Yeah the MISERY dev team kind of lost it. MISERY 1.1 or 1.2 or whatever the pre-2.0 release was is actually very good. MISERY 2.0 didn't deliver on many promised features and cranked the artificial difficulty to 11 as well as the grinding.
The lead gameplay designer for MISERY 2.0 stated on the forums he intended for things you'd normally do in STALKER to be effectively impossible without the right piece of equipment, with which it becomes pointlessly easy. An equipment-based RPG, if you will, where you'll spend 5 hours grinding to buy the equipment to unlock a new thing to grind.
He cited EVE online as inspiration. No seriously, I've seen a screencap of his explanation where he actually states EVE online is his inspiration for STALKER.
Hope you like quick-save too, and not because you actually died. Generally speaking, even with the right equipment, MISERY 2.0 is designed that the repair costs will always be more than the loot no matter what you do. Even if you buy the most anomaly-resistance suit in the game, the repairs ALWAYS cost more than the artifacts are worth. That's even with the cheaper DIY repair methods implemented.
Then there's the straight up artificial difficulty. Excepting the best couple guns in the game shooting the most expensive ammo... nothing dies in less than 2-3 headshots. Excepting you of course. Unless you've grinded up for the exo-suit+addons, everything will kill you in one hit.
Then there's the bugs. Even with the latest official+unofficial patching, around Jupiter and beyond the game crashes constantly. Even before that too, I couldn't get out of Zaton with all the crashing.