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.
Why do they always have to fundamentally ruin a story with a sequel? I don't understand it. There are so many ways to tell a new story without changing the one that came before.
Modern writers don't seem to be able to really look at the big picture and understand why things are the way they are. They have to retcon story and worldbuilding aspects to insert their own ideas even if it ruins what came before.
The worst part is that none of this was even necessary. The writers wanted protagonist man to get a special artifact outside the Zone and go into it to uncover its mysteries (which is pretty much what happens in the current story) and they could have kept this story with some minor alterations to avoid damaging the worldbuilding.