SoC - L.E.G.E.N.D.A.R.Y Mod Review

L.E.G.E.N.D.A.R.Y. Even hearing the name of this mod, makes you think of a mod that would fulfill your every desire you'd ask from a mod. The premise of the mod is indeed quite legendary. The mod tries to combine Oblivion Lost, AMK, Faction Wars, Absolute HD textures, best shaders collection, ARSENAL RC 3 and a lot more modifications into 5 gigabytes of modding fun. I had no idea what to expect from this premise..
 The mod requires you to have v.10005. The mod itself also is only v.0001 and many fixes were needed before playing it.
  L.E.G.E.N.D.A.R.Y combined Absolute HD texture pack, L.U.R.K. textures and enhanced shaders. As a result, the game is visually fantastic. I won't lie saying that L.E.G.E.N.D.A.R.Y has one of the best graphics I've seen in a STALKER game. Even all the weathers, from sunny to banging lightning, were amazing to look at. However, there were some problems with textures. The inventory textures were sometimes too small and sometimes some textures wouldn't load. Despite the little texture flickering in some areas and Barkeep looking like an oompa loompa now, the graphics in L.E.G.E.N.D.A.R.Y were very good!
 The audio area of the mod was pretty much fantastic, too. The new gun sounds were powerful and the new mutant sounds were horrific. The ambient noises and soundtrack were a bit too silent, though. In some areas, the soundtrack even seemed disabled.
 Before playing L.E.G.E.N.D.A.R.Y and knowing the mod has combined Faction Wars with AMK + OL storyline, then you would expect madness. What did the mod offer? Complete, utter madness. The gameplay was so unbalanced, that on my playthrough, I already had a scoped and silenced SIG-550 in the very first Cordon area, thanks to random mercenary and Monolith bodies hanging around. Whilst it was indeed fun to observe the patrolling ecologist and Freedom squads, it got annoying to suddenly have a bandit squad, that spawned 3 seconds ago, gunning you down. You could actually see the new squads suddenly spawning in front of you sometimes. Thankfully, there are other much better features, like the weapons. With the Arsenal RC 3, you can expect lots and lots of weapons (over 300 really). All the sounds, models, textures and animations of the weapons were polished and amazing. I have no idea why did they have to add AMK, though. There were little to no radio messages and nobody wants the jelly screen, the randomized anomaly placements (thank you, Fortuna, for placing one anomaly right in front of Sids bunker) and the ever-lasting blowouts. Also, thanks to adding in Oblivion Lost, you also got the worlds most anti-climactic ending - having to walk back from CNPP-2 into Freeplay. Luckily, the neat on-screen subtitles to all heard dialogue and the original Russian cutscenes were a very pleasant extra to the mod!
 After all this squad mess, there was also the general AI which, in short, was hopeless. Sometimes the enemies would kill you from a hundred metres with an SMG in one shot and sometimes they'd stare at you with a blank stare, probably asking you "What are you waiting for?". The bandit AI was so incredibly dumb, that they even had exo-skeletons to maybe make up their stupidity. The NPCs really didn't want you to immerse. It didn't also help keep your nerves that somehow NPC's started throwing grenades every 20 seconds and SOMEHOW, every other enemy NPC had gotten hold of a rocket launcher now, which they very happily fired at you from a medium distance. However, the NPC's were extremely good at another thing, too - looting the people you had killed, before you can loot them. Mark my words, they are champions at that.
 In the stability department, the mod did okay. The mod liked to stutter and freeze a lot every now and then, though and after the X-18 and X-16 cutscenes, you got a blank screen and you had to reload a save, but with quick loadtimes, one crash and a few bugs, I can safely say that the mod is stable.
 I think I know where L.E.G.E.N.D.A.R.Y was going for - a fun, carefree modpack consisting of many major fun mods and elements. Unfortunately in L.E.G.E.N.D.A.R.Y, these elements didn't quite fit and as a result, the mod lost in many gameplay aspects, like the general atmosphere with the faction war madness. The most enjoyable aspects of L.E.G.E.N.D.A.R.Y were the lovely graphics and the gun porn.

 6.5 / 10 - A test version, that clearly is a test version. Maybe someday this mod might become legendary..

(the mod can be downloaded from the Anon's Almost Complete STALKER Mod Repository)