God damnit I can't wait to finish the Caspian. Metro and it's quirks, man...
Every time I play NG+ I make the mistake of leaving the added weathers on. Awesome in the volga and the forest, but in the caspian, it means visibility-crippling sandstorms every 3 minutes... that also affect everything inside. Whether you are trying to explore or do missions, it can make things borderline unplayable. I was driving through the main valley when one hit that was so bad that I had a literal foot of visibility. And it locked in. I left it for 30 minutes and it stayed. I had to leave the valley to make it stop. Which took another 10 minutes just bumping into walls and obstacles. Even when you're driving straight into a wall, you can't see it! It's hard to even know if you're still moving or trying to phase into another dimension through the cliffside, because all you see is orange. And then there's the twitchy van. And then there's the tower fight where the guys below you have the ability to one-shot you in the face before you can see them. I also don't appreciate how some of the guys you kill in that slog of an unbalanced long-range fight disappear by the time you get there to loot them.
And then, there's the fucking cracked ship, which I guess is forever bugged. I'm stuck in there now, not really expecting to fight every enemy in there, so I'm torn. I might actually just leave, drive across the world to clean weapons, and come the hell back. They're all stuck out of position, just standing in weird place and not doing their routines. And there are dark spots where my light sensor is sticking on and I get spotted through cover... the path to the switches. Never had a problem there before but now the game seems to think it's a bright, open space. I can't get in to the main area at all without being spotted like I'm in an open field.
Also, the lights are bugged badly. If you go and turn off the lights, save, and reload, the lights will forever be on. The switches are still off. You can switch them on and off again, but the lights stay on. So if you screw up, you have to load back and do the entire level over again, or try to kill everyone in there from the worst spot.
I'm all for a challenge, but the reward at the end doesn't match and it basically amounts to an hour of time lost and frustration trying to trigger it to work like it's supposed to and one shotting the whole steal run. I mean, it's actually broken so lol. The boss fight at the end, I can somewhat forgive, even if he has at times eaten every single shotgun round I can carry. Those juggernauts just suck, man. Unless you have the exact right thing, you may not even be able to beat them. You could get stuck there forever. Or just leave after fighting through the bulk of the level and miss the actual reward.
I could list so many more things I've come to really hate about the Caspian. It's mostly good. But when it's bad, it's a fucking awful experience.
EDIT: Alright, now it's just messing with me. After leaving, coming back, and almost getting spotted, the enemies in the ship finally resumed their dialogue and went to their spots. The light bug is always still a thing but with solid snake skills and a few f-bombs, I made it. Shot the juggernaut in the nuts with 8 incendiary tikhar, ~10 shotgun shells, and another 12 or so 7.62mm rounds. Not bad, honestly. I didn't have to break out the molotovs and kill the slave on the floor. Let em all out. Went back to the train again and switched some weapons for the fight at the last outpost before you reach the oil rig.
When I was approaching, the scripted sandstorm didn't trigger. There's always a sandstorm so you can't easily snipe them. Weird... I walked up slowly, expecting to get ripped into, but it was DESERTED! There's usually 8 or so dudes there. But this time there was only loot. Never ever seen that before. I figure this is fine, even though I'm miffed because that's a profitable fight for ammo and stuff. I'm also experiencing the disappearing red-dot glitch on this play through so I needed to scrounge a couple. Doesn't matter... almost to Taiga and I'm counting my blessings that it's speeding that up. Run back to where my van is and start driving towards the rig. Hit a little dip, maybe a foot or so deep and 3 feet wide. Die instantly and camera does double corkscrew INSIDE the van. WHAT?! WHAT?!
Hold on... autosave loads me back in the middle of the outpost. Only now there are enemies ready to instantly murder me to death, which they do. I watch as the triggered sandstorm begins to whirl and the screen goes red. Cool/not cool.
Load my manual save, drive back, bad guys are where they should be, kill them, loot spot. I am now on course for the oil rig. It's a short trek and I am all nerves for it at this point thinking about what might happen when I go inside. WTF have they been doing with these updates?
![Laugh :laugh: :laugh:](https://tpucdn.com/forums/data/assets/smilies/laugh-v1.gif)
How do I play this a good half-dozen times and never encounter any of this?