S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

I came into this game based on a recommendation from a friend who is really into the Stalker game lore and he warned me that it can be a hardcore survival game if you want it to be. While I enjoy realism in a game Stalker 2 can get very difficult to manage if you play it in any difficulty above normal not mention play it vanilla. At least to me. The game has many many good attributes and man it's fun once you get past the first 1-1.5 hours of the beginning parts of the game. It also has a few things about it that I found very annoying like not being able to vault over certain terrain obstructions, walls and fences, or the fact that you get hungry way too often or when you take a sip of an energy drink and find yourself immediately starving. Especially the part where fast travel is super limited so you will have to leg it for about 80% of the game. All of these things are easily fixed with mods which I highly encourage doing because I found myself having way more fun once I added a few quality of life mods. Gunplay in this game is excellent and customization feels like a reward since weapon parts and mods are not easily found and not easy to unlock in one visit to the gunsmith. As soon as you feel like you're rich, half or more of your currency will be gone when you mod your armor and weapons. If you want to be kitted out to the max, you need to grind and earn money, of which there are many side missions to do from various characters in the game. My 50+ hour playthrough was literally bug and glitch free and it's a well optimized game. Graphics are really good as well. I was able to max it out on DLAA and no FG and get about 80-100fps on average and it looks amazing on an OLED. I typically don't play dark and gloomy games but Stalker 2 changed that for me. I really enjoyed the last 10 or so hours of the game too. Pripyat was cool to explore. I highly advise you watch a few lore videos on the Stalker series because I really enjoyed the story in this game and found myself wanting to find out more about it. If you like shooters with a mix of survival set in a semi apocalyptic Eastern European environment, this game is for you!