izigame.me

I love this game even with all its faults. However this game needs a WARNING sign to all who want to try it. I will briefly mention what i love about the game then i will explain all the issues this game has in order to provide said warning label.
This game has a cult following and somewhat of a pedigree. The buggy nature of the game mixed with some interesting story and setting along with great atmosphere and weird slavic shenanigans make this a one of a kind experience, especially since nothing has come out since the last game quite like it. Yes i adore the Metro series but that series has a better story, its more focused and linear and provides better atmosphere imho, while on the other hand this series is more focused on the setting and is more like an RPG with a focus not on levels of the character but guns, armor and artifacts. So it's a more technical RPG. That is unique. Add to that an abundance of mods that provide such an experience that will give you hours and hours of replayability and challenge (think Escape from Tarkov but singleplayer).
Now for the negative aspects of the game but only Vanilla (no Mods):
As mentioned the game has A LOT of bugs. Game breaks easilly, enemies shoot at you without looking at you, reloading a save sometimes doesn't reset enemy knowledge of your location, getting spotted a mile away, they shoot you trought walls, objective markers dont dissapear, voices repeating same lines over and over again, enemies don't flinch, instadeath, clones spawn in a single spot, enemies spawn and aim at walls or at the sky until you shoot at them, they shoot at you even if there is no way they can see you..... the list goes on.
Whatever everyone is saying, NO the weapons don't deal more damage on higher difficulties towards enemies. The first weapons are inaccurate so that makes you think you are shooting blanks while you are actually missing shots. Headshots usually kill in one shot, but for some reason not always (armored enemies or just glitches).
Most quests are fetch and kill quests and don't bother doing them unless you really want to. Most of the resources (and money) are easy to come by during the later half of the game. The progression is natural from bad weapons to not knowing which one to carry since there are a lot of good ones suddenly.
The bad part of the game is the way you traverse around the map while collecting stuff and completing missions only to have to walk back the entire way just to complete it for the reward. Along the way most enemies respawn or raids occur so because of the way the semi-open world is structured you will have linear corridors you have to pass and they are almost always garded at some point by either mutants, dogs, bandits or zombified enemies.
The game shines during the middle segment but falls flat when nearing the end (last 3 missions). It becomes very linear and you have a point of no return that the game doesn't mention but some characters do in some sort of way if you pay attention. The problem is that you have to be well prepaired to even have the possibility of succeding. These last missions are VERY poorly designed and ruin what the first half of the game established. The game doesn't have a combat focus at all, that is the reason everything is so innacurate and wonky. Then the game decides to throw 30+ enemies in a single building at you just at the end of a mission... and then there is almost a constant wave of enemies until the end of the game. You will HAVE TO kill most of them to be able to pass alive. They will instakill you around corners, nade you while in cover, snipe you with a gauss rifle from a building far out of normal range (for a normal chance to hit them because of the bad accuracy) or RPG you from across the map. The enemy placement is really really bad during the last bit of the game. SAVE OFTEN and plan ahead. F6 is your best friend!
The last bad thing is the story kind of. Yes the atmosphere is good but ruined during the last bit of the game cause of the abominable combat. Same goes for the story. But it also suffers from bad explanation. You have 0 developed characters other than the main character somewhat - the guy you are playing as. So any plot twist is not really surprising. There are 7 endings 5 of which are "fake" endings and 2 are "true" (1 of which is cannon ofc, like in Metro). The 5 fake ones are not that big of a deal and make no sense until you see the requirements to get all 5. The other 2 endings are a lot better but their explanation is really bad. I understand the concept cause I read about it more but for most people it will be confusing and won't give you much fulfillment (No catharsis).

With all that said I do really like the game. Just make sure to remember this is a unique game with a lot of problems and a lot of good things. The mod support is astonishing and after trying the base game mods should be on your list to install if you found the game to be interesting but could use a bit of tweaking.