S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Patch 1.0.3 has arrived. Main and side missions fixes, input lag decrease, and other improvements.

I'm a massive Stalker fan, and the state of the game pains me. What they have is so good. The world is beautiful and immaculately designed, the vibe and the atmosphere is all there. The guns feel good. The story is good so far with interesting characters and good performances (at least in Ukrainian) and the animations and presentation in main story dialogue quests has been good and immersive. Not cyberpunk levels maybe but good and a huge step up from previous games.

But man, there is so much that reeks of unfinished and half-done. They likely would have needed another year at least but I think they just ran out of money. It also looks like being forced to comply with console parity for the Xbox meant they couldn't get performance under control and had to rip out A-life (or abandon it when it was clear it wouldn't work on Xbox).

With how great the good parts are it pains me doubly.

The ai isn't the biggest problem IMO, it's the balancing of things. Even many easy early-game enemies are absolute bullet sponges and can kill you in 3-4 hits. The whole game right now is just finding ways to cheese every encounter, which doesn't feel good.
And both buying stuff and repairing things is so ridiculously expensive that it's impossible to keep up. It feels like they didn't do much playtesting of the actual game at all, more like they tested specific things in exclusivity.