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Finished the game. My faith in Kojima as a writer is completely renewed. The story was damn near perfect. The setting was fascinating, the characters were all compelling, and the twists were brilliant and all properly foreshadowed (maybe too much for some? I guessed one of the major end game's twist at the beginning of chapter two). The trailers were super weird because we lacked context, but once you have it everything makes sense.
The directing was also stellar, but I never doubted his skills there. Big props to the actors, who delivered stunning performances, Mads Mikkelsen in particular.
As for the gameplay, I think it works well if you stick mainly to the main orders as I did. There are always new elements introduced to keep it from getting too stale. I imagine I would have probably gotten bored with the game if I had spent hours doing standard orders, which are more or less all the same from what I can tell. It still felt repetitive at some points, but I can't say I was truly bored or annoyed.
I'd say my major complaint would be what Kojima sold as a major aspect of the game: the online. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but it's really unbalanced. As soon as you connect a zone to the network, pretty much everything you need pops up, meaning no challenge and that you can't contribute much. As a result, I spent more than half of the game offline. This way I actually had to prepare for my expeditions. The game also felt more immersive this way to me. Sam is supposed to be alone, after all.
I still "cheated" and connected for a certain chapter though (the game pretty much tells you to do it), which would have probably been a real bitch otherwise.
So yeah, mixed bag for me there.
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