Chernobylite: Complete Edition Review (hotmatrixx)
Look; it's a really good game - it's close to "great" but it falls short because of a couple of silly things, which I'll go into.
But first, the good;
Story seems a little weird at first, but as soon as I swapped to Russian it was WAY better. See below.
The story line is great. You know something is off, but how it all unfolds is really well written.
Make sure you talk to your Comrades at the end of the day, every day. There are some really cool interactions, and it helps to fill the world out quite a lot. Most of it is truth, covered by the KBG, with a little bit of story Lore mixed in and it works really, really well.
Having to ADS seems a little weird at times, especially as you almost never actually use the knife; but it becomes fairly natural pretty fast... but it hurts if your ADS isn't sensitive enough and they get up close on you.
Even if you are English speaking, play on Russian with subtitles. The English Voice Actors are straight up British and it's disingenuous. Even one guy (speaks perfect Russian) we later find is Canadian, speaks with a British accent, not an Americanised one - but Tatyana - her accent is American. AND the acting is BAD. ALL OF IT. Just play on Russian.
I played on Medium; medium is WAY too easy. It felt too much like a "walking simulator" where you follow a marker, Shoot a dude, stealth a bit, follow more markers. By day 5 I had enough resources to not have to worry about them anymore, and by day 15 I had built every base item, every upgrade, every thing, with plenty of Comfort for the gang. Play on a harder difficulty. igor sounds smexy asf in Russian. he sounds 'off' as a Brit.
The game feels like it's meant to be a 'no save' system where you only save at the end of a successful mission, and that people complained so they added a save system and it DETRACTS from the game. I know it has one.
I RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT SAVE_SCUM your play through. Disable saves altogether by never using them, ever. (OK except maybe to try out the branching endings) Death is part of the game loop and if you're save scumming you'll miss one of the main mechanics of the game.
Your choices matter, yet they are reversible, later in the game you can revisit choices and change outcomes of major story points. Many dialogues are 'flavour text' where your responses don't matter but you're allowed to respond with either compassion or anger, mostly; and occasionally this will affect the outcome of other events in the game. ANYTHING that affects other outcomes can be revisited, forgotten, or changed. So don't be afraid of making the wrong choices. Make your choices and see how it would play out - it's easy to change it back later.
If one of your companions gets captured, you have to go and 'die' to one of the NAS soldiers so taht you can get in and break your buddy out. The game doesn't explain this. If no one needs saving, and you die... you can go back and change some actions. The game doesn't explain this, either.
I kinda want to do another play through on the Hardest difficulty, but at the same time I realise what a commitment that's going to mean.
The maps do feel small, but they also feel under-utiliised, and don't really 'stand out' - POI's don't really feel like they 'pop' or make maps memorable.
Maps feel disconnected from each other (unlike STALKER where you 'felt' the connection by travelling to the roadway that joined them)