Ok NLC is both interesting and infuriating.
Lets start with the good:
- Custom engine gives SOC good visuals without going over the top on dramatic lighting like some mods are want to do.
- Custom engine also allows for a much needed rework of stalkers gunplay/aiming.... this feels, I dare say, the best shooting I've played in a STALKER mod. It also has 3D scopes, albeit not PiP (presumably to avoid the inevitable performance hit seen in other mods).
- Weapons are all very high quality models with good animations. Some of the best I've ever seen for STALKER actually.
- Inventory system is the best Ive ever seen. You carry everything in your bag and then if you want stuff to be easily accessible, you have to mount it/put it on various parts of your clothing, early in the game you get a tactical rig which allows for keeping multiple magazines of ammo and grenades at the ready and so on.
- The zone is deadly, and doesn't feel like a theme park as it does in some mods with too many people wandering around. This mod apparently has the highest anomaly count of all mods and there are huge numbers of mutants too.
- "hardcore" economy based - sensibly - around Artifacts, rather than MISERY's retard "hardcore" economy based on absolute nonsense and make believe.
- Artifacts are actually useful and worth getting. Even "degenerates" - artifacts with only negative properties - are still valuable for trading.
- AMK style artifact transmutation.
- Probably the most amount of C&C ive ever seen in a STALKER mod. There are often multiple ways to deal with a quest and your choices affect later quests/characters.
- unlike MISERY mod item bloat, every single item in NLC has a purpose, and its usually logical and intuitive.
The bad:
- The beginning of this mod is awfully unfair, and repeatedly asks you to eat shit and then laughs in your face for actually doing it. An example of one very bad beginning quest is the standard fetch an artifact for Sid. You will be very low on HP and also sleep deprived (so running very slow as a result) - which the mod doesnt make you aware of - and picking up artifacts barehanded gives a random amount of damage and chance to bleed, so its pretty much pure luck if you can make it back to sid's bunker and get necessary meds as reward from him before dropping dead.
- the mod does the opposite of hand holding - it instead literally asks you to remember crucial details yourself to the point where there is apparently a note writing function in the game. Seriously - no "quest" entries in your PDA, no map markers etc. You still do quests, but all the information comes from dialogues and items.
- the machine translation is very rough, and this is a mod that requires attention to detail.
- Changes to mutants are annoying. Boars emit a minor radiation field that stops you from sprinting, blind dogs have a psy effect that gets stronger the larger the pack, pseudodogs have an infuriating effect that throws your aim and vision off, tushkanos cause massive bleeding. Zombies, for whatever reason, cause hunger and deafness just from being near you. I'm sure it will get worse from here but i havent found out yet.
