S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cost of Hope

I really liked base game despite its flaws. This DLC however is way too frustrating to be an enjoyable experience. It's more of the base game (which is good enough for me), but with horrible, obnoxious level design. 90% of the gameplay is figuring out how to get somewhere, because every area is covered by some fence or there is a huge building with one tiny small entrance and you have to circle arround it for few minutes to find it. This gets even worse in the final location where the flare anomaly is. In a base game anomalies were really cool, still somewhat dangerous, but not frustrating. Here you have anomally with few hundred meters range that kills you in few seconds if you don't keep hiding behind some wall every few seconds and a lot of times there is just nothing to hide behind. The anomaly itself would be a cool idea, if the range was relatively small, but few hundered meters? It just makes the gameplay and exploration miserable. Terrible, terrible design choice.

This DLC is not that bad, also big W for better graphics.

good expansion/story +duty gang rise

дуже атмосферне DLC яке добавило багато знайомих персонажів. Дякую GCS, Слава Україні!

This DLC is masterpiece 8.3/10! The story is great, I don't have anything bad to say, Mavka and Zulu are incredibly well written and have good chemistry between each other and with the player. Story have around 20+hrs. New locations have lot of interesting places and the atmosphere is incredible, I was scared what will jump on me behind every corner, and the bubble location had me doubting my senses. There is also some side quests included not just the main story, side quests are good and have some idea not your typical "go kill, come back". This DLC is 100% worth the full price!

First time ever I post a review purely because I do hope a lost soul won't do the same mistake that I did As much as at first I wanted to write a negative review, like a full on rant on how this DLC is complete crap, I think now it's "Ok", however not worth it's price of like 30 USD, for a summary go full down. Maybe starting without the DLC itself but the update 2.0, I know this is a review for the DLC and not the game itself but the 2.0 update was not a 2.0 update, more like an 1.X update (X being a number u wanted to pick), it's just an engine update and some vegetation changes, wow, huge. Now, the DLC itself, even BEFORE buying it i've heard comparisons to the DLC "Phantom Liberty" from Cyberpunk 2077, which honestly, giving credit to their creators, was a EXPANSION and NOT a DLC, and this is picky but the first mission of the DLC Ever being called "Terra Incognita", like c'mon, i've never seen any other game have a quest like this and i'm either unexperienced or cyberpunk did it first AND OK it's just a quest name, but also the DLC was bundled with a "HUGE" overhyped 2.0 update and guess what? The DLC has an option to SKIP the main campaign, and I don't know if this is a common practice for DLC's now but... Guess what other game did that? Yeah, Cyberpunk. As much as the quality of enviroments and buildings are still there, it's not as big and expansive of that of Phantom Liberty, which is ALSO 30 USD and gives you tons more content and things to wander and look around at. Other thing is that your Decisions beyond the main story point (Which gives you an option A or B) there is not much consequence of choice.... or ANY choice at all, unlike in Phantom Liberty, where the Choice is made later on and the motivations of characters is clearly shown, but here? As a Player that NEVER played any Stalker game, I didn't know which side to choose because neither character really tried to convince me (nor did I have any proper prior knowledge of those 2 factions) or even tell me about their complete ideologies or even just simply "Talk" with me, it was always a fetch quest, or at least sure did feel like it. What ultimately led me to picking Freedom is because of Zulu's atitude and snarky comment at me trying to be neutral lmao And also, despite the DOZENS OF HOURS promised by the developers (I Think, i wouldn't bet my life on it), if you start the DLC from the earliest point possible, and played the DLC till the end, it'd take ~15 hours (Took me around that time, alongside a few side quests from the DLC and none from the base game) And well, ~4-5 hours were taken up by the main story progression that is NECESSARY to unlock further of the DLC... which is not a good look... Dozens of hours? More like a pair of hands of hours or something idk, disappointing The narrative of the story also didn't really make me feel any sympathy for any of the characters??? Like, ANY, i didn't feel a connection nor even knew them, at the end of the DLC I still didn't see Mavka or Zulu as anyone close or trustworthy... and voice acting was sometimes even worse than the base game characters (Like Dalin) because they were either forcing too much accent (Or doing it too much) or just everything felt forced And last side note: the side quests during AND after the DLC were more fun and interesting than the main story, now a little spoiler but: WHY DID A SIDE QUEST GET THE TERRITORIAL THING WHERE U HAD TO TAKE OVER OUTPOSTS????? WHY NOT PUT IT IN THE MAIN DLC AND MAKE IT A THING UH AVE TO MAINTAIN FOR REPLAYABILITY????? such a ♥♥♥♥ up for a cool, nice thing ngl To sum up (Spoiler free of the story, but might ruin the fun): Quality is OK, Story is OK but side quests are better, Content wise it's BAD it's DRY (~10 hours of gameplay with the main story of DLC and DLC side quests), It's not as good as people say (Overhyped), nitpick is that voice acting was poor and there was little to no choice in this DLC, and it ultimately impacted nothing afaik Performance wise (FPS) was pretty good btw At 30 USD? Hell no, I regret it. At 25 USD? Maybe, sure, if I was bored. At 20 USD? A Fair price this DLC should have been released at or sold at the nearest sale. Sorry for lack of proper grammar or punctuation as well as the thing being all over the place

나는 스토커를 하려고 돈을 썼는데 열어보니 파쿠르 길찾기 게임이었다. 스토커 특유의 맛이 사라진 건 아닌데, 억지로 유행하는 걸 다 가져다 붙여버렸다. 정말 맛있는 피자에 두쫀쿠 토핑을 올려서 억지로 같이 먹게 만들었다. 재미가 없는 건 아닌데 스토커의 색이 아닌 것을 메인 퀘스트에 집어넣어서 도대체 뭘 만들고 싶었는지 알 수가 없게 해버렸다. 아무리 1과 2의 시간 차가 거의 20년이라지만 2의 제작진들은 아무래도 스토커 본연의 특징에 대한 이해가 부족한 게 아닐까.