STALCRAFT

 PC
  • Publisher: EXBO
  • Release Date: Dec 9, 2022
User Score
7.6

Generally favorable reviews- based on 34 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 34
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 34
  3. Negative: 2 out of 34

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  1. ayuwooh
    Apr 16, 2023
    6
    The potential for Stalcraft is enormous, but unfortunately, the game feels like a walking simulator at times. The quests are boring and lackluster, often requiring you to run back and forth without doing much else. Even the combat encounters can be underwhelming, with enemies that can be taken down with just a single hit.

    One frustrating aspect of the game is the Emission (Reset/Wipe)    The potential for Stalcraft is enormous, but unfortunately, the game feels like a walking simulator at times. The quests are boring and lackluster, often requiring you to run back and forth without doing much else. Even the combat encounters can be underwhelming, with enemies that can be taken down with just a single hit.

    One frustrating aspect of the game is the Emission (Reset/Wipe) that occurs every 3-4 hours, which you have to keep track of on your own since the game doesn't notify you. This can be especially annoying if you're not close to an underground area where you can stay safe.

    Another issue is the lack of fast travel options in the game. You need to walk across the entire zone to get to another, which can result in losing a lot of time if you die along the way. Furthermore, if you die in a different zone, you will not respawn at the base of that zone, but instead in the latest zone you were in, forcing you to walk back through the same zone again. This can become tedious and frustrating quickly.

    The game also has zone-locked items, meaning you cannot buy certain items unless you are in the correct zone. For example, if you want a low-level item from a gun vendor, you will need to travel back to the previous zone to purchase it, even if you have the required resources and money. This can be incredibly frustrating and time-consuming.

    Lastly, the lack of character customization in an MMO is a letdown. While it may not be the most important aspect of the game, it can still make the experience feel more personal and engaging.

    Overall, while Stalcraft has the potential to be a great game, it falls short in many areas, resulting in a lackluster and often frustrating experience.    … Expand
  2. Fkit
    May 22, 2023
    6
    This game has a great atmosphere and a fun progression system, requiring you to farm materials to upgrade your gear to a higher level.

    However, the farming once you reach midgame (lower bar level 7lvl) becomes tedious at best. From the world spawning metal and events in like an mmo so you have to both compete against allies and enemies, and with the fact that if you don't spot an enemy    This game has a great atmosphere and a fun progression system, requiring you to farm materials to upgrade your gear to a higher level.

    However, the farming once you reach midgame (lower bar level 7lvl) becomes tedious at best. From the world spawning metal and events in like an mmo so you have to both compete against allies and enemies, and with the fact that if you don't spot an enemy player before they spot you, you have a slim chance of winning the battle unless they are aiming with their feet.

    The PvP exists just for a progression wall, it serves no other purpose. Selling back bags is fine, as you can just get 15k for walking around for 3 minutes at the midgame base, The Bar. The Bar something else. As a joint base for both the Bandits and Stalkers, it creates two glaring problems; The entrances and exits are too close to each other, and it concentrates the players into the one area.

    The Factory map that holds The Bar outpost is the only place to get a material, the Pickle. A mineral that is green and shaped like it's name, and is used for the many weapons, armour, and attachment upgrades. It is dropped by human AI, which can be neutral, allied, or enemy. If it's an allied AI, you cannot kill them, but you can take neutral or enemy AI for the resource. The problem is that the map doesn't allow for easy access, you need to either sneak around tens of enemy faction players, or blast your way through as there are only 2 pathways to the other side of the map where the camps can only exist, on the enemy side. Now, if you broke through that should be fine and dandy, you can get to farming. However! Now you need to deal with the fact that the enemy spawn is only 20 seconds away, and there is only a few pathways through that are visible from the enemy spawn. Any experienced player would be able to run out from spawn immediately after death to get back into the fight.

    The rest of the locations are better balanced in terms of farming barter resources and this problem is observed only in the areas where the bases with the respawn point are located, but in the northern locations there is another problem - a long and boring walk to them.    … Expand
  3. GenTen
    Jun 3, 2023
    7
    Let me preface this review by saying that I enjoy this game. Terribly so. I'm a huge fan of the STALKER universe and genre as a whole, and this game is a welcome addition to the many stalker games/fan creations that I have come to experience over the years, but unfortunately I cannot recommend this game to anyone who does not have as much patience as I do.

    Now lets get to the review.    Let me preface this review by saying that I enjoy this game. Terribly so. I'm a huge fan of the STALKER universe and genre as a whole, and this game is a welcome addition to the many stalker games/fan creations that I have come to experience over the years, but unfortunately I cannot recommend this game to anyone who does not have as much patience as I do.

    Now lets get to the review.

    The Good

    Like many fan creations of games in the STALKER genre, STALCRAFT boasts an atmosphere full of life, mystery, and full on anxiety inducing panic attack moments that I oh so adore from these types of games. Your life can be so easily snuffed out, whether it be by an anomaly, bloodsuckers, or running from bloodsuckers into an anomaly, this game simply fills that empty space that STALKER: GAMMA left behind after I found myself longing for a multiplayer STALKER experience once again. Even if the characters in it are blocky minecraft characters that sort of throw you off balance every so often when you see their faces, this game makes you realize that its not just a bunch of funny looking block characters in a video game... It's a bunch of funny looking block characters fighting for their f*cking lives in The Zone.

    The gunplay feels solid in STALCRAFT. Gunning down creatures in The Zone feels just as good as it did the first time I ever played a STALKER game, and it keeps me coming back for more. Guns feel weighty and chunky, leaving you with that satisfying feeling that you just absolutely obliterated whatever you were shooting at. Not to mention the fact that the animations for the guns are absolutely gorgeous. I'm looking forward to unlocking more weapons and armor as I grind through this game.

    Speaking of grinding, the PvE loop in this game is honestly pretty damn good. It feels extremely rewarding when you make it back to a safe zone after an hour long grind session, not to mention the weight lifting from your shoulders knowing you made it back with the bag. Dying in this game means losing all of that loot you accumulated (unless you're able to run back and get it, granted nobody has looted your body.) The reputation grind system is also pretty straightforward and rewarding as well. Granting you bonuses to crafting/buying items in that specific safe zone.

    There is also a PvP gearscore matchmaking system in place, which makes sure you aren't matched with somebody that's going to absolutely rock your sh*t with a railgun as soon as you spawn in. This feature does help tolerate the PvP just a bit more at times, since areas seem to be a bit less congested than the early game once you're around 300 gearscore.

    The Bad

    PvP is an absolute nightmare in this game as of this review, not to mention it plays no active role in making the world FEEL like STALKER. When you start the game and leave the first safe zone after picking one of two factions (STALKER or bandit,) you are immediately at risk of being PKed in the open world. This would be fine if it didn't mean you are sent back to safe zone, having dropped all of your ammo, meds, looted items etc. It's honestly not that bad in the early game, but once you reach the mid-game area called The Bar, you are immediately subject to camping and griefing from the enemy faction. It doesn't help that some of the materials needed to craft the mid-game armor and weapons up to this point require you to kill other players so you can sneak into their side of the map and try and grind out these items without being spotted and killed. There are essentially two types of looted items that you look out for when you're on the grind in STALCRAFT. These items are trash loot items which you sell to a vendor, and trade-in items which you use to craft guns and armor. When you die, players can loot these trash items and sell them to the vendor themselves, but the trade-in items drop in a little bag. This bag CANNOT be opened by the people who loot you. They can, however, choose to mail it to you (if they're feeling generous,) drop it on the ground so its lost forever, or list it on the auction house. Other people can buy the bag from the auction house, but only YOU can open it, which pretty much eliminates any reason to hunt players who are actively grinding. Sure you can kill people for their trash loot, but at the same time you can go out and grind it yourself for 90% less hassle than you would if you just wanted to kill people. This has made the PvP experience as a whole in this game feel like a waste of time, resources, and not to mention your f*cking sanity. You can be out in the open world, having spent hours of your time grinding it out, only for some guy to come along, kill you, and gain nothing from it. The mid-early game is horrible with this, being constantly camped/griefed while you try to do dailies/weeklies/MSQ/grind.

    Like I said, I truly enjoy this game, but I feel like it could be so much better.    … Expand
  4. hreiex3
    Jun 5, 2023
    5
    While the game itself is decent for a "block" game, just a lot of QoL stuff needs to be added.

    -Currently, the PvP is not rewarding but not punishing either, its a chore unless you make the fun yourself. Its not something you need to run away from, as most early barter items, ammo etc come in abundance. Its Low Risk with High Reward. If you die, you lose 5 minutes of your time. If you    While the game itself is decent for a "block" game, just a lot of QoL stuff needs to be added.

    -Currently, the PvP is not rewarding but not punishing either, its a chore unless you make the fun yourself. Its not something you need to run away from, as most early barter items, ammo etc come in abundance. Its Low Risk with High Reward. If you die, you lose 5 minutes of your time. If you win, you get some basic barter items out of it, that is it.
    -Stamina needs to be a fifth of what it currently is. Maps are in a way halved between Bandit side and Stalker side, and if you are even slightly in the opposite territory, you are at a major disadvantage. If you happen to kill a player or make a single noise, the whole half of the map is after you. If you happen to outsmart multiple players and start looting them, those players only take below a minute to get back on your ass because everyone runs like Usain Bolt. This goes hand in hand with the former point, where PvP is not rewarding neither punishing, you die, you quick loot your, and then zerg that area with your friend group.
    If a single player is able to group wipe you, they should not be rewarded by being able to swarm you under a minute while you are looting. Decrease the stamina to a 5th it currently is, or add a respawn timer that at minimum is like 20 seconds. Playing well should be viable, not playing zerg.
    -Sound. I have all my audio max as well as 4db extra on my mixer, and I can not for the love of me hear people walking around me, outside of my party members or rats. Make running and walking noise way, WAY louder, and make crouch make faint sound, so rat behavior is not as rewarding.
    -Revive and dbno state is fine. Just have like 0.5 second invulnerability window after a player goes down. This would reward positioning and skillful engagements, where if you happen to go down, its unlikely that you are gonna get instakilled during the initial knock animation as you are forced prone, just because the player happened to have a weapon with a high Rof.

    As of right now, 6 hours in game, me and my friend have a collective 150 kills to a combined deaths of below 20. This is because every time we happen to kill a group of zergs that don't know how to move a mouse, they run back after death 40-50 seconds in, while we are looting, so its a constant back and forth between us sitting and waiting for our chance to loot that zerg group without getting over weight, and them just continuously running through most of the map in a record time.

    Negative review for the single reason that this game does not reward playing and positioning well, but zerging in groups. Arguments like "Just play in a group yourself" do make sense, but the point of this review is that if you are a good player, you should be rewarded for that. If you kill a group of zergs, that same group of zergs should not be able to run back halfway or more through the map while I'm still looting them from the initial fight.    … Expand
  5. ruktare4
    Jun 8, 2023
    5
    I strongly advise against this game if you're someone who prefers a bit of balance, thought and care put in their game. Because this has none of the above.

    The game openly tells you as such in their warning that yes, the game is going to be unfair in pretty much every regard. But what it doesn't tell you is that it's more than just the pvp that is poorly planned. Right from the    I strongly advise against this game if you're someone who prefers a bit of balance, thought and care put in their game. Because this has none of the above.

    The game openly tells you as such in their warning that yes, the game is going to be unfair in pretty much every regard. But what it doesn't tell you is that it's more than just the pvp that is poorly planned.

    Right from the start, the game is 100% pvp oriented which means no matter what, if you're trying to progress and make any headway with quests or loot, you're subjected to Timmy McFatCawk and his crew of heavily armed and armored dudes rolling up on you and wasting all of your time.

    You keep your guns and any item that is considered "locked" to your character, but all those mats you spent 45 minutes farming for so you can get a better gun just to have a hope of being competitive with the PvPers? Gone. All because some losers decided to camp the loading zones or your spawn point so you can't do anything at all.

    The game has a lot of poorly thought out design decisions which are, by admission of a dev, how they want it to be and they don't plan on doing any further thinking on the subject. Even if it means the RNG of the overworld activities could end up dropping hardened NPC soldiers 5 feet behind you to shoot you dead.

    Over half of the game is you running to collect your corpse (assuming your loot isn't gone) because some poor design choice got you killed. Something the majority of even the game's avid fans won't disagree with because they have Stockholm Syndrome from having played it too much already.

    If you value your time, I'd highly suggest avoiding the game because it absolutely does not respect your time.
    If you're the kind of person who enjoys hitting yourself in the balls for fun, then game on.    … Expand
  6. ruwen404
    Jun 17, 2023
    6
    For a strange simulacra of STALKER's Zone as done through the eyes of a block/Minecraft themed lens...It's honestly not bad. There's some charm here, and the progression system is a novel idea if a bit grindy due to the sheer amount of resources needed and amount of maps needed to collect them from. Here's the big rub: The PvP system is stupid, as it stands. It serves no practical purposeFor a strange simulacra of STALKER's Zone as done through the eyes of a block/Minecraft themed lens...It's honestly not bad. There's some charm here, and the progression system is a novel idea if a bit grindy due to the sheer amount of resources needed and amount of maps needed to collect them from. Here's the big rub: The PvP system is stupid, as it stands. It serves no practical purpose in gameplay beyond stroking your ego as you can't get anything from other players beyond loose sell-fodder; which is good. Items like armor and weapons should be bound or else progression would be killed dead if you got unlucky.

    At the same time it's just there as a gate to keep people from progressing quickly since all that'll happen is as a loner, you'll go to get the resources to get upgraded gear, get murdered by either a bandit, or bad luck from the AI. Then your bound loot drops, someone runs across it and yeets your bag into the trash and you're screwed.

    Bandits aren't really much better as you'll be doing the same sort of exploration and grinding, but because as a whole the bandit faction picks on loners way more. Even if you specifically aren't looking for a fight, it's too late. You're the wrong faction, and so you'll get domed and looted...or just get bad luck by the same anomalies and have someone loot your junk and throw away your bag.

    At this point, they either need to confine PvP faction interactions to specific chunks of the world, or retool the drop system so that ALL bound items remain in your inventory and all that drops is unbound fodder, ammo, medical, etc.

    Ontop of this, while overall I'd rank the map design as good as the source, or even better than STALKER in some ways. Rostok is a awful design and shouldn't have ever been added. It's a central hub for BOTH sides of the coin, so what happens is bandits get domed by loners, and loners get camped by bandits. With either side getting screwed over and not having any fun trying to leave the central base of the game to actually play. Should just admit it sucks, and break it into a loner base at Dark Valley, and a bandit base over in Agroprom. There's even already places where it could easily be done and make logical sense.

    As it stands, while I'll probably poke around this game with a friend because as it stands the options for a multiplayer STALKER like experience are basically just THIS. The moment options become better for a genuine Zone coop experience without xXx3dGyB4d1Tl0RdxXx shooting me in the back, or being screwed by my own faction because of bad luck with an anomaly; this Zone wanderer is turning around and not looking back fondly.    … Expand
  7. godofesh
    Aug 3, 2023
    7
    writing this review at 80 hours. One character in each main faction. So to start of this review is negative, thats for the general populace, this isn't going to be hardly any fun for the typical gamer, or those uninitiated to the stalker franchise, because anomolies will make you uninstall.
    PROS:
    - incredibly addictive gameplay loop. The loop is perfect for a shooter MMO. - Stalker    writing this review at 80 hours. One character in each main faction. So to start of this review is negative, thats for the general populace, this isn't going to be hardly any fun for the typical gamer, or those uninitiated to the stalker franchise, because anomolies will make you uninstall.
    PROS:
    - incredibly addictive gameplay loop. The loop is perfect for a shooter MMO.
    - Stalker universe, although fan made.
    - extraction shooter elements in an open world game = awesome dopamine highs.
    - gun play, and modification is pretty good considering the studio's size.
    - progression is fairly well designed and balanced. in PVP enemies that should still be hanging around the early game zone aren't a challenge if you're used to that grittier PVP style of extraction shooters.(ammo types, grenades, healing methods, etc)
    CONS:
    - Enemy AI is the worst I've ever seen in my entire life. I made a game on the free steam maker app when I was 14 that had 10 fold better AI. They literally Just run at you and shoot, they do miss but not enough to make it noticeable. Mutant mobs are the same way, but melee makes it more manageable and you can kite the enemies.
    - extraction shooter type gameplay loop in an MMO. Yeah getting back to base with a brimming bag of goodies feels great but it doesn't happen nearly often enough to support or justify your time. I often spend HOURS farming matts maybe dying once or twice to something that's genuinely my error, then just having nato troops spawn on me or spot me and waste me across the map.(early-mid game issue) Progression is EXTREMELY SLOW because of this and it just makes you feel like the several hours you just invested got you absolutely nothing in game.
    - Game is literally pay to win, a premium membership gives you more loot from any events that spawn in the world, and in a game that the entire progression system is based on crafting gear and buying consumables, well thats not hard to spot.
    - AI balance is also atrocious, I could forgive the damage numbers etc if the AI had, well AI, but considering they are literal aimbots its just not a fair practice.
    - map design also does not support this AI issue as you can't even hide in cover. what little cover exists the enemies will just run up on you not giving you time to even reload, let alone heal. Outside of that your only options for hard cover are trees typically which often aren't even big enough to cover you completely and arm shots from nato soldiers will lay you out even with appropriate armor types. so. yeah.
    - No sort of fast travel, would accept this if the game at least had respawn options, but it doesn't. you're forced to respawn in a fixed location(last visited safe zone, excluding a few certain quest locations) which are few and far between, IE no safe zone to respawn at in the dump so if youre a stalker that died 500 meters into the dump, prepare to run 1500 meters to get back and pray you don't get camped, sqaud pvp'd, or wasted by OP AI on the way back or you're doing it again. in a single player experience this would be fine, but its a freakin MMO. thats not acceptable IMO.

    for a free to play game its fun as hell, but after awhile the massive list of cons vs pros just really bogs the game down. The devs don't care about the community much and don't care about cheaters or campers in the sleightest. You'll have more play sessions that end up being a waste of several hours than fun productive play sessions.    … Expand
  8. cloudwr
    Aug 23, 2023
    6
    This game can be great fun and for the most part is, however, it is ruined by the story missions. The story line itself is fine, but it is the design of the levels. They are not challenging due to skill but by incredibly poor design. They rely on broken parkour mechanics alongside incredibly annoying bugs that do nothing to challenge you, but instead just glitch out and ensure that youThis game can be great fun and for the most part is, however, it is ruined by the story missions. The story line itself is fine, but it is the design of the levels. They are not challenging due to skill but by incredibly poor design. They rely on broken parkour mechanics alongside incredibly annoying bugs that do nothing to challenge you, but instead just glitch out and ensure that you cannot make progress. I am not alone in this, look up the minstrel fight online to get a glimpse of what I mean. The fight itself isn't the boss, it is the asinine attempt to reach the fight. Also, The Bar area is frustrating with constant PVP around the entrance so you never know if you'll actually survive getting inside which is annoying due to the respawn mechanics.

    Trading in the game is hindered by separate chats for different locations. The trading channel on the official project Discord is very inconvenient.

    Overall, you can have a lot of fun in this game but due to the developers making ridiculous design choices it will be ruined for many.    … Expand