User blog:Colonel Skull/My thoughts on LADC V.4005 with EP

First off I just want to thank dezowave and the rest of the dev team for creating such a huge world with so much to do. Besides the original feel of mystery and discovery in the OG ShoC, this has probably been my best STALKER experience so far.

There are a few things right off the bat that were very pleasant changes in LA compared to the other stalker games.

Some things that come to mind are the different flashlights. It was really cool to actually have batteries and not have some mystical flashlight(maybe powered by battery artifact lol) that never ran out of juice in the vanilla games. I liked to use the low voltage flashlight in the beginning of the game when I didn't have jack shit and being able to acquire and use the military flashlight later in the game when I had more equipment and rubles.

I also loved that in third person your character doesn't walk and sprint like a weeaboo retard and has proper animations so I don't have to equip a weapon in order to view my character in third person without breaking the immersion.

Another addition is the artifact detector. It was really nice to be able to just remove it from the slot if I got really annoyed with it in the bar or at any other period where I was inside and the beeping was just coming from artifacts outside the walls. I loved the feeling when I finally got my hands on an elite artifact detector and could drive in a vehicle without constant fear from the dreaded vortex.

I also appreciated the belt over time as I annoyed with it at first. It was cool balancing your space between artifacts and how much spare rounds I could pump into enemies. In all honesty its a more realistic approach as well.

I decided to use the Extended Pack as well with my playthrough as well as the CleanHud. Some might criticize the use of these of these mods on a first playthrough but seeing as I was already used to Arsenal Overhaul from CS and CoP, I saw no reason to potentially downgrade my experience by not using it.

My criticisms were a few things that ruined the game at first but I got used to them over time.

The first problem was that the bugged audio from ShoC was still present in LADC. What I am talking about is the high pitched peep noises when you open a locker, kill a boar, and the pseudodog death sound. Why in the hell isn't this fixed? There is an old ass patch for the OG game that fixed all this. I couldn't get it to work with LADC unfortunately but the fact that the devs didn't fix it by defautl boggles my mind. It's so annoying and could be fixed easily. Eventually you get used to it like everything, but I don't feel like I should have to deal with it in the first place.

Another qualm I had with LADC is the "this item is too damaged to be repaired" and the "this item is too damaged to be traded" bs that makes reselling weapons scavenged from dead stalkers near pointless. I find this very fun to do because you get more excited when battling high level enemies(mercs and monolith) and get a better reward for killing them. I understand that selling weapons doesn't net you a lot of money but if you are gonna nerf prices then don't stop me from selling broken weapons. Just have the broken weapons price scale. Also having weapons be too broeken to be repaired makes lots of items completely useless. If I'm really psyched after finding a gauss rifle and then have my optimism stripped away by finding it has no item health and I can't even repair makes it dead weight. A real bummer.

Lastly I don't think areas should be impassable with vehicles. Why have vehicles if I can travel to Yantar from Rostok through a large ass gate that could easily fit a vehicle? Doesn't make much sense to make me wait until later in the game so I have to navigate all the way thru Dead City just to get to Yantar from Rostok with a vehicle. I also have to drive all the way back I came since the exit is bugged.

My first few hours were not very enjoyable to be honest, I was kinda bored just doing fetch shit for jew sidorovich who wouldn't give me any rubles for anything I brought him. I was somewhat enjoying the game, but when I got to agroprom and went underground before saving mole(I thought saving the stalkers was enough) and would have to backtrack thru everything because I messed up, I actually went ahead and uninstalled.

I decided to give it another go the next day and I sure as hell don't regret it. I did the agroprom quest correctly annihilating all the spetznaz before I went to underground to stop any problems. After getting thrown around by burers and getting jump scared by military I ended up leaving with a couple of artifacts, all the loot from Strelok's stash, and the rough tools from the very bottom level. I was starting to appreciate the game a little more, even though I hadn't really started to like it yet.

Things really started to take off when I got to Dark Valley. Infiltrating the bandit and mono bases were really fun and seeing all the new mutants(izlom, swamp beast being a couple) started to make the game come to life. It was also the first time you get a vehicle which you can immediately ditch after darkscape and grab the far better uaz near the Merc village.

Then every new area was far more fun and roaming around the forest for artifacts and stuffing them in the trunk of my car was so satisfying. There are so many things that just made the enjoy the game even more after that. The storyline gets so much more interesting as you get to dead city and military warehouses. I love that they kept ghost and fang alive. It was such a bummer in the base game realizing that everyone Strelok knew aside from Doctor and I guess Guide was dead.

Honestly I was having so much fun at this point I don't remember much. The levels were the perfect balance to me(big enough to be fun and immersive, but not so big you got stutters and bad performance aka CoP)

The NPP was so fun as well as Pripyat. Viewing all the new gear available from Arnie was such a "wow" moment. Unlike Crash who has nothing special as well as shit prices. Also oddly enough he didn't sell me anything and I couldn't sell anything to him after I got the secret trader info from Veles.

I also like how when I finally could afford the BTR with all the money I got from mutant parts and artifacts, they actually put a gun on it! So fun to mow down monolith at NPP and shooting at random mutants on the side of the road just because I could. I figured the gun would be unusable and it was just gonna be a tank with high HP.

I also love that the vortex anomaly makes you fly when in a vehicle. Pretty fun mechanic.

I enjoyed the cutscenes even though the animation quality is laughably bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAOfMqiwP_4

I still enjoyed them and the depth they added to the game.

All in all, I loved this Stalker mod and all of its content. Even though it has some flaws, I think the pros outweigh the cons.

Please comment, I would love hear your thoughts. I made a few edits to this wiki to help out fellow stalkers. I recommend everyone else to do the same as they play to help complete the wiki.