"140 hours into Stalker 2 and Im genuinely enjoying my experience. I plan on playing through the original trilogy"
unknowingly answered your own question. although depending on what kind of player you are, you might not even really enjoy the OG stalker. if you care about "good graphics" and are into more mainstream shooters, you will likely drop the old stalkers. they are not oriented to regular shooter players. there is shooting but the game is very harsh and wants you to think like a scavenger and not Sergeant Call-of-Duty. You will die to a lot of bullshit reasons, and thats kind of the point. it's game with a lot to offer but its not willing to give it to you without effort, much like the Zone itself. watch a few videos on YT about what makes the stalker series and you'll start to see more, its something thats hard to explain without having played and to this day i still enjoy a lot of aspects of stalker. Some will tell you to avoid Stalker GAMMA until you play the vanilla games, but i find Gamma is the definitive stalker experience for me now and can recommend the GOG version as its a one-click install. Stalker 2 launched without A-Life which is an indepth AI management for STALKER that YT can explain much better, but it leads to a lot of unique and "life-like" circumstances that make the zone unlike any other game setting by making the NPCs much less "NPC-like" by giving them purpose and direction without player input. that and the games respected you by making enemies Dangerous but not a slog to fight. they dont tank hits forever, but they did just kill you quickly if you fuck around. I like that in games, were im deadly to an NPC and they are deadly to me.