For those that have played a bit, do you need to have knowledge of the previous games, or does it do a good job explaining whats going on?

I won't be able to play till tonight, but GSC did make it clear previously that you do not have to have played the previous games to follow the story here. Primarily because it's been so long between releases. I'm sure there will still easter egg callouts for old fans, but they'll just be that.

I'm about 1 hour in now, there's nothing as of yet to suggest that the titles are directly linked. I expect there's more later on, they'll mention the happenings of the previous games, in all likelihood.

I've already had the shit scared out of during the first hour, combat feels like simple fun. No skills or special moves; it's all down to you as the player. I'm playing on "Stalker" difficulty, I know better than to go with "Veteran" first time around. Foliage isn't the prettiest I've seen, but overall the game looks great. Sound design seems really solid as well, the atmosphere reminds me so much of the original.

Skill Up was not impressed, called it unfinished. More problems then only performance issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRCLRAJkqjg

Just watched his review.

Too many bugs/glitches,.... he recammends not playing it now, even if you like this series or games like it.
Because now, will be the worst experiance, with it, it'll ever be.
It needs more patches and bugfix's to get enough kinks out of it, to be enjoyable.

I've seen review sites that didn't score it, because they deemed it "unplayable".
So instead of just giveing it a crappy score, they where like "we're not giveing a score or reviewing it".

So yeah... its got bugs people, your warned.

I'll let you be the judge of this claim!

Resolved as in, people have given up and/or are at work / in school atm...

I haven't bought the new version (yet). I've been through all this with FS2020, then every monthly update broke things again or changed stuff in such a way I had to figure out control issues again or learn how to fly again. Next to getting disappointed with downgrades in visuals and spending far too much time finding solutions to bugs.

A year at least before I try it.

It's amazing when it works, but that game really makes you work for it!

Steam showed me review and final update to it when I was uninstalling the game.

Oct 21, 2021

My patience has run out, will no longer recommend this game. The last update (SU6) wiped all my progress and most of my settings and broke IFR flight even further. It's a great sightseeing simulator and yep the graphics have improved with SU6, yet SU stands for SIM UPDATE, why does the sim part only keep getting worse. For any sim flying you will need 3rd party planes, 3rd party ATC, 3rd party flight planning, 3rd party approach information, 3rd party flight tracking and turn live traffic off. It's a comedy playing with the in game systems.

I still played on and for over 4,600 hours total, yet about 1/3rd of that is updating, (re)downloading, debugging, configuring, testing, trouble shooting... With a lot of autopilot testing. Fine during the pandemic, couldn't do much else anyway. Don't have that time today anymore.

I really hoped they would have abandoned that infernal installer, guess not.

Stalker downloaded, let's see if it runs :)

Not yet, forgot to update drivers, game is complaining about known issues my GPU drivers.

I will wait for 12 months, it will need several patches in all likelihood. As I said before, it should have been delayed in my opinion.

Hmm I hope I don't run out of space. Compiling shaders is taking forever. Nice painting to look at though lol.

Oh well, gonna eat first, I'm sure that won't be the last before it actually runs.

Wow, game is at 111K CCU on Steam! Currently sitting at a 76% Mostly Positive after 2,000 reviews.