CHEEKI BREEKI

It has its flaws, like bugs and some awkward design choices, but it also improves on Shadow of Chernobyl in key areas. I really like the faction system, where groups actively fight for control. The AI is smarter, and the world feels more dynamic. It’s not perfect, but the variety in missions and the deeper world-building make it a solid prequel to the original.

There's definitely some fun to be had, but most of this game is complete and utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Even with mods to fix the bugs, issues are still there, and additional mods are required to alter gameplay. The gameplay itself is a worse version of Shadow of Chernobyl with mechanics from Call of Pripyat, with exploration and side content feeling like procedurally generated Ubisoft stuff. Every side quest in Call of Pripyat had some story behind it and usually formed a quest line that, upon completion, awarded you with special items, daily items, and reputation from factions. In Clear Sky, 90% of the side content is: "HEY, I LOST THAT GUITAR, GO THERE, PICK IT UP AND COME BACK TO ME, RETRIEVE THE 500 RUBLES AND GET LOST." Remember that fun game Call of Pripyat where every area you entered had stashes (even whole storage rooms), mutants, NPCs with some fun tasks, or anomaly fields, and the exploration was just encouraging? Well, forget about it now. It's completely not worth it to explore; anomalies are scattered around random fields with nothing on them, every NPC is copied and pasted, and only a few NPCs on this big map give you tasks. Stashes spawn only if you get information about them, so there's no point in searching for them. Also, they scrapped the system where you had to find toolkits for technicians to get better mods. Before, you had to search in logical places and ask random stalkers for them. Now, this exploration aspect is gone and replaced by a system where you randomly loot USB sticks from stashes and bodies. Have fun ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The only good things I can say about this game are that Clear Sky is a really cool faction, they added Renegades, and the Swamps are the best addition to the SoC map ever. The Red Forest is also kinda neat. The only stuff that makes this game worth suffering through is that you get to know some nice lore, you get introduced to the SoC story better, and the faction wars with the supplies system are nice.

Not as bad as people say, pretty fun even. Seems like most of it is a skill issue ngl

For story, play this first. For release date, play this 2nd.

I think I understand why so many hate on this game. To start, yes the bleed mechanic is super annoying and adds nothing to the gameplay besides annoyance, it doesn't make the gun fights any more tense it just makes them frustrating due to having to use 400,000 bandages for 1 gunshot wound. Speaking of frustrating, it feels as if they made the guns less accurate and even after upgrading an AK74 to max for accuracy it still wasn't hitting ♥♥♥♥ at 30 yards.

over all I tried to enjoy this game and even resorting to minor mods to improve those frustrating elements just for not much to change. it mostly felt like I was rolling a dice every time I pulled the trigger just for a npc to hit me multiple times with a shotgun at 25 yards mean while the bullets from my ak were seemingly exiting the barrel at 90 degrees.

I would either suggest to skip this one entirely or play it heavily modded (which I might do in the future)

Even with my purist philosophy, which advocates playing old games as vanilla as possible, I cannot recommend playing this one without mods. The shooting mechanics, the economy, the "faction war"—all of the game design is simply broken or unfinished. However, with a mod like ABR, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky can truly shine.

The only stalker i didn't finish, until today.

If you want to have a great time, don't play on master diff. It was brutal in the end, but in the most unfair funny way.
AI shoot at walls to hit you, going around corners and insta double headshots you. In the same time it got very funny when you teleport on top of a building in the end and monolit just teleport around you and you didn't even know where to go and what to shoot first. It was a missing piece from my gaming archive and i'm glad i finished with it.

The bullet trajectory and jamming in this game is like my life. Never in the right place at the right time.

Honestly just play one of the other STALKER games - unless you want to mod the ever living hell out of this game.

Faction Wars was and still is terrible, a gargantuan time sink and a pure distraction from the game after the 8th time the bandits attack the depot and the stalker/loner group gets stuck in a tunnel/rock/house and can't get reinforce. That is until you get near them they magically unstuck themselves and 3-6 bandit squads have already spawned in the depot behind you..... just skip this game and watch a video synopsis.

Also ♥♥♥♥ THAT mission. Any RPG that takes EVERYTHING from me randomly through the game can just go straight to jail.