S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Most polished stalker game to date, with all the bells and whistles of what makes the original trilogy strong truly mastered. It does have its own atmosphere and is kind of easier compared to the 2 earlier ones, but is most accessible and fleshed out.

Degtyarev is also a cool, character and just like the other 2, he offers yet another new and unique perspective/ experience of the zone, with his own motivations as a cool kgb undercover agent who is not afraid to get his hands dirty and assimilate with tha localz.

Call of Pripyat is one of those game that people just seem to miss. Extremely atmospheric game that definitely deserves to be given a chance. This game feels like the fully realized, polished version of two previous games. Don’t get me wrong - i loved entire franchise, but they was undeniably rough around the edges in many ways.
Starting with its predecessors gave me the foundation i needed to really hit the ground running in this one. Absolutely golden!

Better than stalker 2 at the moment.
I got the game on sale and man it's kinda a blast.
If the issues with performance don't get fixed on stalker 2 then just get this instead and install some mods that make the game look better and add better textures for guns and add animations.

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out"

Even though this is janky XRay engine we all know and love, you're still better off playing this with mods than trying to run STALKER 2 that is built on an abomination of an engine also known as Unreal Engine 5.

Replaying this game lifted my migraine from playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2



I feel so much better now, thank god for this game.

What a beautiful game. They figured out the perfect execution for a 'Stalker' game with this one. I am not saying the previous two titles were bad, but this one does everything right and much better. The artifacts, side quests, spookiness, main story, and various mobs - it felt like they blended everything together masterfully and displayed it in the Stalker universe.

I was planning to rush through the trilogy before hopping into Stalker 2, but CoP stopped me from doing that. I ended up completing each and every side quest in this game and made both factions happy. I had Atmos and Gunslinger mods installed, which I highly recommend. There were moments when I walked through the regions just to admire the atmosphere.

It's one of the best FPS Story games out there. If you're planning to rush through trilogy: You can play SoC, skip Clear Sky or even skip both the games, look up a story recap on Youtube and then hop into CoP. But yeah, definitely play this one.

Of all the trilogy (before Stalker 2 was released), Call of Pripyat has the best open world, stalking, weapon / armor mechanics there are the best.

Perhaps, the plot doesn't hold you as it did in SoC, however, exploring the Zone is fascinating.

If you love eurojunk (or something close to post apocalypse), consider playing Call of Pripyat after completing Shadow of Chernobyl. You can skip Clear Sky, won't miss a thing.

great game that i played as a kid on a crappy computer. now i have a gaming computer and its even better. Roughly 30 hours of game play to get the story line and most side quests done, so its not too long but you can definitely play longer to get more achievements. Highly recommend.

An impressive game that combines the strengths of its predecessors, SOC and CS.

Listen here, rookie. I’ve got 1,000 hours in Call of Pripyat. My soul is more irradiated than a glowing artifact, and my blood type is now officially “vodka.” The Zone isn’t just a place; it’s a lifestyle. Buckle up because I’m about to share wisdom forged in the fires of blowouts and snork ambushes.

Step One: You Are But a Babushka in the Zone
First things first, toss out any notions of “winning.” The Zone doesn’t care about you. Your starter pistol? A joke. Your first mission? A death sentence. Think you’re hot stuff with your shiny new anomaly detector? Joke’s on you—it’s leading you into a gravity well. But don’t worry, Beard’s got your back with an offer to trade your left kidney for some expired bread and a bandage.

Spreadsheets are Sexy
Real stalkers live in Excel. You think you’re playing a game, but no—you’re curating a personal database of artifact spawn points, NPC schedules, and anomaly patterns. My desktop is 70% Zone spreadsheets, 20% anomaly maps, and 10% memes about “Cheeki Breeki.” I have macros for calculating artifact profitability, and I consider this fun. Are you even in the Zone if you’re not alt-tabbing between Jupiter factory blueprints and artifact auction price trends?

The Three Rules of Zone Combat
Always Save: Quick-save before every encounter, every conversation, every sneeze. You WILL accidentally step on a landmine or aggro an entire bandit camp because you sneezed too loud IRL.
Never Waste Ammo: Your bullets are worth more than your life. If you’re out of AP rounds, congrats—you’re now a pacifist in a zone full of mutants.
Aim for the Knees: Forget headshots. Mutants don’t care about headshots. Knees? Knees make snorks crumble like Zone breadsticks.
Artifacts: The Zone’s Lootbox System
Artifacts are the Zone’s love language. You’ll sprint into a death anomaly for one, lose half your health, and chug vodka like a champ to recover. But when you sell it to Owl for enough rubles to buy a rusty AK, it feels worth it. My artifact loadout is optimized to turn me into a tank with negative 10 stamina. Who needs to run when you can tank a bloodsucker head-on?

Guru Level: Zone Whisperer
After 1,000 hours, I don’t just survive the Zone; I AM the Zone. I can predict blowouts based on the way the clouds shift. I know NPCs by their walk cycles and can recite every Cheeki Breeki bandit taunt. Once, I cleared out a Monolith base with a knife and a dream because I forgot to buy ammo, and honestly? It was exhilarating.

Community Memes to Embrace
“Get out of here, Stalker!” is a lifestyle, not a phrase.
Every anomaly is a friend you haven’t been exploded by yet.
Bloodsuckers? Just vodka enthusiasts looking for a cuddle.
The Zone’s economy is a pyramid scheme, and you’re always on the bottom.
The Final Guru Tip
You don’t play Call of Pripyat. The game plays you. It breaks you down until you become a mutated spreadsheet goblin who eats radiation for breakfast and prays to the RNG gods for a Bear detector. But when you finally step out of the Zone and hear a real-life bird chirping, you’ll miss it. You’ll miss the constant danger, the thrill of hunting artifacts, and the sheer, unrelenting chaos.

And then you’ll go back in for just one more round. After all, rookie, the Zone never truly lets you leave.

TL;DR: 1,000 hours in Call of Pripyat turned me into a vodka-drinking, spreadsheet-making anomaly whisperer, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is the best game in the franchise. And the reason why it's the best is they didn't make it into a theme park or a guided tour through the 60 square kilometers of land that's an empty wasteland outside of the main story. Instead, CoP limits its scope to just 3 locations: Zaton, Jupiter and Pripyat (with the latter mostly endgame one), but each of them has several times the content depth.

Due to having to spend most of your time within the two locations, it works wonders for your experience. You no longer have to travel very long distances between objectives, and guides (that serve as fast travel) are available not only at major hubs but can be random stalkers and can move you to any location within the area. Every location is filled with things to do and oftentimes has some quests associated with it. Anomalies are mostly kept to dedicated areas and you don't really encounter them traversing the map, leading to the ability to move around faster and less equipment degradation.

This "less is more" approach is characteristic of the whole game. CoP doesn't have dozens of redundant armor suits to pick from, but what it features has a purpose and oftentimes comes with unique upgrades aimed to distinguish the suit from everything else. Same goes for weapons - in fact, there is a trader Nimble you encounter very early on, who can get you a lot of cool stuff provided you've got money for it. This way very little content ends up gated behind story progression.

The story is a bit sidelined in this one in favor of side quests and side quest chains, and this works wonders for this game. There are oftentimes 2 or 3 ways you can approach quests, and you get in-game achievements for your actions - achievemnts that have tangible impact, like change in reputation, better prices and even unique stock at traders, not accessible otherwise. All of it gives the game a lot of replayability, which is made feasible due to the fact main story doesn't take some 100 hours to clear (looking at you, Heart of Chornobyl).

As for issues, this one definitely has some, so let's list them quickly:
1) It's dated. Duh. Grab some visual mods and a 4gb patch. Maybe a weapon pack.
2) Tier 3 upgrades for weapons and suits (read - most interesting ones) are not available until you reach Pripyat.
3) While it's the first and so far only Stalker game to feature "freeplay" after the story ends, it's very bare-bones with little things to do.

2 and 3 combined lead to a reality where you want to rush through the story ASAP and save the side quests for last, because otherwise you're locking yourself out of some cool set pieces to use your weapons at - and outside of those set pieces, the game doesn't feature a lot.

Overall, CoP is the closest Stalker series ever got to a world you'd want to live in rather than visit, to a game not unlike Skyrim or Fallout 4. It's a shame Stalker 2 decided to go back to its roots as opposed to further improving the formula found in this one.

Absolutely golden. Didn't get it on my first playthrough, quit early and started again from scratch. I got it, one of the most fun games I've ever played. Some of the enemy AI is a bit weird but that doesn't ruin the fun.

an amazing game once you get into it. It has a large learning curve but once you get use to the look and feel of the game, it is amazing and you just keep looking forward to the rest of the game. I want to say i did everything i could in a single playthrough and it took me almost 18 hours.

With a more unique approach compared to the first two games, Call Of Pripyat makes its mark with the more realistic aspects and actually making the side characters count for something.
This time around, you're in the shoes of a military undercover?(i dont remember) major, the faction that used to be your enemy in the first 2 games and now you're a part of it, and in its leading positions nonetheless, the soldiers you meet helping you and repairing your equipment for free and providing you with ammunition for free as well.
The exploration feels more dull than the other games, because a lot of the map is empty, and the locations you can go into feel little in number.
The sidequests however, do have an effect on the other npc's and count for my favorite part of the game, which was the ending, with a Witcher 3 approach, way before Witcher 3 was even released, showing how the world and the other characters changed and went forward after the events of the game, events which your character mainly affected.

Without further ado, this is a game worth picking up, especially now, if your PC does not meet the requirements for Stalker 2 xP (and until it gets optimized).

Good game, the UI is better then the other two but in my opinion it had things that lacked from the two... I beat the game and had less deaths!

Really good game, bought this 6 years ago and never played. Randomly decided to play it now and it's really good. It feels like Fallout, but in Ukraine. For 2010 the graphics still look good when it's fully maxed out. I like it a lot. 8/10. Badass game.

Not my favorite, but objectively the most refined of the three. It's a shame that a lot of detail was sacrificed to make the open world locations possible. The game definitely deserves a patch to fix such limitations.

My actual hours won't show since I use Mod Organizer to mod this game for best experience but with that it's the best thing ever. Can't wait for stalker 2 to come out in few days!

• The first thing that caught my attention in this game after the previous two games is that when you are going to do a task or while progressing in the story, the game does not show you everything directly; it wants you to do some research and find some things on your own. This situation can be very enjoyable for some people, but quite boring for others. In my opinion, they have done this situation very well and when we look at the general reviews, it seems that many people have enjoyed it.

• As for the story, as in the whole series, it progresses quite enjoyable in this one as well and makes you experience that atmosphere very nicely. As I mentioned earlier, we try to solve many mysteries ourselves, which adds a different effect to the story.

• When we look at the technical side of the game, the mechanics are exactly the same as the previous two games. The graphics also look the same, I can only say that the lighting has been improved a little in the last two games. Most importantly, the optimization problems I experienced in the previous game have been fixed in this game. The only problem I encountered: when I died once in the last part of the game and started from the last save point again, the characters we were moving with remained motionless. This is a small bug in my opinion, so it's not a problem because the game continued when I moved towards where I needed to go.

• In conclusion, I can say that all three games are quite comprehensive for the time they were released, easy to learn, have a great storytelling, and have dialogues and atmosphere that draw you in. I'm excitedly waiting to play the new game in the series. I recommend buying the three-pack and playing them in order. My score is 9/10.

Have Fun!

Definitely best in the series so far, absolute gem, a lot of fun and a true experience. The characters are much more fleshed out, the world is smaller but a lot better to explore and work in.

Despite being fourteen years old, this game is very well rounded. Good gunplay, straightfoward mechanics, awesome lore and a great game world that really sucks you in from the start. I originally picked this up from guilt of having never finished it, even though I had played lots of anomaly. I gotta say I thoroughly enjoy this more than any of the mods now. I encourage anyone who is fascinated by this series to give it a try. Very hopeful for what's to come of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

It's so hard to decide, but this might be my favorite of the original STALKER Trilogy, if only by a hair. It's so far removed from SoC's tight narrative and multiple small interconnected levels with their own unique personality-- replaced with a much looser story meant to be a setup for STALKER 2, and fewer, much larger mini open-world levels.

This can be a divisive change depending on if you're an old fan or not, but I think it works well for this game. The open-world in this game is suited to be a lot more replayable, with anomalies constantly respawning artifacts of different rarities after blowouts/emissions, a ton of cleverly hidden stashes, and a ton of (VERY good) side quests that take you around to more hidden parts of the maps. The entire "feel" of the game is different for this, which is why I like both games nearly as much. STALKER SoC has that really nice early 2000's tight handcrafted feel with a very bright and colorful but dirty art style. CoP has much sparser POIs due to it's open world and loses a bit of that hand-crafted feel, and it's art style is much greyer/brown as well that hits a good "rusted out and irradiated" vibe. It's all push and pull, and luckily you can play both games depending on what you want to get from them.

Compared to Clear Sky, this game jerks the gameplay back into a different direction. CS played a lot more like a modern shooter with very low TTK for both you and enemies, but CoP almost overdoes it in the other way and makes it more like Shadow of Chernobyl but easier. You can find great weapons and armor early on if you're exploring that you very well could use the rest of the game, and the issue is that it makes any upgrades feel very underwhelming. If you find a TRs-301 (M4A1 really) very early and use it for the entire game if you wish. The rest of the 5.56x45 weapons by extension feel like they're barely better, especially when headshots is still the name of the game. None of this makes the game any less fun, but it makes some of the highs of the game less high than they could be. You still die very quickly no matter what. Even in an exosuit a couple snorks can take you down if you get slowed by one, and many of the mutants are still very resistant to bullets, even if you have the turbo-fuck-you 600rpm assault rifle.

Story-wise, not much to write home about. As mentioned above, it was VERY clearly meant to be a setup to the 2012 STALKER 2. It looks like it still is, considering the new actually releasing version of STALKER 2 has Strider in it as seemingly prominent character. The story has you playing as a Major of the Ukrainian Security Service investigating why a military operation on the zone to contain it had failed so horribly. And the reason for it that you discover at the end is very underwhelming, and you if you're observant enough you might understand why pretty early on lol, as it becomes very obvious in hindsight. The real meat is the side characters you meet. Setting up who the big players will be in the center of the Zone with the quests you do, assuming you choose to be good instead of helping bandits and shit (and assuming the good endings become canon). They all have fun quests and the characters all have good personality and (written) dialogue. I was shocked.

Overall very fun game.
Took me years to actually beat the game, I always ran out of steam by the time I get to Pripyat, but this was my first STALKER game that I owned and I'm glad to see my nostalgia for the first two areas held up pretty well.

I'd give this one a 9/10.
STALKER 2 in 3 days as of writing babey.
God I hope it's good.

Great classic, this game surpasses previous games in technical terms, if in previous parts by the end you get tired and want to speedrun the game, then with this game it is not so, I played it with pleasure but the very end. I hope they will make a remake or remaster of the original trilogy

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (2010)

How about that name of this title, huh? Call of Pripyat. Just hearing that should spark your imagination. But i'm slightly getting ahead of myself.

You play as Major Alexander Degtyarev, a Security Service of Ukraine agent who is sent to the Zone to investigate why the helicopters crashed and why Operation Fairway failed as a result. This is the most basic breakdown of the story, anymore than that goes into spoiler territory. CoP is the third Stalker game, so you should really start with Shadow of Chernobyl (the first released Stalker game) or Clear Sky (The second stalker game released, but it's story takes place before SoC.) I'm not going to go into which game you should play first, there are enough hour long video reviews and breakdowns on Youtube if you wish to delve into that philosophy. Logically you should play Shadow of Chernobyl before playing Call of Pripyat. You can play this one on its own, but I don't recommend doing so as you will miss important story setting and the overall feel of the Stalker games.

I know for a lot of people if you ask them which of the Stalker games is their favourite they will most likely say Shadow of Chernobyl and that makes sense, it's a very good and classic game by today's standards. I have to say my favourite is Call of Pripyat. The game runs extremely well and the guns are less janky then the guns in SoC. The guns are pretty bad is SoC, there are times where you will stand against a bandit and empty your clip into his head and he will not go down. Now it feels if your bullets actually make contact with what you are shooting, so that's a welcome change.

It took me a while to understand the map as this was also changed compared to the previous titles. You have three massive maps to explore. In the previous titles you traveled from map to map with loading screens, now you can go where you want to without that unless you enter an area. This open map feeling was a good change. To add a ever present feeling of dread, there are emissions that happen in the Zone. I'm going to describe it as an angry dangerous shockwave of Zone energy that wishes to kill all who don't seek shelter immediately. Let me tell you - being out in the field while you are fighting mutants and you hear the guy over the radio telling you to find shelter and you see your nearest shelter is quite a way off is not fun.

There is plenty to do in the game, lots of quests to complete. They added an achievement system in the game, where if you perform certain quests with certain outcomes you will receive an achievement and it gives you some gameplay benefits for doing so. Unfortunately you do not get a Steam achievement as well as CoP does not have any, it would be cool though. The game's ending is much like the Fallout games - the narrator will go through all your actions and comment on it, what you do and what you didn't do. You can collect artefacts to increase your stats. You find these buy exploring anomalies. Dangerous, but worth it as artefacts are extremely good to have and you can sell the ones you don't want or need for a lot money.

Call of Pripyat's final map to explore is... well, the city of Pripyat. You do get to explore the city in SoC, but for me personally it never sat right. It feels more like a detour there. I know my opinion will be different here compared to most people but I always felt that Pripyat deserved more then quick detour you take through it in SoC. This game breaks it down a bit, they give you a reason to explore the town with points of interest. This game made it truly special to be there. I have to add that I love history, so to be able to walk around Pripyat felt special - yes, it is a video game and not the real city, but who cares? I get to explore.

Call of Pripyat at the end of the day is just more Stalker if that makes sense, If you loved the previous games, I have no doubt you will find something to enjoy in this one. If you are preparing for Stalker 2, please give all the previous Stalker games a go. They are old and clunky compared to the games of today but hell are they worth it. I only recall watching a teaser trailer for CoP and was sceptical back in the day, but now that I have played it myself I have to admit this is a really good and fun game.

9/10

Normally this would be where I end my review but I have to give a shoutout to a very special mod. The mod is called Stalker Anomaly. There is really no better place to talk about it then here. This is a mod that combines all three Stalker game's map into one map, connecting them all. You can choose which faction you want to play as, and let me tell you, all the factions are there. They added like a thousand new items to the game, new ammo types, new food, new medicine. They improved the crafting and armour upgrade system. The Zone feels alive and changes with each new game you play. The graphics is improved to the max, it looks amazing. They have their own story you can choose to follow. This mod is free to download, I highly recommend you check it out if you finished the Stalker games and want more of that Stalker experience, but on your terms. Happy hunting, Stalker.

Caution: You may have trouble operating this game on Windows 10 and 11. I could not get it to work as it just hasn't been updated.

With that said however, there are third party fixes, and mods you can find to help with that. But, I cannot recommend this steam version, unless you know what you are doing, and want to invest the time.

I recommend to get it on GOG, and it will be pre-configured to work properly.

I took shelter in a rusted out shipwreck, in the center of a valley. The zone was going through some kind of radioactive storm. In the distance, I watched a bandit being chased across the valley by abominations, on his way to safety. He made it to the ship, took up refuge across from me. He did not raise his weapon against me--we just waited it out together.

This game creates such moments like that. Very janky, but very atmospheric and fun for it's 20-30 hour runtime. None of these games are much like Roadside Picnic, but I'm not really bothered by that. They're great for what they are.

The 'emission' storms are honestly genius. Every great memory I have of this game comes from them. There's a heist mission, steal something from a bunch of bandits and get out safely. I did this while underlevel--tried to be stealthy, but was caught on my way out. They chased me, guns blazing--almost got me, but the emission started and they turned back to take cover. I was out there, unsheltered, and made my way into a cave--filled with monsters in gasmasks. Fun times.

One of the greatest games of all time, bar none. HOWEVER you should buy it NOW, even though S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is less than a week away (for real this time!) because xrMPE just made finished their CO-OP mod!!! You can play the whole campaign co-op with up to four players. And if you already own the game, go get it now! The mod is FREE!!

https://www.xrmpe.online/

Nice classic game. Not very hard (or maybe it's just me), but still very enjoyable.

I jumped into this right after S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, and honestly, this game feels like the fully realized, polished version of its predecessors. Don’t get me wrong—I loved Shadow of Chernobyl, but it was undeniably rough around the edges in many ways. This game, on the other hand, is just as immersive without needing a guide to get through it. It’s well-crafted and a blast to play.

That said, I’d still recommend playing the first game before diving into this one. Even though I had mixed feelings about Shadow of Chernobyl, working through its quirks and learning its mechanics made the experience here much smoother. Starting with the original gave me the foundation I needed to really hit the ground running in this one.

This game is comparable to a big wet sloppy kiss straight from Ukraine. It's messy but then again how much better can you get than a big wet sloppy kiss.

Clear Sky would be the best game in the franchise for the map. Call of Pripyat is the best for literally everything else. The game only offers three zones. Pripyat, Skadovsk and Jupiter plant Areas.

This game still holds up today 2024 even without mods. Playing this cause the excitement that Stalker 2 is finally going to be released is too much.

The atmosphere of this game is amazing for a game that came out in 2010! The game systems and player choice is amazing! You are literally just dropped in to the zone and it up to you on how and when you complete your objectives. There is very little if any hand holding. There is no yellow paint on how to do anomalies you have to figure it out.

Fantastic improvement from the previous games (Clear Sky especially), they really ironed out a lot of the problems from them and produced probably the most stable and well developed game of the three.

The atmosphere, sound design and music is great, the side missions are very in-depth, the upgrade system is improved off Clear Sky (though could be tweaked a bit more) and the gunplay and general gameplay has been vastly improved. Despite that, It still misses the mark a bit in terms of map layout, having only 3 (although very large) maps, with the tutular Pripyat making up the last 30% of the game, which is another issue. The game is VERY short, without side missions you could probably have this game done in 15 hours or less, which is a bit disappointing. Pripyat in Shadow of Chernobyl was amazing to explore for the first time, and it being much bigger in this game was exciting, but it felt rather underutilised unfortunately as well as the ending sequence of the game feeling very rushed.

Reglardless of my issues, and it not being as iconic as the original Shadow of Chernobyl, this game is still very good, and probably the best one as a game itself.

Моноліт це світло та знання, знання та світло! Він повернеться! Повернеться! В бій, захисники Моноліту, в бій!

An excellent improvement over Shadow of Chernobyl. It significantly expands the sandbox, with new weapons, areas, enemies and plenty of quality of life improvements. It also encourages and rewards player exploration and intuition. A great game, all in all.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is one of the most underrated game series of all time. Never have I ever experienced such amazing combat from any other game, let alone with AI.
It can be a very difficult hame as well, and much to explore in the zone.

So many modifications that have kept this game alive for years and more to come.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is without a doubt my favorite open world survival game. The atmosphere in Shadow of Chernobyl immediately pulled me in unlike any game I’ve played before or since. I’ve even played through Clear sky a couple of times despite not even really liking that game. But Call of Pripyat was one that I just never finished. Maybe it was because by the time I got to it after beating Clear Sky I was burnt out, or maybe it was because I got busy and didn’t return to the series for years, but this one never really did stick to me like the first game did despite many people loving it even more. Call of Pripyat takes a lot of the ambitious mechanics that Clear Sky failed to execute in a satisfying manner and refines them into a much more enjoyable experience, but it does lose a bit of what made the atmosphere of Shadow of Chernobyl so great in the process, and I think this is why I ultimately skip this for simply returning to the original.

Call of Pripyat is an open world survival game that separates itself from the rest of the genre by not requiring engagement with keeping meters full constantly. Time moves at an accelerated rate, but not to the point where you are starving every 30 minutes. Guns wear out after extended use, but they aren’t immediately unreliable once they start to break. And you’re collecting gear to trade instead of raw materials to craft. The gear you have is your progression system and your incentive for exploring. What elevates this is seeing the NPCs that populate the world going through the same situations that you’re experiencing. Stalkers will head into anomaly-riddled areas to hunt for artifacts, bandits will kill groups of stalkers and loot their gear. Even the wildlife will hunt and drag corpses away to feast on them. This has always been a thing in these games, but Call of Pripyat does a better job of showing the NPCs performing these actions, like seeing an artifact hunter actually pull out a detector while his buddy hangs back keeping an eye out for enemies, or a loner pulling out his pistol to execute the last remaining bandit after a failed ambush.

But Call of Pripyat does a few things that undermines this formula. For one, you start off with gear that is too good. Starting with just a Makarov PM and a leather jacket in the original was a brutal start that really made you feel like you were at the absolute bottom of the totem pole. Here, you already start with some decent armor and an AK. Also, bandits start as a neutral faction to you meaning the only real danger to you are mutants, which are usually pretty easy to deal with in the small numbers they come in. And since you can repair and upgrade weapons and armor, there is much less incentive to pick up new weapons to keep going and not much disincentive to just rush in and shoot everything that moves. Areas, while more detailed with less loading screens than in the original, are much smaller and more densely packed. It rarely feels like a journey to get from one side of the map to the other. And while I do appreciate the number of sidequests in the game and the fact that they tie into the ending montage, the majority of them are scripted sequences compared to the more open objectives of the original game. To its credit, you can break the sequences if you wish and kill important NPCs and still finish the game.

The actual plot of these games were never a strong point, but Call of Pripyat spends a lot more time on it. And I don’t think it really works in its favor. The cutscenes are janky as hell and the voice acting is hilariously bad. There is definitely some charm to them, but I’d much prefer to just stay in control of the character. And much like the previous two games, the endgame abandons the appeal of the hours that came before and makes the final area of Pripyat basically just a large combat arena with little incentive for actual exploration. The action finale setpiece in this game is also the weakest with some incredibly low stakes and a low enemy count that is pretty easy to deal with. I do like how the ending montage shows what happens to the important characters that you interact with based on your choices, but I would’ve liked to see those things actually take effect in the world for myself instead of just hearing about it from the narrator.

Now that I’ve finally completed Call of Pripyat, I can definitely see why some people like it the most. It has the best implementation of the survival mechanics and AI of the games, which makes it great to add on to with mods. But as a vanilla experience, I still prefer Shadow of Chernobyl.

Certainly hasn't aged well but that's what mods are for. The original G.O.A.T.

Long story short:
Recommended only if you have already played Shadow of Chernobyl and REALLY enjoyed it.

/TLDR:
Shadow of Chernobyl was and still is a masterpiece, despite its many shortcomings. Such a great game with great atmosphere, great immersion and a great story (even though the solution for the zone mystery it offers is rather underwhelming).

Clear Sky, the prequel, has a nice story too, but it's the exact same story as SoC, with not a lot of new insights into the zone or the characters or really anything. Despite having the better graphics of the three Stalker games, bad design choices and bad mechanics prevented it from being a great or even a good game.

Call of Pripyat, on its turn, has worse graphics than its predecessor and has no story whatsoever, it just sends you on unrelated quests with no overarching narrative. Very little happens that can be considered any relevant, and nothing at all that is connected to the story of the previous games until the very end, and even then it's just an unnecessary and very dull prologue that adds nothing of value to the bigger picture.

I played the first two games in a row and started CoP right away, but I didn't get beyond the first map because, frankly, it felt a bit boring. I tried a second time and once again the game failed at capturing my interest, and I got distracted with other things without getting very far. And so I decided to replay SoC to get the real ending, and played through it in a couple of days. After that I went beack to CoP, this time determined to get beyond the first map, and this time I made it through the entire game. It took me three tries (third time's a charm, as the saying goes). The game has its qualities, but a few aspects made getting into it difficult for me, namely:

• the main character has the charisma of a doornob;
• coming from SoC and CS, CoP starts out (and remains to some extent) really slow and unfocused;
• every quest felt like an optional side-quest I'd rather skip for something more enticing, there was no compelling reason for doing anything the game threw at me for the most part;
• the helicopters' crash investigation must be one of the most boring and pointless main quests ever in a game;
• the absence of any compelling story or objectives gets in the way of immersion;
• the first area is, imo, the least enjoyable and interesting of the three areas the game offers, and you'll spend a lot of time there before you can move on;
• nothing really exciting happens in the game until you get to Pripyat, and even then you can barely call the events taking place there exciting;
• I had to force myself to keep going, waiting for something interesting to happen, and even though the game got immersive at points, it was always sort of on and then off again...

CoP is nothing like SoC in the sense that it kept me "in the zone" until the bitter end, every time. Playing the former was more of a casual, almost bureaucratic affair. It doesn't hold a candle to SoC, people saying it's the best entry in the trilogy are out of their minds...

Why a recommendation, then, if I only had negative things to say about it? Because it's not broken like CS and because there are moments where it shines. It's enjoyable to a degree, and if you already played SoC a couple of times and want to spend some extra time in the zone, it offers an underwhelming but viable means for that.

If you're planning on playing it through, let me suggest that you install a mod that gives your character model a helmet, for it bothered me to no end that the main quest has you acquiring a suit with a closed cycle breathing system, and then the cutscene shows your character going into the poisonous tunnels without his helmet on, because the model never has a helmet on. Nothing like a most irritating Hollywood cliche brought to your niche eastern European game just because...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat is perhaps one of the greatest Trilogy games I've ever played. I wish I could feel how it first felt to load up this game, or Shadow of Chernobyl, without knowing anything about the game. The atmosphere is so persistently terrifying. Zaton, Jupiter, and Pripyat outskirts are perfect new maps that add so much character and depth to the zone. The side quests are so much better than SoC. Please Experience this at least once in your life time.

One of my favorite games. Great atmosphere, graphics are so-so, but the game is interesting. I also highly recommend playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

An immersive game with unpredictable enemies and a reasonable quest plot. good graphics for its age.

This is Call of Pripyat, a game where your starter weapons are so horrendously fucking dogshit that its community spent 15 years convincing themselves that the difficulty must correspond to your outgoing damage. This isn't true. I fell for it- It felt true because I heard this myth right after suffering through the early game and finally getting a weapon that actually DOES do damage, only to change the difficulty to maximum at that exact moment. This meant that once my better weapons were countered by insanely bullet spongey enemies, I got fucking absolutely raped to death by the monolith and really fucking pissed off. Thank Zelensky for your country's aesthetic fuck ass nuclear disaster zone, very cool.

the Sequel of SoC is much more better than the prequel, and somehow stick more on the gloomier tone of the world.

The World has that sense of hopelessness since the events of the 1st game, filled with dry vegetation, anomalies all around, and the stalkers wandering around what to do. The use of exploration from this game shines a lot if you like to find secrets and hunt artifacts. the objectives are a little bit better, but it doesn't hold much interest for me. the side quests are now full-on quests that you can do, rather than fetch quests from the 1st game.

The story is alright, exploring the world to uncover what happened to Stingray squad, finding what happened to the areas, taking out enemies, so on and so forth. It's still linear, but there are still some interesting moments given from the game.

technically, there are few bugs and crashes as always, but it's fine since it didn't cause a lot of major issues to the system.

But, I enjoy this a lot more than clear sky, there are improvements to the gameplay and story, and the world is still interesting to explore.

Holds up so well, the environment is so immersive along with every character in the game feeling like their own little addition to the game. Unlike fallout you can kill major characters and seriously alter how the game is gonna go. If you arent satisfied with the way the game looks theres some fantastic mod packs that make it look beautiful and even add content. pick it up on sale to easily kill a weekend having some fun

A solid single player game. One of my first real horror games, that I completed with full enjoyment. Looking forward to the sequel due November 2024

Survival shooter with some slightly dated mechanics (shooting, some UI elements), but it certainly is a very atmospheric game. Seek cover before the next emission starts!

Survival isn't a given. Equipment will detoriate and there's a (not too punishing) hunger system which influrences your stamina regeneration. However the curious explorer will find enough resources to survive and eventually prosper. Do not forget to check your carry weight limit though as lugging around too much stuff will certainly slow you down. Battles can be lethal and I'm not only referring to human opponents. More than once I was ambushed by mutated wildlife and killed after serious bloodloss. Most animals hunt in packs, so come prepared. The AI is very decent in this game. There's a faction AI and humans *will* patrol borders and help each other out as long as they're on friendly terms. Graphics are a bit dated, but the lighting model is good. When it's night, it is *really* dark. Sound design is decent, focusing mostly on background effects to enhance the atmosphere. I played CoP with two mods, Atmosfear and Absolute Nature to enhance the game's experience.

All around I enjoyed CoP and I'm looking forward to the next game in the series.

Rating: 8,0/10

here i have only 1 hour of gameplay but if i calculated the whole real time ive spent on this sequel it would be closer to 100 h or smth. nice game, i think better than Clear Sky, but worse than Shadow Of Chernobyl. 14-15 years passed after this was released and now we will get the new stalker soon - dream came true and christmas will come sooner for me this year lol.

the stalker formula has stayed exactly the same, just with new maps, expanded features, and a new storyline. best of the three in my opinion

Fantastic game although the threshold to get into it is quite high.

The game does not hold your hand at all. You're forced to figure out pretty much everything yourself - including what to do. I always leave the wiki open in the background to figure out which quest to complete next.

A couple tips regarding things I've noticed in the game -
1. Play on the highest difficulty - apparently the damage your bullets as well as enemy bullets go down on the easier settings. This makes killing enemies a lot harder the easier the difficulty setting is.

2. Sell ammo to stalkers that wander around, sell guns to the merchant (Owl/Hawaiian) - I've noticed Stalkers of the world pay a lot more for ammunition than merchants.

3. Hunt artifacts - Any time you see an anomaly (freak lights/electricity/fires floating around/lots of noxious gas/etc) there's a high chance there's an artifact somewhere nearby. Press "O" to pull out your artifact detector, keep spamming "F" and recover those artifacts. Some give solid benefits regarding protection against radiation/fire/improves healing factor/etc. I learnt of how important they are almost 16 hours into the game.

Give it a chance as it's super easy to just quit in the beginning. The first time I tried it years ago, I did the same. Once you've passed a threshold, the game is a joy to play.