I have played the demo version on the Switch which was quite long actually. I enjoyed the tactical part of it and I really want to dig in deep into the mechanics. My concern is the amount of anime style melodrama. I'm not really too big of a fan of that style of storytelling and it would kind of ruin the game experience for me, or at the least, have me skipping through all cutscenes.

I'm curious as to how much is there to expect. As a point of reference, I found the story in the Fire Emblem Birthright to be almost impossible to bare, but the antics of MGSV to be the appropriate level of ridiculous.

Thanks!

It's not as heavy handed with the anime cheese as the first game, at least it does not front load that so much at the start of the game. The game is somewhat more serious in tone which is nice considering the setting they are pulling from. The sheer amount of wishy washy melodrama almost made me stop playing the first VC, before pushing through that bs and coming fully around on it at the end. That said VC4 still has a lot of that, for me it seemed to have started on the right foot and as it developed it seemed to earn all that anime drama better overall. The biggest cheese fest is relegated to squad side stories however (where i think it fits perfectly tonally).

To me it's kind of like how people feel about MGS story actually, since you mention it, if you buy in and accept it on its own terms with all its silliness it's a heck of a fun ride; but if you don't buy into it's tone you're gonna hate it and think it's silly garbage all the way through, most likely.

As to the question of how much story there is? A lot. On average every chapter has one battle and about 6-8 talking scenes. So if you decide to skip stuff you're gonna be skipping a lot. And to be honest I'm not sure i can judge how good the game is if you completely take away that story part and have 0 investment in the characters or the events. Xcom this isn't that's for sure. I feel like playing just for the tactical layer would take away from VC4 significantly, as it's not that hardcore of a tactics game, at the end if the day.

All of the above said, it's an excellent game imo, and is definitely in the running one of my favorite games this year.

Yeah, this is most likely not the game for you haha. There's a good chunk of story stuff before, during, and after each battle. I like the story, hell, I like this whole game a lot, so much so it's safe to say it's my GOTY. However, so far, it is indeed a looot of anime melodrama so if that's not your thing I would probably avoid it or wait for a pretty big sale.

Is it really a problem to just skip all the cutscenes and play the game solely for the gameplay? Honest question. I'm a pretty gameplay-oriented player and I've done that before.

@savage: Personally, it depends on the game. I really like strategy games, but there are things that happen in between the strategy that try to flesh out the world and sometimes gives you benefits gameplay wise. For example, Fire Emblem Birthright has bonuses based on character relationships and those are built in the hub world in between the battles. Even though the story was pretty good when it came to the main stuff, I was pretty confused as to why I had to (physically) blow on my 3Ds and cool down my in game partner ... to build our relationship. I got a lot of weird looks from my wife haha!

And I really like story, when it counts. Using MGS again, the first game is nothing without its story. but MGSV is almost worst for it. Both great games.

I don't know if I'd call it melodrama, but there is stupid anime bullshit. It might not be right to call all of it anime, it's just a lot of ill-fitting cutscenes that don't suit the tone of a war story. And there are SO MANY cutscenes: the average has to be over 10 between missions, though most of them are just plot glue.

My feelings toward the story are positive overall, but that's entirely from the final 4 chapters of the game. Before that the game's presentation of the war is weirdly bloodless. Even their account of the desperation of a shattered army is so facile and brief that it doesn't have any impact. But it's no worse than the first game in that regard, and I think this time the main story is less stupid.

What kept me going through the lowlights of this game was telling myself "the anime made them do it" whenever a character did something idiotic.

From what I’ve seen thus far, there’s still plenty of tropey anime nonsense if that’s off-putting to you. A lot of talking, some character interactions that you can almost predict beat-for-beat based on their archetype, stuff like that. At the very least, I’d argue Claude and his band of idiots are more tolerable (in the several hours I’ve played) than Welkin and Alicia’s painfully dumb romance in the first game or ANYTHING in VC2. There’s no token “fantasy racism is baaaad” subplot yet, and hopefully there won’t be a mission where you liberate a concentration camp right after the optional beach episode.