I bought it but got a refund. I was a huge fan of the first game and enjoyed CoP well enough, though it felt like a completely different game that only shared aesthetics with the SoC.
I think I played for about an hour and in that time it felt like I was being led by the nose through the "quests". I don't know if the world opened up after that a linear "curated" experience isn't what draws me to that game. The first anomaly you went through had an obvious path so you didn't have to throw bolts, (I'm not sure that was even in the game unless I just missed it).
I'm a tard who plays PC games with a controller and there didn't appear to be aim assist which I know is lame but is also standard at this point when you use a controller in FPS (or it is there and I just suck terribly). Also the inventory interface was rough with the controller with some seriously counter-intuitive control scheme decisions.
The game was pretty enough and ran fine but just felt kind of cheaply slapped together compared to the obviously lovingly crafted first one.
And really minor complaint that there was no Russian voice available. I know there us Ukranian voice and its close enough to Russian that it doesn't matter for atmosphere, but it feels unnecessarily petty considering you know everyone who worked on the game probably spoke both.
According to gameplay footage (from dunkey) you get to throw bolts when the game fully opens up.
For me, and for what I've heard about their "innovative AI technology", I don't think I would like it. I dislike that sort of "AI spawns in a radius around you" thing.
I'm generally not a fan of that either, though in some cases I have seen games manage to pull that off in surprisingly convincing ways, to the point to where I wouldn't have any idea that it was doing that if I didn't have some knowledge about what was going on under the hood.
I'm thinking of maybe holding off until the modding scene catches up a bit, simply because of how spoiled I've been with STALKER mods in general for however many years now.