This.

It was great. So great at the beginning. When I got to chapter 2 I was over the moon. What? More story!?! It was ok for a while. Got a few story bits. Then, when I realized what was going on, I uninstalled, went to youtube and looked at the last few cinematics.

It's sad, they shipped a game that has the promise of a 2nd chapter but that has it mostly missing and hidden behind shitty convoluted mechanics.

/rant over

@lobster_ear: But it's not an impostor, it's you.

I know this doesn't really help, but I was down on the game since day 1. I just don't like the structure or storytelling.

The story sucks, who cares. The game is great to play.

It really feels half backed and unfinished but you only realized that when you get actually finish it.

The only thing that PW has over MGSV is the deployement missions are more fleshed out. They're still kinda bad in PW though.

I waited a few weeks before buying MGS5, I wasn't planning on buying it because of Konami and their BS, However, during several Bombcast episodes Dan and Brad kept telling how MGS5 was maybe the best open world game of all-time. So I decided to give this game a shot, the opening was cool enough but somehow I couldn't get myself to play the game beyond mission 10. Whenever I had some time to play games I kept thinking 'maybe I should play MGS5' but ultimately I always end up olaying something else.

Normally it's fine if my opinion on a game differs from the Bombcrew (and other media outlets). However, with what I played of MGS5, the claim by Dan, Brad and numerous other media outlets that MGS5 was the best open world game of all time was simply insane. So I guess part of my 'hate' for MGS5 comes from the fact that it's bound to get several GOTY awards that it really doesn't deserve. Yes, it is the best playing MGS game, but it fails horribly as an open world game in my opinion.

@baillie: People who come to Metal Gear for the ridiculous story and not 60+ hours of open world stuff care.

So I'm playing through this for the first time right now. I found the first 5-10 hours a drag as they trickled in abilities and companions, but once I could scout new crew members and had Quiet, missions became super-fun. Hours 11-40 are some of the most fun I've had in a game in recent years. I'm certainly glad I'm playing it. But...

Now I'm running into frequently reusing areas, and the slog that is traveling around Afghanistan. The menus are slower than Witcher 3's ever were, and remain clunky. Research projects have now jumped to hours and enormous cost. All of which I would overlook if the actual story missions hadn't become a pain. I don't want to stealth around this airport to follow a guy, with twenty NPCs that might see me at any time, while Ocelot yells at me over the radio to go faster. It's not tense, and it's not fun.

The escort mission with the kids was also obnoxious - worse that the game somehow dumped my checkpoints, so when a kid ran away from me and died against a gunship, it booted me all the way out of the mission. Something I didn't want to do at all became something I had to do over entirely.

I'm going to give it a couple more tries, but I am not at all engaged with the story and just want more of the fun part of the gameplay. I don't feel connected to the world; only destroying radar and comms seems to do anything lasting to it. I don't feel tied to these places like I did helping rebels populate bases in Far Cry 3 or seeding my commanders around Shadow of Mordor. It's just a big sandbox that is super-fun to go hunting in when it's not a rote story mission, which itself is harmed by faulty checkpointing. I feel like manual saves would've greatly helped my aggravation. The aggravations are mounting, though, and I feel like if FOB is as annoying as people make it out to be, I could see myself turning on the game the way a lot of people have. Right now I'm wondering if I shouldn't stop playing now to preserve the good memories.

@planetfunksquad: Eh. I'm MGS' biggest fan, but I can also look past disappointing story. I mean, Fallout is the biggest thing right now and it has neither good gameplay or story.

Because it takes a while for its flaws to really become apparent and solidify (har har har)

In the beginning it looks great, you get an open world that it actually works with different places to visit. You get a cool looking base, you start capturing dudes, you spend a little money and resources and get your tech going enabling new gear and tactic. You get buddies that helps you, start to expand your base, and enemies start to respond to your tactics (helmet, nigh vision, etc) Everything feel alive and all interconnected.

But then it starts to become a grind. Revisit areas too many times, stacks of the same side ops with same objectives back to the same areas over and over again. Research and base expansion takes too long, makes you question the FOB and micro transactions. Riot suit and shield become show stopper for some tactics so your options become more and more limited as oppose to more and more diverse, combat deployment works too slowly for my taste and is also tied to FOB. I end up leaving the game on overnight or leave it idling while research/deployment/expansion are going on. Deployment cost and supply drop costs get crazy also. Later missions I often lose money rather than gain and rely on side ops or idling around for grinding..sounds like an energy based mobile game. Until I decide to explore the dark arts of cheat engine.

Story is...the over arcing concept isn't bad although starting with build your army again like in Peace Walker probably isn't the best start. It falls short on a few too many things that really devalue the story. I am ok with the "it was you all along" ending in fact I was quite please with how it manage to tied the whole legacy of the series to the player with a touch of meta commentary that ties into the story. The parts that are lacking are: Skullface is a weak character, his actions and motives felt directionless and didn't really care for anything, and in turn I didn't really care much for him. Huey's exit is weak and weird, felt like a rush job. The entire first part of the game was positioned as we are going after Cypher, Cypher this, Cypher that, but in the end it has hardly anything to do with Cypher and they never address it. The conversion from codec to tape works in terms of favoring gameplay and addressing past complains, but it loses a lot of character, a sense to time and place, and urgency when it comes to story telling. It just sounds flat.

The whole child soldier aspect had some gravity but gameplay wise it was annoying as hell. Eli/Liquid snake and Psycho Mantis is...in my opinion terribly played out and supremely frustrating and unsatisfying. Mantis is relegated to a deus ex machina plot device. Eli/Liquid having 20ft thick plot armor and being a child to boot makes it clear that he is invincible in the game...all while the player knowing full well what will happen in the future and the game non stop telling you he is up to some shit in motherbase, but yet you can't do anything about it is just pure frustration. I am glad episode 51 never made it to the game. From what I have seen it would have been the worst of these aspects dial all the way to the max.

I can understand this sentiment, but it does make me frown just a tad since it's clear that a game is being judged not on it's own merits, but by a completely different standard. I'm not sure I am eloquent enough to formulate an argument either way.

My time with the game followed a very similar arc to many people. I put in about 90 hours, in which time I cleared all the main missions and side ops, but mostly ignored the repeat missions. I had a very good time throughout, but wondered when we were going to clean up the Eli subplot, since obviously that is much too big to leave hanging. I was severely disappointed when it became apparent that it wasn't going to get resolved.

I guess, the heart of the matter is that in any other series, you might expect that such a major plot thread would get cleaned up in a sequel or something. Even if that sequel never materializes (eg, Half-Life), you go into it knowing that the developers thought they had a shot at resolving it. But, with Metal Gear, it's been very obvious from the outset that this was it. So, to allow this thread to dangle not only is very frustrating from MGSV's perspective, but for the whole series.

Then again, as a fan of the Metroid series, the feeling that "this is it?" is very much familiar.

I still think it's great. I only really dislike how much of a grind it is to complete the weapon/item development and the fully armored enemies at the end. Really though, it felt like 5* (except for a few things) was about the rank you could get most gear to while not grinding like a mad man. Mind you I played the hell out of it and did almost every mission once to get that far but there seems like a point where you have to actually do missions over way too much to finish one branch of a tree. It's a bit off but not anything that'd make me actively talk down about it.

I'm glad it it came together this good, it's like the feeling I got when going from MGS 1 to 2. It was like "oh this plays really well and looks cool, hey where's Snake... oh well game's still fun". I like it and all the shit you can do. I almost wish they went as crazy as Substance with an extra mode with crazy shit happening, oh well.

They didn't finish it in that first week. I was loving it for the first 2 weeks, couldn't get enough of it. Then I slowly realized it's been the same old side-ops and vague story. Fun to play though.

I can see what you mean, but even if I judged the game for what it was, rather than what I expected, I still don't think I'd be into it. I'm not an open world game guy, I liked the other MGS games for their balls out weird stories. I knew going in to MGSV that the story was supposed to be thin, I just didn't realise exactly how thin it was gonna be. I was absolutely ready to forgive a different style of game so long as I got my fix of strangeness, and after the hospital intro (which I seem to be in the minority of people who loved that stuff) I thought I was going to get that. Instead I found myself slogging through a bunch of gameplay I didn't care for to get to the tiny slivers of story that were there. Even the audio log stuff just didn't hit the right buttons for me.

In fairness, if you kept all the cutscenes but trimmed down the length of the gameplay parts it'd probably be closer to what I wanted. And again, maybe thats unfair to the game, cos I'm obviously not who it was made for. All I know is that I was bummed out by basically the whole thing, and I think thats a valid perspective on the fifth entry in a series thats been going as long as MGS. It's easy to feel like you know what you're going to get in that situation and I feel like I got the exact opposite.

This must be how everyone else felt back in the day, slogging through hours of story they didn't care for just to get the tiny slivers of gameplay they wanted ha.

My only major issue is the aforementioned lack of character development. In itself, as a self-contained story, it does fine. In filling an important gap in Metal Gear chronology, and in portraying real life events, is where it makes some serious missteps.

The game is primarily set during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80's and yet is so concerned with a gradual reveal of what Skullface is up to that it fails to show any actual conflict between Soviets and Afghanis. Some of my favourite moments of MGS4 were the players ability to side with the rebels in those fictional conflicts, and here that idea could have been so much more well realized and interesting in an open world where there are real historical implications. Also, here was the one chance they had to show how Ocelot obtained the Shalashaska moniker, and instead its only mentioned in passing. Some flashback scenes (ala MGS4) would have added so much, especially to contextualize Skullface's role in the events of MGS3.

How about showing David/Snake at all, even if that means showing the events outside the games locales? The plot twist would have been so much more satisfying if they had shown Big Boss return to the U.S. to become commander of FOXHOUND and any gameplay at all relating to Venom Snake establishing the first Outer Heaven. They could have done so much more in Africa, as tied as it is to the backstory of both Raiden and Gray Fox.

I still love the gameplay however, even though it did start to wear on me. I still like the plot twist at its core.

Good Metal Gear game. Bad Metal Gear movie.

Also, Quiet makes base management really uncomfortable.

Yeah, it's mechanically a really solid game which is why it gets so much praise, but like you said, it has almost none of the features people associate with Metal Gear games in the past. Sure, stuff like the fulton and cardboard box is typical Metal Gear goofiness, and the plot gets pretty sci-fi at times, but during 90% of the actual gameplay, you could mistake the game for just being open world Splinter Cell, and there are very few story cutscenes or wacky boss encounters to dissuade you of that feeling.

Also, Jesus Christ, so many missions boil down to "kill or fulton some NPC who is ultimately not significant at all and never has a speaking role, and all that happens is after you kill/extract them, Miller talks about them for like 15 seconds."

The ending to this game retroactively makes other games in this series that I liked immensely a little less.

It's weird to have such a flawless gameplay experience marred with such a huge bummer on the narrative front.

Chapter 2 is what killed it for me. I was having such a great time with the game by the time you see the credits roll for the first time. I didn't realize some of the later missions were optional but having that thrown into the main missions list along with having to replay the prologue, it took all the enjoyment out of playing it at the end.

Going back to it now, I have to deal with all the FOB BS now and almost all my side missions now consist of eliminating heavy infantry / armored vehicle units so I'm having even less fun with playing it. Also still weird to me that every cutscene in the game was shown in the trailers.

I've played roughly 55 hours so far but I'm only up to mission 15, I feel so conflicted. On one hand it's one of the most fun games I've ever played. The mechanics and game feel are so incredibly polished and just feel good. It's also a great game to watch - my friends/girlfriend will genuinely ask me if they can sit down and watch me play some Metal Gear. Scanning soldiers and fultoning them feels great and rewarding, infiltration feels tricky and rewarding and fresh every time, and the constant new development of weapons keeps the gameplay interesting (just unlocked the rocket hand and it's amazing and I love it)
But maaaaaaan is it an awful Metal Gear game. When the cutscenes are there you see how much Kojima could have done with this engine. The camera, the lighting, the cinematography, the acting it's all top notch mouth dropping stuff. But there's so little of it, and the stuff that's there doesn't feel rewarding or fun enough. When I'm reading about the game having 45 missions or something like that, meaning I still have 40 left after 55 hours, and apparently the missions get worse and less fun, I have no idea if I'll actually ever finish the game. The only reason I was initially interested in it was for the story - see what happens to Big Boss and how he becomes who he is, but apparently you don't really get that.
So I totally see why people are down on it. It's a great "game" it's just not a great metal gear game, also it's stretched out. Kind of like Alien Isolation - the first half of that game is incredible and then it just goes on way too long.
It's a shame. If Kojima had more time/more money maybe we would have gotten a truly incredibly product. Instead we got fantastic gameplay and an ehh product. Such a shame.
Still one of my top 3 games of the year, but compared to something like The Witcher 3 which stays great throughout, it's easy to see why people would be down on this game.

You're spending way too much time faffing about if you're 55 hours in and only on mission 15.

People finish the game at around that hour count. You should probably mainline the story at this point if you still have interest in playing the game.

It's GOTY. So whatever! Story sucked, yes. But it's still the most fun I've had playing a game. And it's brand of weird humor just made it above the norm.

Too bad Konami made poor decisions with the FOB stuff and what-not. But, lets be honest, you really didn't have to mess with that if you didn't want to. I never got invaded after probably 150+ hours between Xbone and PC.

@jangowuzhere: But I'm having way more fun "faffing about" then actually playing the missions which sometimes just feels like a drag. Doesn't matter how I play as long as I'm having fun right? :)

I mean... I'm down on the game because it's a bad game. Or at the very least, a bad Metal Gear Solid game. It absolutely feels like a generic third person stealth shooter that finds itself totally bereft of any of the series constants; a game with no polish and little depth designed to sell to the common mainstream gamer who just wants to do "cool spy guy stuff" and shoot things without ever having to think about underlying themes or learn things while he does it.

This game was a blast to play, but the ending feels hurried and the patches are making the microtransactions content ridiculous.

Everyone knew the game was fun to play from the first hour they played, but everyone is finding out about the rest afterwards. Hence, bad aftertaste.

I loved it completely for awhile after finishing it, I wasn't upset about how the story was done because I played a lot of peace walker and expected that. For some reason though after thinking about it for awhile i've come to realize that frankly I was disappointed with the story, not the amount of it just the story in general. The game is very fun but I have felt zero interest in going back to play more because after awhile the side ops are just the same thing over and over. I love replaying metal gear games but just like with peace walker because it is so long I won't feel like playing it again for a long time. It is one of the best games of the year but it isn't as amazing as people made it out to be so I think it's partly because of how much praise it was getting, no where to go but down from there.

@turkeydipking: Don't worry, i played 128 hours of it.

Konami can eat a dick for all that insurance and FOB bullshit

@supermonkey122: Hey dude, first time responding on this forum after becoming a premium member!

I for one am slightly disappointed, by all means it has some of the most refined MGS gameplay, the controls work well and I wish all video games would implement such controls in their work.

However, obviously I will not ruin anything but the story did lack, I am a huge huge MGS fan, obsessed with it and love watching others play it (love the MGScanlon series) but I found myself defending it in my head at times. I am open enough to understand this and can see what I was trying to do, after letting it sink in, watching the past 3 games on MGScanlon and talking with friends I know for sure it is a disappointment.

Which is sad, I wanted it to be the next MGS4 but that still holds up as a quality game. It had the MGS querks and madness, the crazy but interesting story, awesome boss fights, movie style cutscenes, amazing music and funny codec conversations. This just did not deliver.

I watched a youtube link which I highly recommend by Super Bunnyhop - MGS V Dissociative order, I can agree with a lot of what he is saying.

A great game yes, but not a metal gear solid quality title by any means.

What also makes me sad about it is what happened behind the scenes, it is clear that it had to be wrapped up, due to funding or konami saying no more. I don't know the truth but you can tell someone told them to close up before the time was right. They did a good job at making it fully playable...would work for any other game but not a metal gear game unfortunately!

After reading some other comments here I can understand why you asked that now, some people exaggerate their response, but that is the internet.

I hope my answer and the video sheds some light on my slight disappointment.By no means a bad game though!

Beat the game, looked for others reactions and found this thread. Feel pretty much the same as a lot of folks:

• Enjoyed the first half
• Started getting bored of second half
• Got annoyed by patches with FOB nonsense I don't even care about
• Confused / let down by ending and overall story.

Not even close to Game of the Year material, but a worthwhile playthrough for many other reasons such as:

• Best stealth game in the business. Each encounter is challenging and fun if you're shooting for total stealth
• Kojima anime strangeness on full-display. An acquired taste.
• Next-gen presentation, particularly in the hospital scene.
• D-Dog

Konami needs to stahp with the microtransactions. Just stahp.

Not to be all hipster, but I've been down on it from the beginning and never got why people were wetting their britches over it. An open-world metal gear with an overly-serious and sparsely delivered story and no david hayter is everything I don't want. They lost me from the very start. And like, it's cool that the controls are pretty good and you can experiment with all these ways to complete missions, but it ain't GTA is it? It's not like there's a whole lot going on in the open world. It's basically a lifeless, pointless expanse, which kinda makes the experimental gameplay much less impressive. Idk, it just really doesn't seem that great. I don't get it at all. But for the record I also think the far cry games are complete garbage, so this style of game may just not be for me.

I felt like people were a bit down on it even when it was pretty new.

V is going to be a lot like MGS4. You bring it up and a lot of people come out of the wood work to hate on it in long rants, but you do a poll and it wins GOTY. People that don't like it just really don't like it. This is part of how forums work.

I still like the game but the FOB thing is biast and unfair