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.
That shouldn't really have anything to do with the artifacts. Let me give you some background lore on why the Zone exists.
After the Chernobyl NPP melted down and the exclusion zone was set up, scientists set up secret labs in the Zone to do secret research.
Part of this research is the C-Consciousness project, which attempted to fix humanity's flaws (eliminating greed, cruelty, anger, etc) by attempting to alter the noosphere (an invisible field affected by and affecting human cognition).
They did an experiment to attempt to alter the noosphere which backfired horribly and ended up damaging it, and that is what resulted in the creation of the Zone and the anomalies within it.
Even after C-Con is destroyed due to Strelok's actions in SoC the Zone remains as the damage to the noosphere appears to be permanent.
The Wish Granter is not directly related to the anomalous phenomena inside the Zone, it's a trap built by C-Con to deal with intruders.