This game is such a bad prequel and a bad follow up to SoC, the game wasnt buggy for me unlike many others. But the gameplay was just stupidly broken and so many flaws in the design. The story is incredibly linear and the entire game is based around finding strelok and stopping him from reaching the CNPP. Which is very interesting on the board. But the way the devs have handled the game itself is just embarrassing. Throughout the game i came across 5 main flaws:

Money, throughout the story i felt very underpowered and barely scraping by with the very minimal amount of healing items and ammo. With the accuracy being so incredibly poor and the ammo being more scarce compared to SoC, it made no sense to me. The entire playthrough i had i barely accumulated 50,000Rubles. That is an absolute joke. Every main story reward was either so insignificant i couldnt use it or i had to do numerous side missions just to get ammo and other supplies just to further progress the story

Accuracy, leading on from above, the accuracy on the rifles are so incredibly poor i was using my pistol more than my main primary because of how incredibly inaccurate all the weapons were. The best and only gun that felt great to use was the VSS, and i had to progress 70% of the story just to get one. So the first 3/4 of the game was spent using a terrible AK that could barely shoot a guy 5 metres infront of me.

The grenade spam, I thought i had escaped it or gotten off easy with the grenade spam when i was about half way through, but then oh my god i would get into a fight and have a monolith soldier throw a grenade at me directly beneath me without fail every single time. The grenade AI needs to be turned down as they throw them so often and they have NBA level accuracy.

The bleeding, every single bullet that touches you no matter a pistol or an anti material rifle all are incredibly vital to stop the bleeding, and with a lack of money from before looting bodies just to scrape by and stay alive throughout the game was a struggle and the constant bandage spam it felt i would use four bandages for every one bullet that hit me late game.

And finally the Factions, i had to restart my save from the beginning because of a game breaking faction war bug. Its such an interesting concept and i really wish they expanded upon it in later games or made it functional in this game. But its sooo broken and you could clear out an area and then hold down the point until friendlies arrive. FOREVER. They have a chance to just not spawn. And it completely soft locked my game to the point of having to restart.

So the game is worth the play if you truly enjoy torturing yourself, but if you dont care about unfinished game features, unbalanced AI, a broken economy then clear sky is completely for you. There are always mods to use which will fix the game. But recommending the game when you need mods for it to be functional seems wrong. And if you buy the game you deserve to know how it actually plays. All in all the story is very interesting and worth the experience. But its a hellish 10 hours to get to it.

The base game of Dark souls 2 is incredibly hit or miss, on pc the controls are janky and the features present in DS2 in comparison to DS1 have new additions but these are mostly for the worse, especially ADP which is a stupid way of incorporating I-frames to be more common instead of a players skill and timing. The bosses while unique are very easy and more monotonous to get to than to actually kill, theres numerous gank boss fights with 2+ bosses in a small arena. All of these boss fights are completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and unfun to fight. The addition of human effigies debuted in DS2 and never once made a return as the entire system of death inflicting damage to ur overall health is stupidly annoying and a feature everybody is glad that it didnt return. All the NPC's feel incredibly hollow and unimportant when compared to DS1. And finally the level design is so boring and has no real feel of progression as you can just warp everywhere, the enemy placements in levels are also super inconvienent, this is especially noticable in the dlcs as they're less developed and finished in my opinion

Crown of the ivory king DLC is a joke, its an icey hellscape that has almost no bonfires and enemies that deal so much damage but have so much resistance its near impossible to enter this DLC without having end game leveling. The bosses i do admit are incredibly fun but theyre also disgustingly difficult to a fault - For future reference never ever fight led and zallen or whatever. It genuinely has the worst run back ive ever seen.

Crown of the sunken king DLC is the most foul disgrace of a DLC and fromsoftware deserves to release dark souls 4 just to make up for this abysmal mess of a DLC. the bonfires are so scarce and the entire shtick of the DLC is moving the squares from the glowing pillars to unlock new areas. However i used that feature a max of three times. The bosses are complete jokes and are all so piss easy its a wonder how anybody actually enjoys this DLC. The final boss Sinh the dragon being the end to the DLC is so disappointing as the boss attacks are so predictable and the boss being as weak as it is barely scathed me when fighting it

Crown of the old iron king, is the most degenerate ♥♥♥♥ ever and has little to no replayability for me besides the extremely well crafted boss fights. Well Fume Knight and Sir alonne are well made, the rest of the DLC is stupidly difficult to the point of annoyance and upon beating the DLC twice (Once summonless and once with summons) I can say that this DLC is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and shouldn't be played unless youre going for 100% completion to get the spells.