>>8776243oh and let me add to this. Samefag here.
I played each game 3x. I'll give a breakdown and the mods I used.
STALKER SoC: The best game of the series. It was the first one to come out, and it had the best environment of all of them. The only problems were some AI bugs, graphics, and the weather- night wasn't really night, it was just a really dark day. First playthrough, I did Complete. It fixed the night issue, added a sleeping bag, fixed graphics and bugs. Second playthrough I did complete yet again, the third playthrough I did AMK, and the fourth I did a mix of AMK and complete. AMK makes everything 10x harder with improved gameplay- it makes small weapons like the double barreled shotgun and the Viper (MP5) go into the pistol slot, while adding IRL aspects. For example: you need to buy Geiger counters, gravi anomalies are invisible and silent, and anomalies generally kill you if you step in them. 2 bullets will kill you if you're not wearing much armor, you also need to buy a "detector" that beeps when you are near anomalies (rather than getting it in the beginning automatically), antirad takes away health and makes you hungry, etc. Also adds more monsters.
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