Honestly, this game is so good when you don't have a ♥♥♥♥♥ in your ear telling you it's bad

This game is amazing, but there's already a thousand reviews telling you that, so I want to quickly talk about the massive modding scene this game, specifically, has.

If you go to google and search for "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly", you will find a link to a moddb page that has a FREE download for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly mod, which is a mod for this game. Basically, it is a fanmade engine update for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that was much needed. It also adds a lot of new things and has a far larger map than any of the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, as it's pretty much all of the maps from the 3 games merged into one, and it works amazingly. It also features a main story that is 3 (+1 bonus) chapters long, and while these questlines won't be winning any awards, they definitely kept me sufficiently interested to keep exploring the zone, and also provide some answers to some questions the original trilogy left, though they're obviously fanmade theories and not actually canon.

I will say though, play the original trilogy first, if only to support the devs. A 4th game should also be releasing later this year, so now is the perfect time to get stuck in.

Now things get interesting, mods on mods on mods.

On ModDB there are a ton of mods that you can install ontop of stalker anomaly, which add new animations, areas, weapons, questlines, etc. Though if manually modding games isn't your thing, there are also lots of modpacks that completely overhaul the game in various ways. The main one I want to gush about for a moment is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. G.A.M.M.A.. This FREE modpack has given me the most entertainment I've had while playing any video game for years. Seriously. No games core gameplay loop has gripped me by the balls like G.A.M.M.A. has. It is, for me, the perfect single player FPS experience, and it is entirely free, though it is like ~200gb to install (<100gb after installation).
One downside with G.A.M.M.A. however, is that it does not like to run well sometimes, as it is a collection of hundreds of mods. I have an RTX 3060, Ryzen 7 5700X +32gb of RAM, which is by no means any sort of super computer but seems like it should be sufficient, however it will still have times where it struggles running G.A.M.M.A., though these are only ever dips down to 40-50fps for about a minute max, then it usually smoothens out again. A YouTuber named "Cheeki Breeki" has a great video detailing how to squeeze the most fps out of G.A.M.M.A. that you should check out if you're interested in playing the game.
There are also other modpacks available for download, some better than others, but after playing a good chunk of them, I can say that, at least for me, G.A.M.M.A. is the best I've played, though the rest are absolutely still worth a go. G.A.M.M.A. is also massively customisable, with a ton of mods that you can enable/disable inside of MO2 after you have it all downloaded. "Cheeki Breeki" also has a great install guide. *

Anyway, all in all, Grok and the rest of the G.A.M.M.A. team have done great work compiling and creating their modpack, and it offers a beautifully brutal experience like no other game I've played, and I cannot recommend it enough for fans of difficult First Person Shooters.

TLDR: The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy is amazing, but it can be better with mods. Try out S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly and, if you have a decent PC, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. G.A.M.M.A.

*EDIT: The GAMMA Discord now has an official channel for optimising the game, and should help get the game to run on weaker PCs. It has a ton of steps that are very detailed and easy to follow so check that out if you're interested.
EDIT2: There's a new anomaly mod called "AOEngine" that further optimises the game's engine. It's still early in release but it essentially helps the game properly utilise multi-threading (along with other fixes) so you get more mileage from your CPU. BE WARNED: The mod is not open source, which might not seem like a huge deal but it does raise concerns about safety and longevity. It's also still in very early development (released a couple of months ago, only on version 0.4.5) so crashes are expected, for some guaranteed, but it should be the thing that helps boost performance the most once all issues are ironed out.
It's worth trying but if you are truly concerned about the closed source nature (understandably) then you can avoid it for now, hopefully the devs decide to change their mind and open it up, especially with how modding is quite the group effort sometimes.
If you are interested, as with most anomaly mods, you can find the download on ModDB, just google "Stalker AOEngine" and it should be the first thing you see.

Game is good, you should buy it.

very good horror game and still holds up to this day, also a very fun speed game if you're into that

gay

played for a minute or 2, seems alright

Ok, so this game is ♥♥♥♥ tons of fun... with friends.
If you don't have friends to play with, build and advance in the game. But without them, it is pretty, boring and/or difficult.
The main 2 reasons this game can be ♥♥♥♥ at times are:
The community is cancer. People will gun you down even if you are a fresh spawn or with ♥♥♥♥ tons of loot. This game can be so tense and fun sometimes. I remember I was playing with a friend and we were at the top of a light house. He looked down and thought he saw someone. I didn't believe him. I wanted to go down but he told me not to. We were sitting there for about 5/10 minutes. Then we heard footsteps. We then sat in fear for another 10 minutes. I pulled out a gun when I heard the footsteps right below us. He climbed up a ladder and I gunned him down.
Me and the same friend were once again at a lighthouse. I saw a plane and we focused on that for a bit. We then got shot in the head 2 minutes later. Although that doesn't sound like fun, it is now a very fond memory we both have. Now these are just 2 examples of the thousands of good stories about this game we now have.
The other bad part is the fact that there is no single player, or tutorial. The game places you down in a world and goes "Here you go. Have fun"
"But... I don't know how to play"... At this point the game never talks to you again.

Now the good stuff:
This game is so much fun.
It provides you with so many memories.
Progressing is one of best thing I've experienced.
You just lose track of time playing this game.
It gets updated frequently, and doesn't show signs of stopping any time soon.
It looks beautiful.

I highly recommend this game. Some of the best £15 I've ever spent.

You can get naked AND listen to a sick jukebox. 122/10

Ok I have alot to say.

This game is fun, VERY FUN (especially with friends)

But there needs to be ALOT OF NERFING. People like Viktor, Tyra, Kinessa, Buck and Torvald need to be nerfed and soon.

They require no skill what so ever. Every game I play someone on the enemy team will be Victor and you WILL GET DESTROYED! I don't know how they think it's appropriate to have someone that does so much damage.

Buck is basically Viktor but with a shotgun. 3 shots and you're dead, unless you're Torvald, which brings me on to my next point.

Torvald is INSANELY OP. He has a shield which is way too durable. It takes so long to destroy and by the time you do destroy it, you've already died 5 times.

It's basically the same for all the other characters I've listed above.

It may seem like I hate this game right now, but I don't and here's why:
It's insanely fun to play with friends.
It's comunitity is pretty friendly.
Characters are fun to play as (my favourite being the flank ones (mostly Androxus and Skye))
This game is like Overwatch but free.
IT'S FREE!!!!!
Coming up with a stratagy to win is so much fun.
And tons tons more.

I must say though, if you hate OP characters, wait until they get nerfed.