A true radioactive apocalypse 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a game focused on a single-player campaign, with intense challenges and combat, bringing stealth and resource management elements in a very advanced way, with various types of items, food, medicines, weapons, and equipment, within a breathtaking setting, with remote, devastated, and very dark scenarios. 
 

Following in the footsteps of its predecessor 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl brings a very interesting story and has a very striking historical context, in an introductory context, we control Skif, an artifact merchant who explores the Zone, now devastated by the radiation from the Chernobyl accident, aiming to control anomalies, defeat groups of soldiers and mercenaries, carry out contracts, and mainly survive, the game is very hardcore in this aspect, everything punishes you a lot, even if you have the patience to play with a lot of attention and calm. 

That said, the story unfolds in a non-linear way, leaving the player free to carry out the activities they see fit, the game has 20 areas to be explored and has a lively setting, in the sense of having a day and night ecosystem, storms, locations with high radiation levels, and scattered NPCs, being friendly or not. 

With this context, we have a purpose for our gameplay, resulting in a considerably long and intense campaign, offering good hours of entertainment and immersion. 

 

Punitive and cruel combat 

As I mentioned, the game is a delight for survival enthusiasts and for the entire "Soviet" and post-apocalyptic setting, being a direct successor to the first title S.T.A.L.K.E.R., this title, despite some flaws, has an embedded greatness, capable of bringing a true whirlwind of feelings, while the game is scary, it is also stunning, however, being honest, mere definitions do not translate the intensity of the atmosphere and combat, while we need to pay attention to the environment, we are subject to finding several enemies at once, and one thing is certain, in the blink of an eye we are dead. 

It is important to emphasize that the difficulty of the game is relative, despite having a difficulty selector, a large part of the experience is quite punitive regardless, it is possible in the first hours of play to count dozens of deaths until you get the hang of it. 

For this review, we chose the normal difficulty, an option that we believe is the standard experience, although it is not a very high difficulty, even so the challenges and especially the combat are interesting. 

It is important to emphasize that the mechanics involving anomalies and the entire radioactive atmosphere are very fun, as our character can become contaminated with it and lose life over time, all medications to reverse or alleviate the condition, in addition to all the basic combat mechanics, such as bleeding, use of medkits and bandages, as well as food and drinks. 

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe is not new in the world of games, since the first game showed up in 2007, already bringing, for the time, a very dynamic and innovative schematic, which is transmitted to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, since the recipe is basically the same, but with the maximum of innovations that the new generation of technologies allows, and in my view, this specific title is a release that aims to please and captivate the general public, despite seeming quite niche, it is actually an excellent entry point for the genre, seeking a larger audience for the universe without losing any detail of immersion and depth of the universe. 

 

A good release, but with questionable aspects 

Playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was a very immersive experience, games like this have a very great capacity to integrate you into the ecosystem, make you think and often invest endless hours, the game has fantastic art direction, stunning graphics that catch the eye, which despite being a positive point, there is a negative side that I will present next. 

We know that the game uses Unreal Engine 5 as a graphics engine, which undoubtedly does very well and with high quality, my criticism is as follows, in recent months and even years, this graphics engine has been widely used in several games, which, unfortunately, ends up leaving everyone with that taste of generic, and end up taking away a bit of the personality of the games, which could adopt a more characteristic graphic style, or explore a little more other approaches. 

The game, in general, is not easy to play, especially in mechanical terms, despite having frequent tutorials, all aspects of the game punish you a lot, since having slightly slower gameplay, it is still full of visual effects, besides the character's movement and weapon handling having a very realistic touch, which ends up making it a little more difficult. 

It is localized in several languages, has a great dubbing in general, especially if it is in Ukrainian, by far one of the greatest sources of immersion present, the voices match the characters, and the text translations were well done. 

The game's performance is a very sensitive point, it is undeniable that it is a modern game, with a demanding graphics engine and requires a medium computer so that a balance can be achieved between graphic quality and frames per second, both parameters conditioned to the use of upscaling and frame generation auxiliary tools, which, unfortunately, for most hardware is mandatory. 

 

A devastated world worth visiting 

My experience with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was very good in some aspects, such as immersion, narrative quality, graphics, and audio, but it was not so good in the aspect that I mentioned about having generic characteristics and exaggerating a bit in complexity even in lower difficulties, after all, not everyone likes to be chased by monsters and soldiers all the time. 

Anyway, the game as a whole brought me good hours of fun and frustration, with positive highlight again for the setting. 

The key mapping is very intuitive, on the keyboard and mouse and on the controller, being a complete matter of taste what should be better for the individual player's experience, the game's audio is excellent and the dubbing is a standout, overall, it is a game that I would recommend for fans of the series and for newcomers, despite the difficulty, when you get used to things flow very well. 

The game offers a good quality of life, with a complete and very minimalist interface, as well as good settings and customization options for controls, graphics, and audio. 



For this review, the game was experienced on PC, using the Xbox platform.