Chernobylite: Complete Edition Review (debarshi)
Chernobylite is a survival game with crafting elements set in a sci-fi alternative Chernobyl exclusion zone. The Ukrainian devs have used 3D-scanning to painstakingly re-create Chernobyl exclusion zone in photorealistic detail.
What I liked
The overall region is divided into smaller (~500 sq m) maps, only one of which may be explored in one in-game day. Every in-game day, you are expected to visit one of these regions to complete missions and/or collect crafting supplies and food rations. You also assign your companions to visit regions and carry out basic tasks, collect supplies, or thin out enemies for you before you go there yourself for a story mission. The story campaign is designed such that it takes 20-30 in-game days to complete it, during which you will visit each region 4-5 times. This would make the maps repetitive very quickly if it were not for repositioned resources and enemy and merchant spawn points, changing weather and environmental states between runs. Overall, I found this more enjoyable than the average AAA game's massive but lifeless maps.
There are five companions you can recruit. In order to keep them loyal and prevent them from deserting you need to follow their advice on plot relevant decisions. The characters' back-stories and personalities are such that for any decision, two of them will disagree. And whoever you chose not to side with, will show a drop in their "relationship" status. While this makes every decision tactical, it stops you from taking the choice you personally feel is right. The game makes up for this by allowing you to change any choice you made throughout the game by spending "Chernobylite", letting you find out consequences of all possible actions without replaying entire sections.
There is a "VR Inception" game-within-the-game where you have to fight 15 randomised groups of enemies in small arenas (including three bosses from "Monster Hunt side missions") to get a chance to improve relations with one of your companions. This gamemode follows a rouge-lite formula.
All major choices have consequences, often very unexpected ones.
There are random encounters in the form of some creepy dolls. They are so varied and unique, you never know what to expect.
Base customisation and weapon modification have significant variety and depth.
The final mission is a "heist" with some Mass Effect meets Oceans Eleven kind of vibes: assigning roles to companions, making tactical choices, etc. I liked this very much, but I wish there was more than one mission of this type.
There is a "tour around the zone" mode that lets you explore the recreation of the exclusion zone without enemies, to see photographs and converse with "scientist" NPCs talking about the actual history and consequences of the Chernobyl incident.
There is also a free play mode that lets you visit any region with custom gear and events.
The game is surprisingly well-optimised, with graphics turned low it ran on my potato system just fine.
You can set difficulty for combat, survival and management separately.
The "monster" enemies can teleport, making combat challenging in a fun way. Also, there is a "timed" boss who shows up if you take too long in a level, there are ways to delay his appearance if you want. His appearance is telegraphed with a brewing storm, which is cool. However, he would often teleport right in front of you giving you no opportunity to use stealth.
What I did not like
The main plot seemed unnecessarily convoluted to me. The side-characters had simpler and yet interesting back-stories, of which we get to learn very little through some conversations.
The stealth is simple but realistic, mainly involving crouching behind cover or bushes. But I noticed that enemies' hearing detection radius does not account for height. I would be running around two stories up, but an enemy on the ground outside would get alerted.
Every time you kill a person, the main character takes psychological damage. Which can be cured with some consumables like "calming salts" and vodka (lol wut?). So if you decide against stealth, you would have to pack vodka along with ammo.
Manual save points don't work very well. Enemies can sometimes respawn after reloading (once saw them standing on top of their own corpse).
The merchant NPCs have limited dialogue options. They introduce themselves all over again every time you choose to choose to "chat" with them. At one point I straight up robbed a merchant and he sounded understandably angry. But the next day he was back to his jolly self.
Some monsters cannot leave the buildings they spawn inside, so you could lure them to the door and kill them like sitting ducks.
Crafting traps is not possible while you in combat. Also traps once crafted cannot be moved. Further, crafting creates noise, so you cannot do it too close to an unaware enemy without alerting them. All these significantly reduce traps' usefulness. The available recourse is to craft a noisemaker trap to attract the enemy to your damaging trap (i.e. twice the crafting) or noting the patrol route and crafting trap on it. The ability to pre-craft traps and deploy them where needed would have fixed this issue.
At 2 instances during my ~40 hour playtime, the game glitched out and I had to reload an older save or restart the mission. Once the monster I was supposed to hunt did not spawn, the other times the game refused to believe that I am no longer in combat (there is a timer for it, and it just stopped counting down). That is still okay, but I had 2 crashes within a span of 2 hours of playing the VR inception mode.