hell, if you take the mutants, and the nuclear stuff ATOM is probably a great depiction of what early post soviet life is like in russia (at least in my eyes, trough the lenses of media that i see russian culture with. real russian might see different things ).
Not a Russian myself, but as a fellow Slav I also got a very strong feel that much of what's seen in game is actually very alike to reality of 90ies, albeit my place went through a war, not just peaceful-ish disintegration of institutions and society so I certainly can't be a good judge there (ironically, our institutions and society were more or less intact as Yugoslavia fell apart, our problems were more political and obvious, less social and insidious). This vibe was especially present in places like Krasno, with the police and way they are presented. It "feels" very Russian. Then there's the never ending stream of political jokes of course, but that's more in your face obvious.
The whole nuclear war part aside which we can't imagine properly, the game is very believable from present rl point of view. Take elections in Otradnoye for example. You can have them fixed, but with exactly zero moral qualms, judgment, irony or any "this is example of how things shouldn't be" kind of presentation. You just do it or you don't. It serves a purpose. Everyone gets it. It's how things work, it's how life is etc etc.
I like how this game has really wild lore, too. Lots of strange monsters, more otherworldly types of creatures and even demons and other supernatural entities are explored. I really like that, it almost feels like a grounded, gritty yet magical world somehow.
What I like most about this is that, at least in my so far experience, it isn't clear which is it. Every time something weird happens, you are left uncertain. Like the guy obsessed by a demon that I exorcised (in the name of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union no less). Was it a demon and did it really go for the pig and caused it to run off screaming, or did the guy act it out and made it run and squeal by slapping it? Or the guy from the future in Krasno. It looks like he's just a lunatic, but then there are a couple of clues about it, even in circus, that something really happened.
On a serious note, I dislike a couple of things about the game. The less important is character progression: perk system, as others said, isn't well done. Even if you leave the point system, which I'm only mildly against, the decision to make different difficulties give you drastically different amounts of the points is bad. At higher difficulties perks are just too precious, no fun is allowed and most of the tree ends up being a trap. Also this is never mentioned, at least I never noticed it in difficulty setting descriptions.
Second harder to fix thing is the way there's just too many npcs giving me meaningful clues about the quests, hidden places etc for the size of the game world. In Krasno I got literally overwhelmed by the amount of stuff people told me. It became impossible for me to keep track of it, and by the time I realized I need an actual notebook and pencil to cope, it was too late. This is the first time I'm complaining about number of meaningful non-fluff puzzle-like textual content in a game I think. Now amount itself might not be too much, it's the concentration of it. In Fallout 2 the massive amount of similar interactions with npcs was distributed over a massive map, which made it less tedious and more fresh, where you approach a new city wondering what you'll meet next, after solving the previous. In ATOM it's the opposite, you are sent around the world map back and forth from just a couple of hot spots, and these spots are so concentrated in quest givers, lore, subtle clues etc that it's hard to keep one's head from spinning. I keep running into stuff that I remember I should remember something about, but I don't.
Ok and then there's combat, it could have been a tad more sophisticated. I guess this is what fallout was like, but being able to do something other than stand and shoot would be nice. I got spoiled by Battle Brothers and Underrail but still. It's not such a big deal though.
All in all the more I play ATOM the more I like it. It's really a great game. Even the second fault can be handled by gitting gud and organizing better. But in case you do the sequel, and you should, I'd spread the content around some more.
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