Recent reviews by foster

Women fear me
Fish fear me
Men turn their eyes away from me as I walk
No beast dare makes a sound in my presence
I am alone on this barren earth

I DO like ze sound of zis one... It tickles mein special place

-funny german man

After a good amount of time in, well past the starting area and going into the middle of the game I can safely say I've experienced enough to provide a good enough review. As a preface, I have only played a small amount of Shadow of Chornobyl, a game I plan to revisit after I enjoy my time in Heart of Chornobyl. I do know the story for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but will not be discussing anything on it as that's for you to find on your own. This review will only be about gameplay and optimizations. This is the Deluxe edition of the game and it is being played on a Ryzen 7 7700, RTX 4060ti (16gb vram), and 32gb of ram on an SSD.


From what I've played of Shadow and Heart of Chornobyl, this game is an immense step up in terms of quality and obviously graphics. The inventory system seems to be similar and a lot of stylistic choices are still present. In terms of raw visual and auditory presentation, this game is fantastic. Running on UE5, the game looks phenomenal and the sound of The Zone is immersive and at time frightening. Having gotten to Wild Island, the sound design and world design has remained consistently drab yet incredibly breathtaking to look at. I especially like some of the anomalies that you can find and the way they are presented.

Minor gripes about this presentation would have to be the repetition of certain load screen and the death screen as I feel they just get old looking at over and over. I also feel that there could've been small variety to the various mutants as without them, every Snork and Bloodsucker looks identical. Not a big issue, but it would be nice to see some variety to the clothes or size or coloring.


Heart of Chornobyl's gameplay is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I really enjoy parts of the gunplay and I really like having to maintain your gear. It's realistic to assume that weapons will breakdown over time and you'll have to patch up your armor. However, firing 30 rounds through an AK wears it down a LOT. It's almost comical how flimsy weapons are and how fast they degrade. Especially at an early point in the game, this is punishing. Weaponry breaking means you have to pay an arm and a leg to repair it and you can't even sell it to a trader so it just sits on the ground until it despawns. I found myself relying on an AK-74n throughout pretty much the entire game so far as whenever I found a G3 or HK416, I didn't have enough ammo to use them so I was forced to default to paying an arm and a leg for the weapon I knew I had ammo for but didn't want to use.

On the topic of ammo, I found that I would become overburdened incredibly quickly while only carrying a few hundred rounds of ammo. I'm sure down the line I'll get better armor and more artifacts to help with carry weight, but early on I was pretty much stuck with relying on a single weapon along with Skif's pistol. Getting into a later part of the game, I found that a lot of the ammo I needed wasn't sold ANYWHERE. Factions like The Ward or Ex-Monolithians didn't have any 5.56 ammo and it left me unwilling to use the rifles from the Deluxe Edition that I had so far. Lastly on the topic of weapons, Skif (The protagonist) has a Makarov pistol that you cannot remove from your inventory. I suppose this is for gameplay, but it's really frustrating not being able to put it in a stash to trade it out for a USP.

As previously mentioned, there are various factions in the game that you will come across, some hostile and some friendly. For me, I found it incredibly hard to tell neutral stalkers apart from bandits. Some factions have dedicated uniforms but others seem to blend together, so the only way to tell when someone was hostile was when they eventually started shooting me. I feel that there needs to be a better way to distinguish them as the crosshair lies telling you they're friendly when they very clearly aren't. There is also a big issue with NPCs having laser-beam accuracy as well as some magical 6th sense where they can locate you from wherever and perfectly gun you down on higher difficulties while throwing grenades directly under your feet. Combat against humans boils down to either running from cover-to-cover, or bumrushing people with a shotgun and hoping only one shot will take them down.

Other than humans, you'll obviously encounter mutants, two of which I've already named. All of them are returning mutants from previous games (Flesh, Snorks, Bloodsuckers, etc). While I haven't fought every mutant, I've fought a good amount. I can say without a doubt that Bloodsuckers NEED some form of rework. They are EVERYWHERE it feels like, even in the starting area of the Lesser Zone. They have an insanely high amount of health and armor and take never to no stagger from weaponry, meaning that if you fight two or more at once, you'll most likely be stunlocked from either their roar or their pounce that knocks you over. Snorks and Flesh have the same issues too, but they feel much squishier than Bloodsuckers.


Heart of Chornobyl is NOT an optimized game. Yes, I can run it at 120fps on ultra because I'm bruteforcing it with a 4060ti and framegen, but I shouldn't have to. UE5 is horrendous with its performance so whenever you go into an area with a lot of NPCs, expect that unstable 120fps to dip to almost 70fps until you leave. It's atrocious. The amount of stutters and frame drops I've had throughout the game is so bad that I had to install a mod from Nexus in hopes to optimize it. Other various bugs or issues I've encountered come in the form of wonky animations, characters getting stuck, or characters dying and glitching halfway into the ground. Out of all the issues though, the performance is the main problem. I can deal with someone ragdolling and getting stuck in a wall. After all, there are no bugs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., just anomalies.


Lastly, this is something that I couldn't find answered ANYWHERE. The different editions promise various gear in the game and a side quest. After playing through the Lesser Zone (Starting area) you will be given a quest to track down various stashes. Each one houses a weapon or armor set from the deluxe/ultimate edition. For those worried about it being directly pay-to-win, don't worry. The weapons and armor are essentially just reskins of an existing weapon or armor set. For instance, I found a HK416 with a Monolithian skin on it in the Lesser Zone. It's identical to a normal HK416 you'll see someone using, but it has a camo pattern to match that of Monolith, same with an armor set also found in the Lesser Zone. The devs are also going to add a way to upgrade your edition, so don't worry about FOMO with the items.


All in all, I'd say Heart of Chornobyl is a great game. I got the deluxe edition for $50. I don't think an extra $20-$40 for essentially cosmetics is a good deal, but hopefully the season pass promised will provide fun new expansions. I think $60 is a very fair price for the game but if you're really worried about performance, I'd wait until the next huge patch and ask around then.

a fantastic game that i have bittersweet memories of playing with friends ill never see again.

i miss you both deeply, even though i shouldnt.

genuinely one of the worst 40k games ive played. its a bug-ridden slog with gamebreaking issues that havent been addressed even nearly a year after launch and seeing the majority of updates focusing on dlc tells me they wont be fixed any time soon.

the game mechanics are overwhelming with little explanation, the AI cheats when above normal difficulty, and the pacing is just a slog. for something designed as a D&D-esque game, it's incredibly linear with set steps for quests that i often found completely broken and unable to be completed due to some bug locking off the quest. some characters are completely and utterly useless while the blatantly OP ones were nerfed into the ground with their confusing mechanics being made either useless or even more confusing.

co-op is a mess with constant desync issues. the VAST majority of the game is watching text slowly fill a box while a PNG glows with no voice acting, meaning its a visual novel for the majority of the game with a handful of sparse encounters. this is amplified by co-op as if you ARENT the host, youre left staring and waiting on them to make choices with you having absolutely no say in it other than being able to tell them VERBALLY if youre in a call to pick an option.

ive had plenty of experience with games like this (baldurs gate 1/2/3, neverwinter, pillars of eternity to name just a few) and id say this is one of the absolute worst turn-based RPGs ive had the misfortune of playing and yet another entry to the line of awful 40k games. id reckon it best to wait for it to drop to $20 or less, or buy it on something like CD Keys/G2A instead of blowing $50 (plus another $30 on DLC that adds... classes).

wazzaaaaaaapppp

Got it for free, thanks piranha

I enjoy playing a chad Crusader clan instead of the the cringe virgin Warden clans

I've been on Terror is Reality, you know.

i like him