As much as it kills me to say it, I'm not enjoying this game anywhere near as much as I thought I would. There are so many little design choices that are ignorable on their own, but when you compound them all together it sucks a lot of enjoyment out of the game.
Who thought it would be a good idea to have opening credits for EVERY mission, spoiling who's going to show up (just played a mission where the credits told me that I'd be bumping into Skullface, then the game itself acted like this was supposed to be some sort of surprise)? That's like putting 'Bruce Willis as The Ghost' in the opening credits for Sixth Sense. Why is using the helicopter so slow. Needing to call it in, wait a minute or so to pick up up, sit for a minute or so until it hits the loading screen, then wait for it to load, then repeat the process when selecting a destination is just so tedious. It would be much better if I could select a pickup point and a landing point at once without needing to go through all of that.
And where's all the bat shit crazy stuff I've come to expect and love from a Metal Gear game? The prologue was pretty great but since then in about 20 hours of play I've seen maybe a grand total of about 15 minutes of cutscenes, and heard Big Boss say maybe 20 lines of dialogue outside of 'SPIT IT OUT'. It's really odd to see people having a full on conversation with him, and him just sitting there staring at them like a confused child. I know a lot of the story is told in cassettes which is fine, but the way the story is presented is just so detached from every other game in the series and I don't think it's for the better.
The whole Mother Base thing is a bit too convoluted. The menus aren't designed in such a way where they're intuitive to navigate and it takes way too long to level up your departments to research things. Mission 8 and 9 told me that I needed a missile, which needs a level 12 RND team to research. I was level 8 so went about fultoning everyone to level it up, reached a cap at level 10 and was told I couldn't have more than 40 people until I levelled up the department. That in itself takes a ton of resources (at least a lot for that early in the game) and a 1 hour wait while the department itself levels up. I ended up just saying 'fuck that' and completed the mission in the clumsiest way every using C4. I don't think any of this actually adds anything to the game, and if anything, detracts from the otherwise great gameplay. It requires too much time and focus and punishes certain play styles. Plus, mother base itself is just stupid to navigate. Why those long bridges between the platforms?
The game does have a lot of great points though. The open world is very nice to look at, if a bit empty and tedious to travel, and I love how seamless it is when you're actually in it. The controls are the best they've ever been in a Metal Gear Game, and the tools and items you can get really open the game up and allow you to really approach things whatever way you want, but this is held back by most missions being roughly the same but in a different setting (Most are either 'rescue the prisoner' or 'extract the super soldier' which both boil down to 'Get to the target and fulton him'). It seems like such wasted potential having these really, really great points diluted by some really questionable design choices.
Hopefully my gripes about the story change as the game progresses (although I won't get my hopes up because I've heard not so great things), but the helicopter nonsense, the mother base stuff and the repetitiveness of the missions has already kind of ruined any chance of me replaying the game. I'm having fun with it inspite of it's flaws, but I'm still disappointed. It's not the swan song Metal Gear deserves.
