SPOILERS FOR ENDING If you've beaten the game feel free to come in and read, otherwise kick rocks until you've made it to the ending so you don't ruin the experience for yourself!
Alright so I finally got around to heading off to the ending earlier this evening and man I gotta put some words down here because the whole fucking vibe compared to ITR 1 is just.....off....
We will be breaking things down into categories, story, atmosphere, weapons, loot, home base, Lauri, UNPSC, and the enemies.
First off lets start with weapons.
The weapon choice is pretty decent, having been spoiled with chucksmods and frenzyc from ITR 1 it felt pretty lacking because even with the modularity system choices never felt impactful enough to warrant other setups despite just having A weapon. Sidearms having no modularity at all kills the vibe beceause one spritz of wd40 and a swipe of a brush and BAM 100% no probsies bruh, but your primary weapon needs several pieces to be cleaned. These pieces don't seem to individually wear down and break on their own either. This is a missed opportunity. Sidearm modularity should be added so we can have different barrels, triggers, and accessories can be added without just buying it and putting the accessory right on. At least the weapon mod terminal in ITR 1 was useful. It made no difference to have a short barrel versus a long one, even clearing rooms in Pachorsk was not an issue with a long barrel G3. Weapon mod choices needs drastically expanded upon with consequences for your choices. Short barrels should NOT be able to cross map snipe, no hate to Synth, but nobody should be sniping with a handgun, small calibers should drop off or disappear after a set distance.
Loot.
Tons of it, but half of it is pointless. Sure there is tons of stuff around you, but 90% of it is monetarily worthless. You only need to search for ash clusters, and old weapon parts, tbh didn't hardly find artifacts to turn in at all, shitloads of altered items, sure, but man having a bag full of fuses, books, and clocks is somehow better than just basic artifacts. If only there was more missions that required certain altered items versus go here and find this altered floating sopa bar....or the rubix cube.... I went the entire game across 100+ hours and never one found enough parts to put together any 1 single weapon. I'd find tons of parts for other random ones, and the ones I did find repeatedly so there is definitely a weighted feel the them. I hope this changes. They should have taken inspiration from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mod from ITR 1 and put weapon parts on a free for all list, where ANY part for ANY weapon can spawn, not just weighted-priority on shitty ones to drop the most. Make it WORTH it go out after tide and specifically scour for parts.
Home base.
Honestly, I wish there were more armor stands and backpack mounts, or ones by the 4 workbenches. Being able to put weapon parts, brushes, oil, and such on the back wall of the benches was amazing, thank you. Having a place to put the paint pattern things would be nice. Like a nice rack just for them. The shower in ITR 1 was a cool touch, in ITR 2 it feels weird. It would be nice if there was a way to activate a chair or bench to sit down at, to simulate sitting down to eat beef chunks, or take apart your weapon or sit across from your coop friend and shoot the breeze. The music in the store is obnoxiously up beat. The whole vibe of the place is too sterile and surgical, really wish it would have been made more rustic? Darker tones, darker vibe, and more in tune with the vibe of the radius versus whatever the fuck the game has become now. Like ammo boxes are all magically a color now and look like some shit out of Marathon or Fortnite.
Atmosphere.
Man you had it in spades this time around. Amazing job. Peninsula sort of sucks lets be honest here, just a tiny shit map that should have only been in like, the training stuff with the real first zone being somewhere large like Forest. Forest though, man, the vibes are real. It feels good, it looks pretty decent, and it plays well. But there are two notable winners here. Pachorsk outskirts and the final zone, whatever you want to call it, the center maybe? Pachorsk Outskirts is AMAZING. With Sky Diddy III roaming around ruining your day/night at random, the ability to have long range engagements, and at night it plain ass being pitch black with what sounds like predator clicks? Perfect. And the block houses give a tiny urban warfare feel that desperately needs expanded upon. We seriously need a few more maps with some extreme urban warfare options, I'd even say use some generative stuff to make a radius warehouse that any random red portal door has a chance to send you that excludes you from tide, you fight through what feels like endless urban indoor combat with opportunities for specialized this place only loot if you reach the end, be it highly unique and specialized weapons and parts, or armor accessories. If you die inside, it sends you back out the original red door portal as though nothing happened but you lose whatever loot you got inside (so ironman deathless runs aren't ruined by this). The ending area with the gold orb from the 1990s movie Sphere.....come on....The visual and sound design here are gold tier literally. I was so amazed by the look ,the feel, the sound that I stood around nearly in awe at what I was experiencing.
Lauri.
Do we really need this guy? Some random ass ghost dude who claims to be our old friend and really wants us to get to the center so "we" can escape but then wants me to go alone and or gets survivors guilt if I send him off to real life? This guy either needs seriously fleshed out with missions of his own, with actual consequences, or get rid of him entirely.
Enemies.
Cool setup, police mimics with the worlds most accurate PM Makarov. Shotgun mimics. Storm troopers with SMG's. You got AKM mimics, you got dudes wearing serious fucking walking tank like armor that still die in 4 headshots, you got sniper mimics who aren't that dangerous anymore, and then the spec ops ones at the end with NVG's on that don't even NVG you in the dark. Their weapons though will burn you in an instant. RIP deathless run to that guy in the outskirts behind the wall by the flower area. TBH I'd glad we don't have that stupid armor shit from ITR 1. The fragments are insanely annoying, some die instantly, others seem to soak up rounds like an APC. I wish all the ash statues we find and break spawned fragments at times. Like a good 25% chance to accidentally summon a fragment to your location because you bumped an ash statue, including the in game paper talking about a mimic explorer one that has a super chance to pop out of a explorer ash statue when taking the weapon off them.
UNPSC.
Man talk about a drag. A real stick in the mud. Katja is back and she is an intern now. Great. The whole video call thing and whatever you want to call our story aside, she seems so fucking naive to the implications of the experiments. And speaking of experiments, why are WE the experiment for the zone, but we work FOR the UNPSC? Shouldn't we be UNPSC agents and make the choice in game to do things for both entities with consequences for both? It really felt the entire time like the UNPSC was just a side addon at this rate. All they cared about was shitty little trinkets, and collecting samples/placing tripids/throwing sensors. I hope this changes in the future.
Alright....Story.
The story......Talk about blueballs of blue balleage. It started off so good, sequel to ITR 1, the lone explorer, now we got a weird ghost buddie, and a side chick at UNPSC who is Katja's new vessel after we freed her from the original radius. The weird ass ultra sterile vibes of the UNPSC area kills it for me. It feels too colorful, too bright, and too......new. Vanno felt better in the aspect of we threw together stuff that didn't disappear with the tide, and home base now feels like a fucking pre lobby to a battle royale game right? Combine that with a story that starts to fall apart in forest and further inside outskirts and we got a recipe for some fresh wtf-ium. I don't want a ghost buddy. I never asked for a ghost guide dude. I don't need to dap up some rando just to walk through the fog. I shouldn't need to stranger things in between to get between zones, those inbetween areas should be the DEFACTO way to travel between major zones, with the inbetween stuff being generatively built every tide so that they change CONSTANTLY giving hard the radius always changes vibe. Lighting some fucking lamps that serve no purpose after we leave the area is such a joykill. The ending being a super generic save them, save yourself, give power to the evil entity that portrays itself as good, and the secret 4th option, all are so shallow it really kills it. No consequences. No major differences. Choosing Lauri should remove him entirely when you return. He escaped. Choosing the UNPSC should give you the damn seclevel 7 and do something with the door. Choosing yourself should do something else. The endings should have been videos or still shots, not statues and some walking.
I know it's only 1.0 and things are subject to change, but man. The order of magnitude of this level of disappointment is immeasurable. When they added the voiced UNPSC person, Lauri, and changed the vibes to bright colors and other stuff, it sorta lost the ambiance of the first game and it became a game that was inspired by ITR 1 rather than a sequel.
Here's hoping they add more maps. Here's hoping they add in tons more weapons. Here is hoping they make the walkie talkies our way of talking to the UNPSC, not a giant 55" tv.