Reviews - AncientRaig

Honestly, except for one small thing, this mod is everything I want in a Stalker mod. It's really great fun to play a Loner and feel that "working your way from the bottom to the top" life that lore loners have to go through. Getting your first PoS sunrise suit feels like such an accomplishment, even though it sucks in all reality. I like the new mutants, and the massive levels. My only, only complaint is the AI. It's too smart, and it's the only thing keeping me from really playing the mod more. It's impossible to do much against the sniper-like AI with a shotgun in most cases. Even with a scoped AK, I, while crouched, have to burst half a clip into a trenchcoat wearing bandit from 100ish meters, adjusting my aim each time I fire, while he's unloading on full auto into my head and snapping my camera around even worse, or even knocking my rifle out of my hands and forcing me to spend 30 seconds trying to find it in the somewhat glitchy maps and grass so dense it makes the rainforest look like a baseball park, killing me in a hit or two through my NBC suit(AO mod) because his rounds somehow always find my head even though he's firing a 15-20 round burst while walking. I had a military soldier shoot me through a hill while I was trying to leave the Cordon village, and by the time I realized he was on the other side of the hill and went over to find him, he killed me because he can absorb 20 rounds from an AK to the chest.

My only other complaint, which is specifically for the Loners, is that Loners don't have a technician, so you can't repair or upgrade your stuff at all, so you'll be stuck with your Sunrise suit, or NBC suit, or whatever you can afford basically being useless and your rifle being extremely inaccurate because you can't upgrade them, and you'll be spending thousands of rubles that you could be spending on better gear on the repair kits necessary to maintain the most basic of gear.

Probably the best gaming experience I've had in a long time. The realism really is top level, with the only real combat problem being mutants still being pretty much immune to non-shotgun weaponry. That and blind dogs are a little glitchy, but that's more a game issue than the mod issue. The new weapons are great, the damage is awesome, and the recoil is usually manageable if you upgrade and control your fire rate, though it would be nice if it was lower to fall more in line with realism. The new armors also make the game feel fresh, though I wish they were available earlier. For example, by the time the Mercenary Suit is available to buy, you probably already have something better, or the money to buy something like the Radiation Suit or the NBC suit. And, tangent, on the topic of the NBC suit, the model really should be changed so that in first person you don't have any skin showing, like so: Media.moddb.com. Realistically, having open area like that would compromise the NBC suit, making it kinda useless. Other than those minor complaints, the mod is 10/10. Gameplay is solid, textures are top notch, issues are small, and the difficulty is without a doubt in the spirit of the STALKER games. This mod is the reason I started playing STALKER again.

The mod is great. I love the more realistic feel of the weapons, the power and weight behind each round you fire. No longer is coming up against a military patrol something to be utterly feared, because by the time you leave the swamps you'll have plenty of medical supplies and a large pool of ammo for an SKS, which can drop them in a few rounds. I love the new care you have to spend in going into engagements, even with mutants, which are much more deadly now. The early part of the swamps is rather heart-pounding if the trader doesn't spawn with a Mosin-Nagant, and if you decide to head into the swamps without stocking up on some ammo in the hopes of finding one, you're going to have a VERY bad time. The mod manages to capture the difficulty of playing STALKER, making weapons more accurate but also increasing damage considerably, so it pays to be careful. However, there are some issues that, while not making the mod worse, do degrade some of the difficulty it tries to build. It's a little too easy to get the 7.62x39mm ammo. Each main bandit camp that Clear Sky takes during the tutorial to faction warfare has a cache of ammo that has about 210 7.62x39mm rounds, and it's pretty easy to acquire an SKS from either giving a live Clear Sky stalker a shotgun and some ammo, or looting one from the inevitable dead. I left the swamps with an SKS, over 800 rounds of 7.62mm ammo, a semi-auto AK, and a PP-19 Bizon. Note that I didn't put in any of the optional "up-gearing" for the renegades, this is just through looking Clear Sky dead and the ammo dumps found in renegade bases. And, by looting the dead renegades of everything on their bodies, I had over 20,000 RU and was able to buy the top-end Clear Sky suit. By the time I finished the first mission for Sidorovich, I had a fully upgraded AKS-74U, and could've probably fully upgraded either an AK-74 or an AK-74M, or any other weapon I found. Medical supplies are pretty easy to find, and I currently have about 40 bandages and 30 standard medkits, none of which I've purchased. However, these issues aren't too glaring, and if looked at in a positive way, can at least make you appreciate the weapons more, which is really what the mod is about. Also, carrying around 800 rounds for one gun tends to leave you a little over-encumbered. The guns are amazing, they recoil realistically and the bullets go where you want them to. And they look amazing, with the updated textures and ejector ports on the right side of the gun. The level of detail gone into, with new reload animations and even drawing/holstering animations for some weapons, easily makes up for any flaws. And even coming out of a fight with a large sum of cash makes sense. If you go sell five good-quality AK-74s to a trader, you should be getting a solid paycheck. Taken as a whole, the mod is easily one of the better mods out there, much better than the STALKER Complete mods, with the exception of the blood clotting in Complete. If that was added in so that you didn't have to use a bandage every time you got grazed, Complete would have nothing on it. Unless you're a cheater who wants to use the Wish Granter. But you're not welcome, so get out of here stalker.