This sequel thrives on emergent gameplay, crafting a journey that evolves with your decisions. With four potential endings, choices can lead to unexpected and sometimes unsettling consequences. Side quests and major storylines change whether you choose to help, ignore, or betray. You might accept what has been described as a straightforward mission to retrieve an item from a cave, only to find yourself battling an invisible monster in pitch darkness. After barely making it back, you’ll think twice before trusting the next seemingly harmless request, especially if your gear or circumstances aren’t ideal. Fully uncovering the game’s narrative web requires multiple playthroughs of the roughly 35-hour main story. With so much to discover, it’s a deeply immersive experience where morality is constantly challenged and outcomes rarely align with expectations.

While STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl immerses you in a haunting adventure, it’s hard to ignore the adjacent issues that detract from the experience. Skif, your protagonist, delivers the best voice performance, though that bar is set rather low. Many NPCs suffer from wooden, hammy dialogue, mispronunciations, and awkward exchanges, clearly betraying the challenges of development. These moments add an endearing jankiness true to the game’s roots, although the overall effect can be more distracting than charming.

Anomalies in the STALKER series are signature remnants of The Zone’s instability and vary in their deadly effects. For example, electrical anomalies deliver lethal shocks and gravitational anomalies crush victims by pulling them into the air. All types are marked by subtle visual cues, such as flickering sparks or air distortions, forcing careful navigation. To detect anomalies and pass them fleetingly you can throw bolts that trigger their effects, creating a tactile sense of exploration and survival.

Enemies are as dangerous as ever, with familiar threats like mutated dogs and grotesque humans making their return. The wildlife is reactive, showcasing behaviours like pack hunting and dynamic territorial disputes between factions or creatures. You constantly get stuck in the middle of disputes while travelling, although the variety of enemies feels limited over time once you’ve faced them all.

The AI, however, is a double-edged sword. Enemies are neither clever nor adaptive and often stand out in the open or get stuck in doorways. However, their accuracy and damage output compensate for their lack of common sense. This forms a strange balance: encounters are challenging, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Still, the occasional firefight where you stealthily dismantle foes one headshot at a time perfectly channels the STALKER vibe.

Rather than levelling up through skill trees or stat boosts, Skif improves stats by equipping artifacts and upgrading equipment. Often found near anomaly clusters, artifacts provide benefits like increased gunfire resistance but often come with trade-offs, such as added radiation exposure. Rare artifacts, offering only positive effects, reward you for taking risks.

Equipment is more straightforward, with new weapons and gear to find and upgrade. At technician shops, you can spend currency from missions or trades to apply modifications that improve damage, reduce weight, or boost protection. These systems are fairly basic but they are still integral to the survival loop. They add depth to resource management and progression, encouraging exploration and adaptation to The Zone’s challenges.

Survival mechanics remain central, with radiation, hunger, and bleeding returning as key systems. Radiation is a constant hazard in hotspots around wreckage, requiring protective suits, artifacts, or countermeasures like medication or vodka. Indicators show poisoning levels, letting players react before fatal damage occurs. Hunger impacts stamina, with food items needed to restore balance. Ignoring hunger eventually results in death, though food is readily available. Bleeding from injuries causes health loss over time, requiring bandages to mend. While streamlined and easier to manage with an abundance of items across the wasteland, these mechanics keep survival forefront of gameplay.

The sound design in Heart of Chornobyl is where things get real. The ambient noise like distant growls, the ominous hum of anomalies, and the haunting winds are expertly crafted to make you feel like you’re never alone. The world is constantly alive with sound, setting a tense, unsettling tone that keeps you on edge.

Just when you’re getting lost in the atmosphere, audio bugs pop up. Gunshots occasionally fail to register, and sometimes the voices and mixing are completely off, sounding too clean or inappropriate for the space. On top of that, NPCs can get stuck in a loop of hilariously annoying dialogue. One guard repeated “Watch it!” endlessly once I passed him, and trust me, it became comical really fast.

Performance is also a mixed bag. You’ll be blown away by the sweeping landscapes and insane attention to detail, but then you’ll hit a frame rate drop in busy areas like Zalissya or a handful of crashes to the desktop that make you question your settings. Playing around with all the graphical and display options, these technical glitches still seem to be present and will knock you out of the moment. The game just doesn’t seem optimised. In saying that, these are all technical concerns I’m positive GSC Game World is likely aware of and will hopefully be rectified soon.

Despite all the above problems and my initial aversion, I find myself enjoying STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. There’s something undeniably alluring about how The Zone seems alive with danger and mystery. It has this awkward charm, a sort of rough-around-the-edges personality that somehow works in its favour, as it has for many other games that have gone on to be successful. Sure, the game stumbles hard, yet its atmosphere pulls you in like a cold fog you can’t escape.