S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Legends of the Zone Trilogy Enhanced Edition Review - Enhanced but Diminished
If there was a series that deserved a modern touch-up (aside from Terranigma), it was STALKER. A huge gap between games means that the earliest three games might have fallen through the cracks, and people never touched them. It’s a shame, because those early games are certified (flawed) bangers. A surprise announcement of an enhanced edition shocked me, but not unwelcomely.
I talked in my Dawntrail review about how sometimes games feel a bit like a monkey’s paw wish, giving you what you want but corrupting it in unexpected ways. That definitely feels true here. I expect newer releases of games to be improved in most ways, but that just isn’t true here. Sure, the game boasts higher quality textures, engine updates, and Steam Workshop support – but if you look at these closely, you’ll see the cracks.
Let’s take official modding support. Kicks arse, love it. Except that now means old mods don’t work, old mods which improve the game via tonnes of bug fixes, additional content, or modpacks like Anomaly/GAMMA, which provide an entirely new way to experience the game. GSC have also put restrictions on what mods can be added to the game, and many of the most popular mods for the originals are flat out not allowed. To restrict modding in this way is a slap in the face for those passionate individuals who have improved upon the core experience and made the game at least remotely relevant to newer players.
At its core, however, this remains an excellent game series. Each of the games is clunky and cumbersome, but there’s such heart and immersion to them that it’s so difficult to replicate today. Playing through Shadows of Chornobyl again still gives me a very similar feeling to when I originally played it. The game’s still tough as molasses, you’ll still be dropped if you’re not careful. Once you get into the groove, though, it’s incredible. It reminded me how much the original games really nailed the horror vibe of the anomalies in The Zone. Each mutant is horrifying to deal with in a unique way, and that’s something I didn’t realise I missed in STALKER 2. In many ways, returning to the original trilogy feels a lot like coming home for me.
The most interesting change for me is in relation to visuals. I’m by no means a huge chaser of visual fidelity, but the visuals here make me feel somewhere between confused and upset. I’m confused about how some of these feel upgraded. Modded, I loaded up the original games and compared them, and it doesn’t feel like a huge upgrade. Yeah, there are some nice shadows and more detail, the lighting is nice and hey, DX12 is super cool and all – but as a result the game struggles to keep a consistent framerate, and some of those visuals feel like the ol’ Hollywood trick of making actors look younger by putting Vaseline on the lens. Things look quite blurry, and I’m sure it’ll get better with patches, but I’m looking at it right now, at launch. As I said before: monkey’s paw.
I’m also annoyed about bugs. There have been so many great patches from modders over the years that all GSC had to do was work out which big bugs were still in the original games and bring those into the new version. Instead, somehow, they brought in new bugs on top of all those old ones. You can’t even manually name your saves or limit the amount of quicksave slots, which is pretty important when you’ve got a hundred saves with generic names and just have no idea where to load from if you wanted to go back and change the storyline four hours ago. In no way am I saying to steal modders’ work, but you can use it as a framework to fix your own bugs.
I want to complain about one other thing. It’s not going to be the removal of Russian imagery from the game. That’s the developer’s choice, and I am not equipped to tackle the intricacies of that discussion. It’s the removal of the original game from the Steam search. I get that they wanted to funnel people to the new games, and that if you buy the Enhanced edition, you get the originals, and if you own the originals, you get the Enhanced edition for free. All of that is super cool, love that, great move. If you want to buy those original games, though, as a cheap way to try them out and not destroy your ageing PC, you’ll have to search outside of Steam, then follow links back. Not only that, but the cost of them has increased. Awful.
If you’d ask me if you should play the Legends of the Zone enhanced editions, my answer is complicated. Sort of. GSC has a history of at least attempting to fix things post-launch, so these aren’t dead in the water, but as it stands, it’s hard to say they’re the ‘best’ version of the game. Mods add so much to those originals, and even though the visuals are less crisp in menus and there’s less visual eye-candy, it’s hard to say those originals still aren’t the best. If modders upgrade their mods to the new framework and GSC loosens their grip on the game a bit, then yeah, the Enhanced trilogy will be the best way. As it stands, though? Maybe give this a bit more time to cook.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Legends of the Zone was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
