Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Phantom Pain was my first Metal Gear Solid game experience, so I wasn't influenced by the legendary reputation this series of games was carrying and the expectations fans would await from this one. And to be honest this is one of the very best games I have ever played. The story is weird and made no sense at all to me, but the gameplay is an absolute master work. A,d of course its replayability makes it really unique. You can sneak or blast everything to attain your objective, you can kill or put to sleep/stun enemies, hide them, chose the weapons to bring on mission with you according to your level of developpment, it's fantastically precise and enjoyable.
Your companions are also a real plus, though I understand people who say it makes the game too easy, but hey you can go on your own, deactivate any help from the game like the reflex mode.
Now, about mother base : you will have to create FOBs in order to advance your levels and be able to developp powerfull weapons but besides that, all the online features are just waste of time, and of course, MONEY. I just hate all that online side of games of these times. Let the game be the game and stop stealing money from the gamers.

On Wikipedia, HITMAN III & MGSV are both stated to be one of the greatest stealth games of all-time. I'd say almost, not quite, but close enough.

At its core The Phantom Pain offers probably the best gameplay experience of all MGS games. You have dozens of tools that open up multiple possibilities to solve any situation, and the roster of missions throws a diverse range of cool situations at you to solve. Some missions that I expected to stealth through I ended up in heated firefights, and some missions that I expected to patiently snipe enemies one by one, I ended up just tiptoeing through without firing a single shot. The difficulty is cranked pretty high for my skill level, the enemy AI is smart and adaptive, so it makes for challenging and fun (and sometimes frustrating) levels.

The 80s Cold War nuclear anxiety dystopia is a perfect setting for MGS, but environmentally the game is pretty dull. The levels mostly consist of pretty, but standard natural landscapes, you almost never get to go inside buildings bigger than a shack, and overall the world is pretty barren. Could have used a lot more of the Soviet aesthetics in the Afghanistan section, and African level is even more nondescript than that - also it features a few of the cool special main mission locations.

And that's about it for the good things for me. Main thing dragging this game down is incredibly shitty writing - an unimaginable thing for a MGS game. There's barely any story to speak of, and what story did make it to the game is at best worthy of a draft tucked deep into Kojima's archives. The Phantom Pain story feels like it was put together by an algorithm from a random assortment of Kojima's interests, meaningless recurring MGS characters, organizations and objects, and some generic action movie keywords (the amount of times some character screams about getting revenge without any additional context...). None of it even remotely works together, and the further it goes on, the more frustrating it becomes. Kojima does manage to pull a few awesome cinematic moments out of this mess, but overall the game would be much better off if it was just about an anonymous Cold War spy fighting anonymous Cold War mercs.

The second big problem is how ridiculously overstuffed the game is. It starts off cool to have so many options, but it literally never stops throwing new mechanics at you, and at best 50% of them stick, and the rest just drag down an awesome core stealth experience. Does it really need an extremely elaborate base management system? Does it need 10 different assault rifles with minute differences in stats? Does it need an animal rescuing system (literally have no idea what it does after 50+ hours at the game) or plant gathering system? Does it need to randomly throw non-stealth missions at you which require a completely different build, development path and playstyle? And don't even get me started on the online stuff, which is just a big ol dead weight that a ton of resources went into.

I enjoyed The Phantom Pain the most when it stuck to what it's good at - an elaborate stealth infiltration sim - but it never for a second stopped to verge into much more frustrating territories that never pay off in the way that older MGS games did with their more frustrating moments.

A little better than the fourth game, but not by much. The story is a mess and none of the political intrigue Kojima presents in this game is as intriguing as past entries.

The gameplay in Phantom Pain is close to being the best MGS experience, but the maps and objectives feel incredibly hollow. It's almost like you're playing an MGS MMORPG solo at times.

Overall, I don't feel the top-notch engine touches the experience of the first three games, at all. Still an enjoyable game, however

Worst story in the series, not much of it, but whenever there is some of it, it's really just some confusing bullsh** that makes you feel like Kojima really went of the rails this time.
BUT! the gameplay is once again amazing, serioesly, it's such fun to play,
and while previous games possibly most shining aspect was the incredible level design, this time we're in an open world, and it's pulled off spectacularly!
traveling on horse or by vehicle feels so good, the world is beautiful and alive, infiltrating bases spread out across the map is such a good addition to the series, along with two different maps two play around in, really good stuff.
truly unfortunate the story and mission structure are the worst in the series, as this game had the potential to be the best one.
unfortunately this time around snake is the least interesting he's ever been, he's still good, but not as entertaining as in other games, there's a reason for this, but it doesn't make it any less disappointing.
Some missions were excellent however, truly excellent, and some characters were good, and the general experience i had with this game despite it's faults is still an amazing one, it's one of the best games of the past decade, and that's just how good the pulled off the non-story related stuff.

Kept me entertained for over 200 hours, but unfortunately the incomplete, sparse, and disappointing story will leave a terribly sour taste in your mouth. Probably one of the most polarizing games in that regard ever made.