For the love of God, do not judge the MGS franchise with this game. This isn't a MGS game and as soon as you play a good MGS you'll realise that.

the exact reasons and complaints that i had about the game, it gets to repetitive after a while (even if you can tackle a mission in a million different ways if you keep doing the same missions over and over for dozens of hours it will still end up feeling repetitive), and completely agree on the pacing problems that the game has, (that was my original complaint), i sometimes played for 5 hours doing missions and i got not a single important cutscene that would actually move the story forward, only more missions that would (In Kaz words) "get us closer to cipher or skull face", and then when i was tired and about to turn the console off a cutscene would trigger and the game would move its plot forward and throw an important mission on my face, and i would be to tired to go on since i would have been playing for hours and was just about to quit the game for the day.

And i do agree that the story was always the biggest reason that kept me invested in the game, however i always liked the gameplay in MGS and i always had a BLAST playing all the games from a gameplay perspective, and MGSV gameplay is surely the best one so far and by far (therefore i do disagree with your last statement), the gameplay was great and it keept me enterteined for over 90+ hours until i started feeling how repetitive and bad paced the game was.

Where would you recommend I start? I would really like to get into it.

the first one on the PS1, yes its an outdated game but... its a 17 years old game, and then move on to MGS2, 3 and 4 (In other words play them in order of release).

I don't have my ps1 anymore but I'll get the hd collection. I didn't know there was a lot of backlash about mgsv, so it's good to hear the rest of the franchise is better. Thank you!

Im a huge MGS fan, i only criticize MGSV because it does have its problems, and once you try out the other MGS games you will probably be surprised by how different they are, (and im not talking about quality here because as flawed as MGSV is, it does have a lot of quality and work put into it, it just gets repetitive, has bad pacing and the worst offender... its incomplete), the other games are way more invested in the story, (which keeps you on youre toes through the entire game) thats not to say that they dont have great gameplay to go along and keep you enterteined, its just that the story is really really good.

Also a little disclaimer my favorite game in the series is MGS3 (and a lot of people agree that its the best in the series and its actually story wise the first in the series), so if by any chance the first game puts you off (due to how outdated it is, or if you werent "feeling it") then at least play MGS 3 its one of the few games i would actually call a masterpiece.

That's why I fell in love with MGS3, despite its flaws. It absolutely upended the "too many cutscenes" stigma Kojima has attached to his name. The gameplay wasn't mearly good, it's one of the best action games, from a gameplay perspective, I've ever played. That is not a compliment I dole out often, as many here are aware. I am very critical of everything, and even I couldn't help gush over that game. There were definitely a lot of cutscenes, but it was, for the most part, expertly paced. There were only two occasions where I felt that they were in the way. Outside of that, they always came right when I wanted a break from the gameplay. Every. Single. Time. And never, on those occasions, did they overstay their welcome.

I think that, mechanic wise, it's the best. (Well, better than SE) Snake controls better here. But I will debate tooth and nail the sentiment that the open world absolutely ruins MGS's brand of arcade stealth. Maybe this is blasphemous to say, but playing a mission in MGS3 felt exactly like playing a level in SMB to me. It was relatively linear, and a very choreagraphed experience. That made it great. MGSV trades that tight choreography for player agency, and I don't think the game benefits enough from it to warrent the change. I think regenerating health was a terrible compromise that completely shadders the tension found in earlier games and promotes hit and run tactics. I think that supply drops absolutely destroys any incentive to naturally explore the areas you're infiltrating for more than just the specific targets you're looking for. I played for maybe 20 hours and there were absolutely no interior buildings to infiltrate, meaning I literally only had two settings in that playtime: Desert and Safari. Because the levels in Snake Eater were so linear and choreographed, every single mission felt vastly different from the last with their own gimmicks to factor in, the same way every level feels different with their own gimmicks in SM3DW. The idea of that is laughable to the point of ludacrisy in MGSV because they're so focused on so-called "emergent gameplay," which already existed fine in MGS3. Really, I want to think the open world ruined so much of this game, but I genuinely think we could have gotten the best of both worlds somehow. Maybe a smaller, denser, Dark Souls/Bloodborne approach to level design where the areas and routes are, by definition, linear, but all interconnected. I don't know, but what they did here ruined much of what I liked about Snake Eater and I imagine much of what I'll like in the other MGS games.

Also, the bosses suck.

Like I said, I'm glad you enjoyed it. The fact that I lasted 20 hours shows how much I enjoyed MGS3, because if I hadn't, i would have stopped after 6. That's how hard I was hoping it would get better.

As someone who only recently got into MGS, loved it, played MGSV, and didn't love it, I'd recommend playing 3 first like I did. It's the first cronologically, is the first one with the modern TPS gameplay (only specific editions), and is still very, very, very, good. I'm not saying not to take advice saying to play them in order of release, but that that's not the only good place to start.

Play Snake Eater. That will immediately get you hooked and looking for more.

im with you bro, i loved it as well. I actually really like the ending and the twist but i just wish we got to see more of the real BB but w/e

I hate the FOB stuff tho, i took a week hiatus from the game, came back to all my resources gone (like 300k worth) i was gonna use them to build nukes and finish 4/4 base upgrades. this really put me off and i just said fuck it and stopped playing.