Yeah, I think Exodus made quite a unique blend of linear and half-open world gameplay. It is still very much different from the openness of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but a Metro game with that much of a different atmosphere could only be done in that way while being as good as it is. Hacking through the vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl was quite hard after that, and not having the time to try to manually mod such an old game on core mechanics was something I didn't have time for then. Finding OGSR was right at the breaking point for me about the series, but I'm glad I've found it even if it took 3 tries.

Link is what I remember downloading back then (should be a "standalone" file meaning it has all the game files, exes etc and won't need any vanilla installs at all). For the other 2 games, Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat, I went with the big community bugfix mod called SRP only iirc. For Clear Sky and Gunslinger for Call of Pripyat, both of which being smaller in scope but good enough for the latter games than needing OGSR-equivalent for them.

There is also a whole lotta different "game" called Anomaly that is basically a tremendous engine upgrade by the community and an open mod ecosystem, which you keep adding to build something yourself. It is a hassle, as much as modding Skyrim with 200 mods, but Anomaly is quite the technical improvement on the base games. It is rather storyless and with bits of "go here, meet this person, go here and fetch this", kind of thing making the whole progression. And yes, it, too, has curated modpacks, one of the biggest ones being G.A.M.M.A with its own setup of mods on a tidy Mod Organizer profile, with the options to add or remove mods yourself.

I apologize if this turned out to be an overhaul/modpack advertisement. There surely were many more overhauls I tried briefly before settling on these, so when you have the time, go ahead and try. Hope you'll have quite the nice experience to overcome the difficulty in adjusting to such an old gem's quirks.