Reviews - VZ58

Blueprint for all stalker mods

A good story with good atmosphere, the only problem it really has is the lack of content about it on YouTube etc.

A really fun experience for anyone who wants a mod that's little closer to the vanilla games.

Just remember, it's not perfect, it's S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Absolutely horrendous mod.

The worst installation process I've ever seen in a Stalker mod.

A large amount of the changes make 0 sense, such as moving the minimap to the bottom left corner and making the health and stamina bars even smaller than they were in vanilla.

Also the flashlight just makes everything white.

I only played it for 5 minutes and it was more than enough to convince me that this is the worst mod I have ever played, period.

If you want to play Clear Sky just play vanilla, because (I never thought I would say this.) this is honestly worse than the 1.0 version of Clear Sky.

The best way to re-experience SoC. This mod is basically what the Complete mod wanted to be but never could.

Bugs still exist but at least the creator doesn't claim that it fixes everything.

I would be really interested in a Clear Sky version of this mod.

9/10

Read this before you read the review:
In this review I am talking about the „vanilla“ Anomaly, that means no addons or altering the config files, I know that some of the issues I am stating here can be fixed with addons. I will also not spoil the main storyline.

Pretty fun experience, but it’s definitely not as perfect as a lot of people say it is.

The graphics quality is phenomenal for a fan made mod and is definitely a huge step-up from the original games and thanks to the new 64 bit engine it is also way more stable than the vanilla games, I've only experienced crashes when I had like 30+ addons and even then it was more stable than vanilla.

The gameplay is pretty similar to the vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games with most missions being either fetch or kill quests.

The gunplay is way better than vanilla, although there are still moments when an enemy soaks up way too much damage, in my playthroughs it has been more of an occasional annoyance than a permanent one. Despite the buff to all weapons the pistols and sub-machine guns really get the short end of the stick here. Outside of areas like Cordon, Swamps or Garbage they are pretty bad because they have low penetration, or the ammo is really obscure and hard to find.

There is almost no reason to carry a pistol instead of a shotgun or a rifle because the weight you save is negligible especially when you get upgrades and attachments for your suit.

One of the things I dislike are the artifacts, the system of containers is kinda interesting and I like it but the artifacts themselves are just really underpowered. Maybe except the high-end ones they are not worth using over the various other more useful attachments like camelbaks or titanium grids.

Food and hunger are reworked here with new mechanics like thirst and sleep deprivation. The only problem here is that clean and healthy food is very cheap and easy to find so the cooking mechanic is sadly kinda useless.

And now we get to the things I absolutely hate, the outfit and weapon repair system.

It’s just so bad I don’t even know where to start. So, basically the repair system works like this: Every outfit and weapon has a set of components that degrade over time and use. To repair an outfit or a weapon you need to swap out the damaged components for new and clean ones. You get components from disassembling outfits and weapons you find on dead bodies. Since the items on dead bodies are almost always at like 20% condition the components from these items need to be repaired with special items you can find or buy from mechanics. Once you have all the components you need you have to buy a fixing kit that works for the type of outfit or weapon you want to repair. Then you need to find a work bench and then you can finally repair your thing. Simple right?
I mean you can still just give it to a mechanic but the prices are incredibly high and even if you repair it yourself it’s cheaper and faster to just buy a new suit/gun 99% of the time. For example let’s say you have found a shotgun you really want so you get all the parts you repair them with files and ramrods, you buy a fixing kit and all of it cost you about 30 000 RU + the time you spent finding and fixing the parts and then you go to a trader to buy some ammo for it and you find out that he’s selling the exact same gun at 100% condition for 25k... FUN

Then there’s this absolute meme called the crafting system.
Do you need binoculars? Well, you can either buy them from literally every trader(excluding the ones who only sell food like Barman) for around 2000 RU or you can spend hours to find some 6 random items that cannot be bought and somehow get your hands on 4 collimators that only like 3 factions sell IF you have a high goodwill with them, oh and they cost about 3000 RU each and there is always only one in stock so you have to wait at least 12 in-game hours to buy more. Once you have all of that you can finally craft your binoculars ohh wait except you can’t craft them without tools and those can only be found in stashes which are completely random.

Random stuff that I didn’t categorize because I’m lazy:

Red forest still sucks(What a surprise).
Most of the ‚‚new‘‘ areas like Darkscape and Meadow are empty wastelands with nothing to do.
Grenade launchers actually work like they should instead of that CoP bull****.
The main storyline is kinda meh. Especially bad are the parts where you have to escort a braindead AI.

Conclusion:
Despite the amount of salt in the last 2 paragraphs I had a fantastic time playing this mod and I would definitely recommend it to any stalker fan(a person who can look past the **** and enjoy the good bits) but I would advise against playing this before the vanilla games.

7,5/10