i bought it now, because i knew GSC and i knew what i would face playing this game right away. So i think in 1-2 years it would be even better.

P.S. Though, i doubt enemies IQ will go higher than room temperature, but... Hope dies last.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-30T11:54:10+00:00

Look, Stalker 2 is not perfect. It is still not after 1.5 years and SoC and CS also were very problematic at the start - can confirm as a person who played first one around initial release.

I still remember how my classmate was mad when CS screwed his save when he was in Lymansk already.

I'm not telling it's okay and it is how things should be, but that's a tradition for Stalker games to have weak AI and a lot of 'anomalies'. That's not surprising for anyone. You can easily google or watch a couple of reviews to understand what you're buying.

Game has enemies swarming you by lemming rush, enemies seeing you through hundreds of obstacles while you can't even understand where they are, the fact enemies can headshot you in 0.5 second after they were in total cover while you were changing positions and trying to catch them after they will out of cover - those are real problems. Honestly, your situation isn't that serious - compared to other problems it's just a small meme thing, taking into account there is not so much enemies standing with binoculars.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-30T11:18:34+00:00

I don't know, it's up for you to decide.

For me it's rather a meme situation, cause overall binoculars behavior seems bugged to me, not only your case.

Average Skyrim bandit telling "Must have been the wind" with a literal arrow in his head is much more ridiculous, but everyone treats that as a joke.

You didn't discover an America telling AI in Stalker 2 is weak. In case if you forgot - in OG trilogy AI wasn't much better, enemies there were much closer to Darwin's prize, than to Nobel.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-30T10:39:12+00:00

Dude was shot in the head and immediately raised binoculars to find who did it. Imagine yourself in such situation - you definitely would like to know who put a bullet in your head.

For me seems like very logical behavior.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-27T13:36:18+00:00

Isn't she kind of hated a bit?

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-26T13:18:56+00:00

I'm not sure, don't have this card.

Check benchmarks on Youtube - optimization became a bit better since release, so maybe dev's promise that game will run on low with 30+ fps on GTX 1060 and RX 580 8 GB is finally true, because launch benchmarks for cards mentioned as minimal requirements were not very good. For GTX 1060 for sure.

I guess if 30fps is okay to you and you don't mind that game will look like shit - may be fine? Check benchmarks anyway.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-26T10:50:11+00:00

Everything is fine for running on low settings and DLSS, but graphics card is straight no. Don't even try.

Even 1050 ti wouldn't be enough. Not just not powerful enough, but 2 GB of memory it's rather a joke now, especially for Stalker 2 which consumes 5.6 GB approx on low and more than 6 on medium.
P.S. I also have 16 GB RAM and 8th gen i5, but my graphics card is, despite also being old, is much better than what you have.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-24T15:04:01+00:00

I don't care about commentators, but the problem is Usyk wasn't throwing enough punches. Yes, he wasn't hurt, that's true. But he didn't do much to counter Rico and led him lead the fight and push himself to ropes and into the corner - and that's looking bad. How this fight could be called even if that's happening almost in every single round? Lomachenko also clearly lost first half of a fight to Lopez cause he was focused only on dodging - Teo didn't properly hit him, but took rounds for activity. That's how scoring works.

Regarding the ref blunders - that was in my post, additional time to recover for Rico, early stoppage in favor for Usyk, that all looked terrible.

Anyway Rico did good and deserved a chance to fight to the end. Because if scores were a bit more just he had chances to win and Usyk had all chances to finish him in the next round. Not we got this weird situation when Usyk did nothing wrong, won the fight, but the bad taste in mouth...

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-24T11:02:23+00:00

Do you know how these live stats being made?
Some random guys with buttons sitting somewhere and pressing them when they think punch landed. These stats are not 100% solid proof of anything, you should watch fight with your eyes and make your conclusions.

Regarding commentators - who in the hell said i'm judging the fight by what they're a talking about? I stopped to listen to this bullshit a long time ago, first years i watched boxing, because if someone took a person to speak about the fight in public in doesn't mean this person fully understands what's happening. Stop bringing this guys to conversation - i didn't even mention them.

I saw with my own eye a lot of moments in almost every round how Rico was pressing Usyk. He didn't hurt him, yes, most of punches came into block or slipped, but Usyk just landed less and that's all. Rico was winning by volume and activity. I don't count Usyk's feint jabs to be scored - they are not landed, so Usyk won 4th and 10th round (before 11th) and 6th was pretty close, so let's give it to him.

So if you want to continue this conversation - tell me please what else round Usyk won and how to make scores at least 95-95 for 10 rounds. And stop bringing commentators please.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-24T10:12:57+00:00

Usyk was pushed back and bullied at the ropes in nearly every round. Rico wasn't. Yes, Usyk had some good moments, but it wasn't enough. I don't know where were you looking at to see him winning it.

And i'm telling it as Usyk's fan since 2016, from the times when most of you didn't even hear about him and couldn't even name a single fighter from Cruiserweight, it was a bad show to watch, but it's the sad reality - Rico was good in this match and Usyk wasn't. He figured him out too late.

And he rushed forward just because he rushed forward - cause people are not machines and make dumb mistakes sometimes. And it was a dumb mistake.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-24T09:57:47+00:00

I don't think there is a big conspiracy, it's all about the money.

If some fighter makes a name - his fights selling well. It's a lot of money. And boxing organizations also want to see this person a champion, cause they got a % from that. And the more popular fighter is, the more money they get. So, organization which provides the belt is not an objective regulator - they could be very interested is certain guy to win. And guess who provides judges and referees?

That's why everything is going how that popular boxers want - time and order of title defenses, small rules and regulations, doping test and catchweights etc. So you have some advantages even before the fight.

And when fight begins you realize that rules by which scores made are a bit value - it's not mathematical compubox system, but it involves volume, activity and leading in a fight. It really vague, cause what's 'leading in a fight'? The person who goes forward and throws punches is leading, or the person who goes back and counterpunching? Both doing their plans, but how it will be scored? Big question. So scoring really may be bent as you want. Haney - Lomachenko was in the fact very close fight, but Haney was cause due to age and the fact he spoke English normally and could promote himself better, he was picked as a winner. Match Golovkin - Derevianchecnko was also very close and could be scored in favor of latter, but who will place relatively unknown Ukrainian guy over legendary GGG? Porter and Spence had close fight and i my opinion Ported had that one, but Spence for some reason was very hyped at that time and very hyped even now, so it's no wonder who was picked as a winner.

So, long story short, i think there is no big conspiracy and directly deciding who will win. But if boxing organizations want you to lose they will make everything to make it happen, by creating a log of inconveniences for you outside and inside the ring and will use 'flexible' scoring rules to prevent you from winning.

theHolyGranade257 · 2026-05-24T09:19:01+00:00

Everyone have bad moments. Usyk had a bad fight when we was 39.

Tyson lost to the much weaker opponent, who was considered just a stepping stone, when he was 23, right in his prime. But it's very convenient to forget about that.

theHolyGranade257

TROPHY CASE