S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cost of Hope

a dlc that rivals the base campaign, and also funnily enough has a longer playtime than some of these "story" games that have been coming out recently

Wanted to beat it before making a review on it. Took a long hiatus since the release but, I finally came back and beat the final mission. Yeah, this DLC in my opinion is as STALKER as STALKER 2 could get. It brings back the atmosphere and world building that the OG trilogy had and felt great from start to finish. The Iron Forest was a pretty fun place to run around in and finally being able to go to the CNPP is something that everyone has been waiting for and was definitely worth the wait. The story is pretty good too and had good pacing. Zulu being back was another nice throwback to Call of Pripyat and seeing old faces like Lukash and Voronin play a bigger role in the world was cool. The DLC sending us to places that we had been before in the vanilla game was nice since there are places that some of the community have wanted to be able to explore again like SIRCAA. [spoiler] And for those of us who begged for the return, we won, welcome back Lymansk! [/spoiler] Definitely give this DLC a try if you get the chance. Whatever your feelings may be about the base game I think you'll enjoy this if you liked the OG trilogy.

So first of all, I wanna power through my overall thoughts: Story is fantastic and engaging, storyline AND the new side-missions are extremely fun to play and well-made, and the new zones are awesome. Strongly recommend, if you like STALKER 2. Now details: Story: People have found their way into the mysterious Iron Forest. In fact, there's a guy blabbing about how he got there at the bar in Slag Heap. There's a few ways in, but it turns out Freedom and Duty already have a joint operation inside the walls of the Iron Forest, and are attempting to unravel the region's mysteries. The story goes in some very surprising directions, and, like the main game, is very dependent on your decisions as a player. I found it really engaging and fascinating from start to finish. Gameplay: The new guns fun to use, and they also found their way into the main game. The real star of the show, in my opinion, though, is all the new side missions that were added to the main game to flesh out Duty and Freedom more as factions, as well as just add more flavor to the world at large. Although the main DLC story isn't terribly long, it is inherently attached to your progress in the main story, so it is effectively split in half. I never timed it start to finish, but I would hazard a guess that it's around 8 hours start to finish. Which is fine, honestly, seeing as there's effectively 2 ways to play through it. For me, personally, I more than got my money's worth out of this DLC, on sheer enjoyment, and the amount of side content you get. All of that to say, again, if you like STALKER 2, I strongly recommend Cost of Hope.