S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - Enhanced Edition
Skip · Shooter · 2025
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 5, under the fair line, at $19.99.
- Length
- 12.7h 36.5h to 100%
- Value
- $1.57/hr
- Reviews
- 57% of 3,510 positive
Recent reviews trending up: 75% over the last 30 days against 57% all-time.
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Discounted in each of its last 6 seasonal sales. Last cut ended 9 days ago.
- Next sale
- Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
About the game
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is the prequel chapter of the Legends of the Zone Trilogy. With the ability to directly influence the balance of power through Faction Wars, step into the boots of Scar — a seasoned mercenary, able to somehow survive deadly Emissions.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 8 GB of memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX960 4GB / AMD Radeon RX 560 4GB, 8 GB of storage. Windows only.
The value story
Across all 11 discounts in the 17 months tracked, the median cut is 33 percent, about 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 9 days ago.
It is pricier than 67 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 91 percent. The games it most resembles do better on the same math. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl - Enhanced Edition ($19.99, scores 13) and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Prypiat - Enhanced Edition ($19.99, scores 14) both outscore it.
More about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - Enhanced Edition
Steam's global achievement data puts 23 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. The median game this site can measure sits at 15. Players rate it 57 percent positive over its lifetime, and the last 30 days run 75 percent. It is aging into a better game than its average suggests. Of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 1 comes from a buyer who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written July 2025 to October 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 40 percent of the 757 reviews written there were positive, against 57 percent overall, and those are 28 percent of everything written about it.
12.7 hours to finish it, 37 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 2.9 times the campaign.
Valve rates it Steam Deck Verified, and at 12.7 hours it is short enough to finish on one.
The drop-off
50% start to 23% finishSteam counts a larger share of its players at the ending achievement than it does for most games this site can measure. Steam global achievements
What players say
12h to finish, Veteran 39% of achievements (17/43) Stalker Clear Sky, where bandages are more valuable than guns, ammo, and artifacts. This is generally considered the worst Stalker game, and while I kinda agree, there is no bad Stalker game; even though it is worse than the others, it's still an above-average game. The last zone and the final fight are bad, and I mean really bad. Locked in a combat corridor...
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
Shorter than the first part, it feels very lazily made, the maps are mostly used from the previous game. The story is even recycled to the max. The soundtrack was nice and the atmosphere is great. 4/10
Don't mind my hours, it's just the Enhanced Edition. Clear Sky is the weakest in the STALKER trilogy and rightly so. 10 years have passed since I first played it and I still hate it. It brings concepts which the series is known for to life, and later refined in CoP, but as a game, it's like a bad attempt at a shooter with bolted-on exploration. The ideas are there but like many things, lacks refining them and...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - Enhanced Edition scores 5/100 on the BANG Score (a skip) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/2427420/s-t-a-l-k-e-r-clear-sky-enhanced-editionReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 26, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.