Stalcraft: X

Steam Reviews

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• Not recommended Posted January 8, 2026 on Steam Great Idea, Great world, bit janky as its originally a mod and somehow they still havent fixed loads of bugs. I want to love this game, but the company Exbo is a joke. They only care about the top 1% of whales that spend thousands, literally everything in the game is focused around it. The final straw was during this current christmas event they have mysterious gifts which you can buy for earnt currency or Stalcoins (paid currency) I bought 30 gifts to send which is around 30 dollars, went to send them only to find I have an email ban because I said some naughty words, never had a notification, never had a warning that I was buying something I couldnt use. Went throught it with bots on their discord, finally got through to the support team for them to tell me there is "no feature" for refunding stalcoins for mysterious gifts, I wasnt even asking for a monetary refund, just send the gifts to the right person or give me my stalcoins back. They pointed me towards making a complaint via email which they warn will take at least a week which by then the event will be over, but they have already really insisted that there is no way I will get a refund of any kind. So basically Exbo can steal my money and tell me to jog on. Unless youre willing to drop thousands or not spend anything and ejoy getting consistently ganked by whales, avoid this game at all costs.
• Not recommended Posted December 23, 2025 on Steam After playing quite a lot of time , game is amazing, gunplay is good, pvp/pve combo is a mixed bag. However once you reach the north, it takes up to x10 times to get items with timegating mechanics. The game is disrespecting your time heavily and require you to live in the game as if you're having a 2nd job. With that out of the way, let's get to the meat and potatoes of my review. The game is incredibly predatory, devs dont give a rats ass about the global community. They have a proven track record of making things harder and more time demanding to get you addicted or they simply hit you with FOMO. A great example would be the old battle pass system, back then you were able to farm season points via in game activities, and now what ? We need to login everyday make sure we do the dailies and weeklies otherwise we will miss-out on precious season pass lvls, the same precious lvls the devs are more than happy to sell back to us in premium overpiced bundles. By all means im not saying the previous system was perfect as shown with the extensive forge-11 farming, but with a bit of tweaking and point redistribution i think it couldve worked since you would be able to take a break and not feel like you were punished for it. And speaking of "redistribution" they've recently nerfed the best way to make money and claimed to have "redistributed" the wealth into other in game activities to keep farming fresh. Sadly we only got back a fraction of what they took away to "compensate for the reduction in data prices" Another point i want to touch upon is the previously mentioned "Time gating" in the form of anomalous serum, a resource so precious it's locked to either 1 per day or 3 per weekly task for a total of 13 per week or 16 with premium. That means i fresh player would need to wait around 2-3 months before being even remotely equipped to handle players they are being thrown at by the matchmaking. The thing that finally made me quit is how devs only balance things around the RU server while leaving servers like SEA which is where i played in the dust. The recent event is nothing but a lazy cash-grab where its a total RNG-fest where you either put in real money on in game currency to "gift" gifts to the players and if you hope to get some yourself you need to pray you end up on the other side of this RNG. The more gifts the community gifts the more skins they are able to buy during the event, however the skins are tied to the special "wrapper" currency which you can only get via said gifts, and on top of that the cheapest skins cost around 10 wrappers and the devs are so nice to give you a WHOPPING 2 wrappers for free. If you ever want to pick this game up i strongly advise against it, but if you must try to simply enjoy the south area of the zone and explore, theory craft and quest to your heart's content, but god forbid you venture out into the north
• Not recommended Posted June 16, 2025 on Steam Game fell off MASSIVELY since Stalcraft X The CEO/lead of the game takes every opportunity to argue with any kind of criticism, to the point he has at least 1 banned account on social media. Same dude renamed a bunch of things in the game after himself, hired his friend as the balance lead and ever since the balance has been abysmal. EXBO is a company that obsesses over player metrics and attempts to "Balance based on metrics" resulting in a sterile and completely lifeless revamp of a flawed but cult-classic standalone stalker/minecraft mod that clearly had more passion and devs who actually kept in touch with the game (and reality) Avoid getting sucked in to what is essentially now a skinner box gambling game EXBO censors criticism and spends most if not all of its marketing hiring content creators to market, so don't be surprised if there are shill reviews pumping this game up falsely
• Not recommended Posted August 1, 2025 on Steam Review: Why This Game Falls Short Initially, I wanted to enjoy this game, but over time, frustration and disappointment have overshadowed any potential it had. Below, I outline the key issues that make this game not worth your time. 1. Stagnant Progression The game starts with engaging progression until you reach the "Bar" location. Here, most average players hit a plateau at Veteran or early Master levels. Grinding becomes slow and tedious due to subpar NPC AI, which feels outdated for modern games. After hours of crafting weapon attachments, there's little to do except stockpile materials and earn currency at an excruciatingly slow rate, leaving players with no meaningful goals. 2. Unbalanced Endgame in the North Choosing a route (Stalker or Bandit) and heading north splits the already thinning player base into four factions (Rise, Frontier, Mercs, or Legion). In the northern regions, you’ll encounter cheaters using aim macros, ESP hacks, lag switches, and real-money trading (RMT) players with maxed-out gear. On North American servers, 3–5 clans dominate key areas like Lyubec and Stillwater, camping farming spots and ambushing players with ease. This so-called "endgame" feels like a repetitive cycle of farming, looting, dying, and wasting time. 3. Rampant Cheating Cheating is a major issue. I received a 7-day ban for using a clicker macro to simplify inventory management, which I found harmless. However, more egregious cheats—like recoil macros and ESP hacks—are widespread and often go unpunished. Clans openly admit to using hacks, and even when reported with evidence, moderators claim they "don’t ban for admittance." ESP users can pinpoint players and rare artifacts across the map, leading to unfair fights and frustrating deaths. 4. Poor Artifact Progression Artifact progression is deeply flawed. Only three meta builds are viable, and leveling artifacts is a nightmare due to random stat rolls that require costly re-rolls. Event-exclusive artifacts, which are no longer obtainable, outclass everything else, locking newer players out of competitive builds. 5. Frustrating Gear Progression Gear progression has a unique branching system that’s initially enjoyable but heavily time-gated. While gear doesn’t downgrade or get lost upon death, leveling it up is a slog. After reaching +10, upgrades often hit the pity system, requiring maximum in-game currency for every level, making progress feel unrewarding. 6. Pay-to-Win Event Weapons Event-exclusive and battle-pass weapons dominate every class. Craftable weapons, like the Kriss Vector, are consistently nerfed in balance patches to ensure event weapons—often obtainable through microtransactions—remain superior. This creates a clear pay-to-win dynamic that frustrates players who rely on in-game crafting. 7. Aggressive Monetization The in-game shop is filled with microtransactions that encourage pay-to-win mechanics. Players can buy upgrade materials, battle-pass progression packs, and loot boxes that promote gambling-like behavior. These practices feel exploitative and detract from fair gameplay. 8. Real-Money Trading (RMT) Despite being against the terms of service, RMT is rampant. Websites openly sell in-game currency for real money, and players who admit to or facilitate RMT face no consequences. This undermines the game’s economy and fairness. 9. Lack of Transparency and Poor Reputation The developer, EXBO, has a declining reputation among players due to its failure to address cheating and RMT. Some speculate that EXBO may even be involved in developing and selling cheating tools or in-game currency through third-party sites, given the sheer volume of resources certain players possess. This lack of transparency erodes trust in the company. Conclusion This game had potential but is plagued by poor progression, rampant cheating, pay-to-win mechanics, and questionable developer practices. Unless significant changes are made, I cannot recommend it to anyone looking for a fair and rewarding gaming experience.
• Not recommended Posted May 16, 2026 on Steam The game started so well, it was an MMO with stalker vibes and you got that experience, but after the X update the devs went more and more into shady monetization practices that are anti-consumer, the game asks and will take from you an unhealthy amount of time that is not rewarded nor appreciated.
• Not recommended Posted August 29, 2025 on Steam One of the most intriguing MMO games out there. As a person with a kink for wasting time on pointless grinds consisting of hours of doing the same thing over and over, this game was completely up my alley all the way until about 50 hours in. The first red flag happened after the first major storyline concluded and I upgraded my weapon past +5 and bought basic cheap artifacts. Suddenly every lobby turned into vietnam, there was just PVP warfrare everywhere - all consisting of people with 3-4KD with minmaxed twink gear. All of a sudden the game became unplayable. I pushed through because there was a lot of fun still to be had, and second half of the story/gameplay loop happening in the North was actually a lot of fun. Until the final boss. It boggles the mind someone actually would greenlight some of the PVE content in this game. After I reached that point, a lot more cracks started to show. I started getting uptiered(going into lobbies with people wearing armors/weapons from the final upgrade stage), and discovered that factions actually just despise new players and love camping the opposite side of the map in minmaxed gear just low enough to not push them towards the next gear bracket. PVP became incredibly toxic, 1v1s impossible to win(die in 3-4 shots while dumping 1/3rd of a mag on a 720 RPM AR with best available to me ammo and barely doing half someone's health), farming a roulette if the opposite factions didn't decide to jump camp random high ground spots and killing off people who can't kill them back until another well estabilished player comes along and drives them away. There is absolutely zero matchmaking in the game and it sucks, because most of those people playing on alts with 10-15 million worth of gear make progress incredibly sluggish for anyone with no means to fight back. The tiering system unfortunately cannot put you back down if you equip a weaker weapon. Once you get uptiered that's it, you're just done. Wish there was something the developers could do to prevent camping opposite faction's starting areas or implement proper matchmaking to put someone's twink alts in lobbies with other twinks based on something, or at least make it harder. If you're considering playing this game, NEVER go past +5 until you can get yourself the final tier of gear yourself. You will make your game completely unplayable and will have to slog through slowly chipping through the dailies to even be able to make any amount of progress and will cut yourself from any potential moneymaking farms.