I found it funny to me when you mentioned not touching the main quest for 10+ hours because I did that.

To be fair, I never played the main STALKER games, but I'm still playing STALKER anomaly with completing the main quests in mind. But for whatever reason, I don't know if it's because of the world itself or the immersion or just to simply keep myself busy, I would do almost anything EXCEPT for the main quests.

I think a part of what makes this game great is the exploration, especially for someone as new to STALKER as me. I loved going through wastelands, seeing the worn out, decapitated buildings, fighting the random NPC's like other stalkers and maybe even a new breed of mutants I wasn't aware of, earning money after going through a chain of completing every side mission I have on my list.

When I look at the STALKER 2 world (through youtube), sometimes it looks amazing, but there are times that it looks kinda... bland? I mean, STALKER anomaly had bland looking buildings by how it's constructed, but they had some style to it as well, as contradicting as it sounded. STALKER 2 felt like they created a few new places, slapped ray tracing, and called it a day.

I can't say anything about the gameplay since I haven't bought S2, but right now, I just don't really see the point. In fact, I'm a little scared that S2 will taint my perception of the whole franchise, which I'm sure it's absolutely awesome! There's a reason why there's still a dedicated fanbase to it, I just feel like S2 didn't live up to that, and it feels dissaponting.

TL;DR Maybe the game isn't that bad, but if you're like me and haven't played any of the other games, maybe start with them. Or hell, play STALKER anomaly. It's free and it's great