I finally beat the game. Overall I'd say it's pretty good. The fox engine is amazing, and the gameplay is great. It's definitely worth playing.

That being said there are a few things that I don't like about it. Most notably the waiting and the story.

The biggest problem for me is the waiting. This game is designed to be a time sink, and on a personal level I hate games like that. Every time you deploy for a mission you have to wait for the helicopter to land. Every time you leave you have to wait for the helicopter to pick you up. Every time you develop something you need to wait for it to finish in game time. Every time you extract an enemy soldier you have to wait for the brig to process them. Every time you extract resources you have to wait for them to be processed. Every time you expand your base you need to wait in game time. If you expand your FOB it's in real time, but it can take over 7 hours for a platform to finish. Deployment missions offline can take up to two hours of in game time, while online deployment missions can take literal days (and reward jack, I don't suggest them). All of this waiting kills replay value and adds up to eat large chunks of time for no reason. It's still fun, but it's a damn good thing the game can be alt tabbed.

The story left something to be desired. I've only played Revengance, and I expected this to be my first "real" Metal Gear Game, but I really didn't get that feeling. Which is disappointing because the gameplay is so good.

Spoiler

My biggest problem with the story is it is unfinished. The real end of the game feels like chapter 1, and the rest is an incoherent patchwork of unfinished, rushed, and unsatisfying ideas. The kids never go anywhere. The man on fire feels dropped. The 'going nuclear' mission didn't capitalize on itself. The fact Venom has so little character probably doesn't help.

TL;DR: Somebody kicked this out the door too quickly, and somebody else liked farmville. But the gameplay is amazing so it's okay.


Now, let's talk FOBs. FOBs are fun, but balance could use work. As it stands, if you invade an FOB and use mines/grenades/eat through your suppressor and a defender shows up you'll lose all of your progress, including any mines you've set up, and start back at the beginning of whatever platform you're on without getting any of those items back.

That is a bit excessive. The defender already has the advantage of a personal army, and likely a more combat oriented load-out. FOBs force stealth, which is fine, but it also means going toe to toe with a defender is going to be a terrible idea. This is still fine, as you can misdirect and sneak your way past them. But the fact you can lose supplies and progress is a bit much. And high level FOBs are difficult even without a defender watching them.

I still enjoy the FOBs a lot, but small things. That, and I still haven't found Jon.

 

Did you not know about using the return to ACC shortcut. Instead of asking the chopper to come get you. You get out of the hotzone,it autosaves, pause and return to aerial command instantly.

 

Looks like I'll pick it up, I've never played a Metal Gear game before but that doesn't seem to matter to much

 

IIRC Return to ACC doesn't preserve the actions since your last checkpoint. i.e. the point where the voice says 'Extraction arrived at Mother Base', when your collected plants and fultoned soldiers are added to your repository. If you move far enough in a certain direction, you'll trigger one (shown by the yellow circle in the top right corner of the screen) and then you can exit to the ACC from the menu without losing anything.

 

I would definitely recommend that you play the rest of the series too at some point, though you'll find this one's pretty different than the others.

 

Spoiler

Gameplay felt good though if you say its a bit repetitive, I'll have to agree.

Story though, Chapter 1 was good despite its flaws. "Let's all go for a road trip with Skullface lol." But after that it all falls apart. Combine this with "What a Tweest" and you've got a game that bridges the gap between Peace Walker and MG1 by presenting more questions than answers.

 

You can also fulton extract yourself back to base by going on top of a resource crate and extracting it. That's much faster than waiting for the helicopter as well during missions.

 

The self extraction is definitely the best method imo

To clarify on previous statements about the exit to ACC option. When you are playing through a Mission this is not a path I recommend even IF you have auto-saved.

Also, it's not necessarily the list of things extracted that let's you know you're all safe to pull out of free roaming (for the sake of this post free roaming means any time you are out in any of the three environments you can actually move about in without being directly engaged in one of the Missions (which means the Episodes themselves not the side-ops)

When the top right corner displays the yellow auto-save circle animation, You can feel safe that everything that occurred BEFORE that animation started was saved, I've noticed that sometimes the list of extractions only happens AFTER that animation, and I always double back when this is the case to trigger another save if I'm going to choose "exit to acc" from the menu because I haven't actually tested to make sure that the number changes occur before the autosave even if the messages are after.

Just sharing a bit of my understanding of the save mechanic

 

If you really want to make sure, open and then close your idriod. This should trigger the "Extraction arrived at Motherbase" read out.

 

Lol /10char

 

He really should have attached a few balloons around random objects.