Recent reviews by Spayker

Played almost 5 hours without any crash. My spec: RTX 4070, i9-12900KS. Average fps with DLS and max graphic settings: 100-150.

I passed prologue and first arc with quest to Sphere complex. What I like:
1) Performance: have not faced any crash yet and fps micro, macro drops for now. Have no clue what some people were talking about, but game feels smoothly with max settings.
2) taking into consideration I've been playing Stalker from 2007, including mods (AMK, Lost Alpha, Gunslinger, Laee, Anomaly, CaC etc), atmosphere here looks even better because of graphic improvements, level design mostly.
3) finally entire map without level loading: world feels smooth and organic with lot of unique places, points of interest
4) cut scenes looks not bad
5) main quest line does not look boring (at least for now). Dialogs are fine too: I did not skip them in most cases.
6) New mutants since first trilogy: I've not met all of them obviously, but I liked rat's swarm (was cut in first Stalker), tushkan swarms etc.

What I feel neutral regarding the game:
1) music sounds not good and nod bad. I'd like to hear more compositions, tracks during walking and combat situations
2) weather looks fine in most cases, but I found odd often storm weather conditions. Some fog, cloudy and sunny "modes" could bring more variety.
3) NPC behavior near camps: they act mostly natural, but I found odd a bit they change their sits too often
4) Some gameplay mechanic simplifications. I know that creators followed traditional aspects of original trilogy, but inability to change batteries in head light, anomaly detectors, artifact sensors looks odd for me. Or maybe I over played mods, where it was implemented. Perhaps, mods and/or DLCs will handle this aspect.

What I've found negative or things to be polished aditionally:
1) NPCs in combat do strange things. Few times I found them staying in one place and doing nothing. It reminds some old mods from first Stalker where same problem appeared many times.
2) Too frequent change of day-night cycle. I'd propose to make it a bit longer (1.5x, 2x or make it configurable in game settings)
3) RTX shadow part works strange time by time. It relates to situations when I enter some building during daylight and I see literally nothing inside because of completeness darkness. I believe it should work like in real life, when some time is required for eyes to start seeing things inside a room.

Summing up: the product looks more ready than in opposite way. I agree it requires additional attention of devs to solve mentioned issues, but the game looks playable.

PS: 20 years were needed to make Stalker idea with one big map, alife simulation real. I'm glad it has become real finally. Next step will do mods, by providing another vision on gameplay mechanics with different extensions and balances.

PSS: I'll update review in case of new details, facts. For now: good hunting, Stalkers!

Guess, that's my first negative review on DLC for Total War Warhammer franchise. It looks inlogical in few aspects at least:
1) mentioned legendary lords do not have direct bond comparing to previous DLCs where some short story was given to explain conflict between characters
2) Start locations for new Kislev's legendary lord looks quite odd, if we take into consideration her lore. Can be easily figured out fact about her interest of Kislev's protection. Why the heck does she fight against dark elves in Naggaroth!?
3) low quantity of additional units for three affected races. I was thinking that 1-2 additional regiments could make situation with DLC much better.

Feels great: new mechanics, lords, heroes, army roster looks intriguing. New battle maps, re-worked campaign map in area of chaos dwarfes faction. FPS looks stable on high settings for now.

Just started playing and already checked performance. Having PC config unchanged (1080 GTX, i7 7700K) and used for WH2 previously, third part looks almost the same in terms of FPS quantity in campaign & battle modes. Benchmark shows over 50 fps in both modes with high graphic setup.

Perhaps some fps drops will be noticed in middle/late game stage...

PS: have new nvidia drivers installed.

Playing since 2013. Only recently got it installed via Steam. Have 7 era of Soviet, Germany, USA, British tank ladder. Game looks pathetic:
1) no promised, since beta, games with naval, land and air vehicles
2) inability to earn enough money for next ladder vehicles having high tier vessels
3) pay to win system or you will never see high tier planes, choppers, tanks etc.
4) no variety of game modes: jesus still 3 points to be captured since 2013...
5) +1 tier rank in each game so be ready to face some armored monster against your tank park
6) bad implementation of damage system: still you can get ricochets in weak points of enemy vehicles from closest distances.

PS: fun can be taken on low tiers only, then quit.

Poor quality of multiplayer: could not join the game after ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ first missions where I could not even pass prelude cut scenes. No ability to run game in full screen even after I personally have selected it in video settings. Could not join the game of my friend even I passed couple stupid missions in single player.

Game's intros are impossible to pass for getting ingame menu in 21-st of century....

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ uplay overlay asked me to register in their network even in cases when I have established friendship with my fellow in steam network.

Video settings can't save my changes at all even after the game was restarted.

Uplay connect stays on my PC in cases when you want uninstall the game for unknown reasons.

Lord, bless me to not buy uplay games ever with such level of support...

Played 15 hours without pauses (bought main game + DLC). Being a not big fan of BT universe (played MechWarrior 3&4, MechCommander 2 and MWO sometime ago), the game left mostly positive impression on me.

What I like in it:
1) cool music in battles and more-less OK soundtracks in menu
2) impressive battles. Invasion mode from DLC can bring you pictures in middle/late games with > 15 mechs , land armor, turrets, artillery installation and air vessels simultaneously. Scale of battles help keeping interest to fight again and again
3) nice optimization: having 1070 GTX and max graphic settings I have not noticed any FPS drops
4) almost full destruction of environment, except mountains and really huge civil structures
5) nice customization of mechs.
6) spawn of enemy forces look ok: they do not spawn behind your back
7) big variety of maps to play on
8) no game crushes, or serious UI bugs spotted after 15 hours of active gaming

What I would like to see improved:
1) universe environment: now it looks more static in terms of battle zones. They do not change after some time or maybe I have not noticed it yet. Borders of great houses stay the same. I would like to see more consequences after my actions in missions in more global scale.
2) more hints in mech workshop for equipment that I want to buy from market
3) more types of land and air armor vessels. Maybe some planes :)
4) more commands for friendly AI mechs in battle
5) better AI behavior since they can stuck (happened couple times with my AI bots)

Summing up all above, the game was focused on mech controlling on battlefields of Battletech. Personally I do not need any deep story line here since destructive environment epic fights in middle and late games give me everything I need from "simulator" of battle mech.

PS: with mods and probable clan DLC the game will show all its beauty potentially, at least I want to believe in it