I’m about 35 hours in at Ch. 8. Episode 3 was the longest by far and it feels like the rest of the game is going to rush to a conclusion fairly quickly from here.
I kind of get the complaints about the game, but not really.
The story is stupid, but no stupider than any other kojima game
spoiler (click to show/hide)
I love the umbilical core images from Heartman. It’s like every creature on earth has an umbilical cord attached to the beach, and basically the same thing as this happened to the dinosaurs or something... :kiss
I don’t know, it’s still easier to follow than every MGS >= 2 and probably more memorable. Imo it’s still better than average for a vidya story and better than average for a kojima story.
For the game play, my biggest complaint really is that it doesn’t lean into the logistics part enough. The worst parts of the game are the BT/terrorists and mules and the best part is traversal and route planning. Harder to navigate environments with more fancy tools would have been better, imo.
That said, I sometimes like the madcap Mr. Bean way you can complete missions too.
Like, I had a mission where I chose to drive a truck through mountains instead of take a foot route like they seemed to have intended. I tried to skirt around a BT area by being cautious, but misjudged where the would be, so when they found me I gunned it and basically cannon balled down the mountain.
I didn’t plan for any terrorists so had no weapons, and when I ran into them, I ran over a bunch with my truck... then they stun bombed my truck so I fought a bunch with my bare hands, then got back in my truck and try to gun it over some rocks, and then some churches song or whatever started blaring once I got away in the messiest possible way => S Rank!
Those moments are super hilarious and still kind of tense, even though they are not incredibly difficult.