Call of Pripyat is a significantly smaller game than Shadow of Chernobyl. It's notecably shallower in every aspect but the equipment aspects and quest variety, but it doesn't stop this game from eating through your free time as soon as you get engaged with quests. This game has a lot of value thanks to relatively rich game world - there are plenty of abandoned undergrounds to visit, plenty of quest related items to find and there certainly is horror feeling to some areas, the only drawback of new level design approach is that all key locations are somewhat tightly packed close to each other, making it a bit too easy to reach to safer areas - doesn't feel lonely enough, really. Handcrafted, branching quests are real saviors of this game. This quest system actually plays out like in Fallout 2 where you can see consequences of your actions in the end. The quests are in fact so well made, Bethesda could envy GSC. It's a solid game which could have been better if the developers took another few months and focused on art-style, weather system and ambience as well as repeatable quests and better base gameplay mechanics. At least it was extremely stable even without patches. Definitely recommended, just wish this game was larger!
It's hard to find how to begin with this review since the game has nearly perfect quality balance between music, game design, story, visuals, animations... everything. Quality of the visual art, music and animation is far beyond reasonable for such a small game, but that's what makes it so special - the product is supersaturated with quality and it definitely helps it to stand out. All the character animations are actually made by rendering 3D models' animations into high quality 2D sprites, and each frame of every animation is ensured to be flawless. Every single area has an unique background even if player has to keep attention on the foreground in order to survive. Some music tracks are much longer than needed for some of the game's cut scenes. Nothing is made cheap, the game is hand crafted masterpiece, a nearly perfect fusion of musical, visual and programming arts. Definitive Edition brings extra content at even higher quality, and some other great additions. About the escape sequences and "restart right at the beginning" - that's no longer the case with Definitive Edition as you can play on "Easy" difficulty level where your progress is actually auto-saved during escape sequences. I personally found original (2015'th edition's) difficulty just right for me, it's the "Normal" difficulty in Definitive Edition. Addition of the "One Life Difficulty" is a very nice touch that helps to get even more replay value and richer experience for those who already mastered the game - being careful and cautious makes experience far more immersive and stakes during the difficult sections are so high you get same emotions as during the first play-through! Difficulty spike in "Ginso Tree" is a thing, but that spike is necessary for complete experience since player receives new movement abilities soon after which makes hardcore platforming/walljumping obsolete. It was a tough game design decision but it was right since it ensures better experience for the majority of players.
