As someone who had only played the first MGS, The Phantom Pain deserves its score.

[Deleted member 12833]

Mechanically and design wise, it's the best game of the generation. While the narrative doesn't live up to the hype of the first 3 games, it's still better than what 80% of games on the market deliver and still better than the masterbatory drivel we got in MGS4

It's a 10/10 game

 

[Exodus 1831]

Probably the most disappointing game of this gen for me.

The story & its ending was so bad it almost turned me off MGS for good

 

[EVA UNIT 01]

Story is as important to gameplay for me so i have to disagree

 

[Unaha-Closp]

I finished MGS1, 2, 3 and 4 approx 4 times each. I did not finish 5. Did not feel like a MGS game to me. Great game to play for sure but not what I wanted.

 

[Sub Boss]

Let Metal Gear die in peace for the love of God

 

[Anth0ny]

Great game, terrible metal gear game.

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basically.

if kojima had another 2 or 3 years to let it cook it could have been absolutely legendary. now i just think back and remember how great the gameplay was and... that's about it.

 

[Dyno]

I was extremely let down by the story we got with the game and the incomplete feeling of it all. However it did play good so I took another run not too long ago and enjoyed it thoroughly because I knew what to expect going in.

I skipped all the cut scenes and treated it as a gameplay only sorta deal and had a blast with it. Taking all focus off the story and any real attempt to complete stuff efficiently made me mess around with the mechanics a lot more too.

 

[NuclearCake]

I had my expectations adjusted because i played and enjoyed Peace Walker way more than i did MGS4. So i knew what kind of game MGSV was going to be from the outset and it was more or less exactly what i expected. Peak gameplay in the series, tied with the second worst story told in the series. Since gameplay is far more important than the story, i let the unfinished and underwhelming nature of the narrative slide. The gameplay more than made up for it. Even if it did have issues of it's own.

 

[IIFloodyII]

Now I'm thinking about the characters and I still can't get over how shit and boring MGS5's Ocelot is. Like fuck me, that had to be intentional right? He's always been at his worst entertaining as fuck.

 

[Richter1887]

It is a good game but I disagree.

Gameplay was perfect but there are so many issues within the game that brings it down. The story being very weirdly structured, the maps being very big for their own good which results in them being very boring to traverse, the very needlessly complicated way to start missions, the fact you need to either replay the story missions or do the side ops missions just to see the ending. The last point was also bad in Peace Walker however.

Then you get to the characters like quiet being so damn stupid design wise and all those add up. If I had to score it would be a 7 or 8. A really good game that is flawed.

Still, it is one of those games I keep installed because I get the itch to go back and play it.

 

[Deleted member 12833]

Shame that tranq + fulton was the most efficient and effective way to do 99% of the game.

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Spoken like a noob. I platinum'd the game. For S ranking it's far and away from being the most effective and for base building it becomes irrelevant....far better ways to get soldiers

 

[FarSight XR-20]

I loved MGS 4. I liked Ground Zeroes. I hate MGS V. Garbage. Useless, lifeless and empty open world, outrageous Chapter 2, pathetic story (and Skull Face being a complete joke), super repetitive missions, main missions that are most of the time boring side missions, soundtrack is weak, too much time waiting for the helicopter.

 

[Lowrys]

Spoken like a noob. I platinum'd the game. For S ranking it's far and away from being the most effective and for base building it becomes irrelevant....far better ways to get soldiers

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Rather than just needlessly insult me, perhaps you could enlighten me as to a more efficient playstyle.

 

[GarthLordOfTheSith]

I can't agree since it basically had no story. Fun game, but that's about it.

 

[blackmass]

I played all the MGS games and I'm fine with the score. The incomplete story didn't kill the game for me.

 

[Sandersson]

That game left me feeling really, really down after I had played it. I was looking forward to this game for years and as a fan, the story was the ultimate left down.

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The trailers make the feeling so much worse. They were so full of emotion and felt like this is supposed to be the big bang of MGS, but it ended up being a whimper of the most dissappointing kind.

And while the gameplay is awesome, I dont think TPP ever achieved the level design of GZ or MGS3 or even 4. Outposts were pretty parse and small, there were maybe a couple of different doors from which you can enter but man did the game feel empty..

 

[TeddyShardik]

Besides the really underwhelming story I just felt the mission design was boring as hell. Yeah, you have a million ways to play the game and that's great but most of the missions you're doing it in were boring aside from the handful of big main missions.

 

[IsaOfTheWorlds]

People complained about the hour long cutscene in MGSIV. They clearly wanted less story until there was less story.

 

[Nasigil]

If it's really just light on story(like Dark Souls or BoTW), it'd be fine, or even great. The problem is that it does has a story, a terrible and blatantly unfinished story. Also the whole game is 30 hours long at best but they try to stretch it to 90 hours or more by purposefully wasting your time as much as possible on repetitive lazy missions.

With these two glaring flaws existing the game should never reach more than 90 MC score, even though I do consider it to have the greatest gameplay system I've had the joy the experience. The reason it got that score in the first place is that Konami only allow journalists to play the game for like 30 hours so they don't see the late game problems. Konami knows exactly what they are doing.

 

[TeddyShardik]

People complained about the hour long cutscene in MGSIV. They clearly wanted less story until there was less story.

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Well we went from like 80% Story, 20% gameplay to 20% story, 80% gameplay.
You can even things out without going to the complete opposite extreme. Especially for a game that promised to deliver a story fans have been waiting for, for ages.

 

[kubev]

It one of the best games this generation.

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Yeah, honestly, it feels like it was released so long ago that you'd forget that it was even part of this console generation, but the level of freedom that it affords the player is almost unparalleled. I really need to get around to playing it again. I don't like dealing with the Skulls, but I enjoyed everything else about the game, outside of a few suspect cases of enemies spawning in for certain missions. The only other Metal Gear game that I enjoyed was the original Solid on PlayStation.

 

[K Samedi]

I think its the best stealth game ever made. The scripted story heavy opening was boring but overall the game is an amazing open world stealth game. The cutscenes are fun to watch too but the cassette tapes were bad in general.

I think Zelda botw and MGSV are the best open world games out there and they both are very Japanese in design. I really like Japanese open world design and there should be more of them.

 

[StaffyManasse]

I always thought it was an unfinished turd of a game with so much genius sprinkled on top it ended up being awesome anyway.

Spoiler

Death Stranding is going to be the same.

 

[LiK]

It's true, MGSV had the best gameplay with the worst story in the series.

 

[MistaTwo]

Yeah, it's absolutely a pretty fun game if taken in a vacuum. But even ignoring the baggage from previous games, it's so clearly unfinished that it doesn't tie up plot lines that were literally introduced in the same game.

The open world did feel lacking to me as well, even if the normal MGS guard shenanigans were fun. It rarely went beyond that.

 

[cj_iwakura]

I enjoyed V, but it's a sequel to Peace Walker, really. Play that and you'll be far more invested in Kaz and Snake.

 

[Mgs2master2]

I always thought it was an unfinished turd of a game with so much genius sprinkled on top it ended up being awesome anyway.

Spoiler

Death Stranding is going to be the same.

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I agree with the spoiler portion here.

 

[Thera]

• Epic yet to beat TPS gameplay
• Good game
• Bad open world
• Very bad mission design
• Awful MGS

 

[Deleted member 14080]

Sublime gameplay.

 

[Deleted member 54320]

The trailers make the feeling so much worse. They were so full of emotion and felt like this is supposed to be the big bang of MGS, but it ended up being a whimper of the most dissappointing kind.

And while the gameplay is awesome, I dont think TPP ever achieved the level design of GZ or MGS3 or even 4. Outposts were pretty parse and small, there were maybe a couple of different doors from which you can enter but man did the game feel empty..

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Pretty much this.

 

[VaporSnake]

I think I could have ignored most of it's shortcomings had the open world itself been great, unfortunately it's pretty bland. It's a sentiment echoed often, but I found that the map in Ground Zeroes ended up being better designed than all of the camps in TPP. Unfortunately there's nothing of interest in-between the camps either... Overall I did really enjoy my time with it, and I've enjoyed revisiting it, but I think the greatest failure of the game ignoring the story is the failure to make an engaging open world.

 

[Pariah]

I think it's one of those games which are greater than the sum of its parts. Take mission design, for example. There's criticism about repetition, specially on side missions, or lack of unique stages, in the way previous games or Ground Zeroes had. On the other hand, every mission can be tackled in many different ways, and with secondary targets to spare, it's ever inviting us, to come back and play again. Mother Base took this design to its limits: every invasion shares a pattern, but so many things can go differently, that every match feels unique.

Modern Hitman does similar with Contracts. Well, The Phantom Pain gave its own spin to the idea, in an open-world, continuous environment. The sad thing in this story is there won't be an evolution of the concept, within MGS. Hopefully, Death Stranding will be able to raise the ante.

 

[Gunny T Highway]

Gameplay 10/10
Story 5/10

I walked away from Phantom Pain being just disappointed because there was quite a lot of potential for the story to be great.