Death Stranding Director's Cut

Exploration and construction are 10/10, but obligatory combat sections and boss fights are really bad on very hard, you see how the combat is atrocious. Don't know why they made you go through combat sections when the game is really not design for combat. Sometimes i think people swallow things like that only because it's Kojima.

what a beautiful video game, my favorite aot

PSA: https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1763138299085091110

Why did the DS2 release page get removed?

the citizen kane of the strand type genre

I am never really a narrative game lover, but this was ace. I only like a narrative game that merges its themes and story with the gameplay in a way that it tells a story and provides an experience only a game can. This fits that bill.

The exploration is fun, and the feeling of getting "likes" and interacting with other players reaffirms the games themes. Additionally if you really want to just b-line the story you won't even be hindered by not spending much time with side content. It's very easy to enjoy this title without feeling tied down by the gameplay.

Now with that being said [spoliers ahead], combat and stealth suffers here quite a bit. BT stealth starts by being annoying and bland as hell before being trivialised by tools you find. BT boss fights are generally easy on all difficulties, just a matter of patience at high difficulties. The shooting segments with terrorists and the dream segments tho, awful, horrid. They truly show how weak the combat of the game is. And even when they're designed to facilitate stealth, you can't even stealth kill Cliff to transition a stage (at least on hard). They drag down the experience which is saf since they should be one of the most exciting parts.

But lame combat and underwhelming stealth for a Kojima game aside. The story and characters are engaging and the setting and themes are very well presented. And honestly, being a delivery guy can be very engaging at times.

If DS2 nails combat and stealth and incetivises it more heavily to balance out the gameplay more (since I and many for 90% of their playtime just avoided dealing with mules, terrorists and BTs as much as possible), I think we're on to something truly special.

Not MGSV having a higher average than this...