Any game of this scope with so many options and moving parts is going to have problems. That's not even up for debate. And there are quite a few problems in MGS5, none of which are game breakers, but can unquestionably result in a fair amount of player frustration.

Once you unwrap your head around the idea that MGS5 is supposed to be a 10/10, five star, perfect game, etc. you're in a much better place to make a proper evaluation. There are no perfect games in my book with potential passes given out for games with such simple gameplay and design that there simply isn't enough to find fault with (Tetris maybe?).

I've logged over 110 hours, which is the most I've played any game since I bought a PS4 on launch day out of 30-40 titles. Most games I buy don't get finished, and some don't even make it out of the first weekend/session of play, so I'm pretty clear on what I feel deserves my game time, and what I feel is wasting it. So the concept of "value" as in dollars to hours of entertainment is completely meaningless to me. On the contrary, spending even 40 hours on a game means I just spent a work week's worth of time on entertainment.

Clearly, something is keeping me coming back, and it's not boredom, OCD or an overly developed fanaticism for the Metal Gear franchise, which full disclosure, became my favorite game franchise to date, even with all its faults.

MGS games don't get a free pass from me; it took me years before I finished the original MGS even though I bought it when it was originally released and saw all the big hype at the Konami booth at that year's E3. It similarly took me years before I finished MGS2, largely because I de-prioritized video games when I was in the Army. I bought MGS3 Snake Eater well after release and couldn't play the game until Subsistence added 3D camera control even later (it's probably still my favorite of the franchise). MGS4 was the first that I found myself marathoning/interactive movie watching. Never finished Portable Ops, Ops+ or (gasp) Peace Walker because I found it maddening to play on the PSP. I have no excuse for not playing after it was released as the PS3 HD remaster even though I have more than one copy of it from alternate collections. So no; MGS games get no free pass from me when it comes to spending an embarrassing amount of time on them.


Regarding complaints; I'm going to agree with more than not. I see a fair amount of complaints that seem to exist simply to hate on a game that so many people like myself are clearly having a lot of fun playing obsessively, but there are legitimate problems.

I'm just going to say that my biggest issue with MGS5 seems to stem around the "unfinished" feel of it which I suspect has to do with the game being too ambitious, taking too much time/resources from Konami, resulting in an over budget game that led to problems with the beancounters, problems between Kojima and Konami business execs.

In short, I think development was cut off midway (or two thirds way, or whatever) and Kojima Productions was left to finish what they had, polish it up to the best of their ability so they had a finished, sellable game to give Konami their ROI on a massive budget game. I don't think it's any coincidence that MGS5 is their last such game.

I'm not going to go into the game mechanics, story or difficulty. Some of the missions were pretty aggravating and not fun. Obviously there was a fair amount of repetition going on with rehashed missions. Seemed unnecessary seeing as how players can replay missions anyway. Why not just add an Extreme toggle option like Ground Zeroes. Extra Ops, same.

Of course the whole reason for doing ops is generating/stealing resources to build Outer Heaven. Obviously there's the online MGO aspect which makes a point of base building, resource developing since it becomes a war of private armies other players have built. If you're not playing MGO, it does seem a bit pointless to spend that much time doing all that.

I'm not doing MGO, and yet I'm still playing the game.

Not quite the ending I had hoped for, but it probably would have been a bit much to ask for something that segued directly into the opening of Metal Gear. Instead we have a retcon of Metal Gear, with the odd 4th wall breaking meta twist that 

SPOILER BELOW

Big Boss is you; the unnamed medic you created in MGS5.



Added spoiler tag (highlight to reveal) - SamuelRSmith

Putting 100 hours into a game doesn't mean that it deserves a 10/10.  The game might just be good enough and have enough content to put an excessive amount of time into, or it might be a great game like MGS5 that just doesn't deserve the rating it got.  Just because people are bashing the 10/10s the game has received and the issues that it has because of that doesn't mean that they're stating it isn't a good or great game, just that this game has massive issues and it doesn't deserve the score it's received. 

I've put over 100 hours into every Yakuza game, White Knight Chronicles 2, Tactics Ogre, Dragon Warrior 7, Dragon's Crown, Persona 4, almost every Final Fantasy, Jump Ultimate Stars, lots of other fighting games and many other games in general.  Whether it was because of multiple playthroughs or across a single save file I've put 100s of hours into many games.  It doesn't make those games 10/10.  They certainly have to be  good games or games I enjoy for me to put that much time into them, but doesn't mean they're 10/10.

The so called "honeymoon"-period, I doubt if it will ever go away, regardless of media.

Almost every single reply on this thread is unbiased, though.

You can manually set it on or off on the speakers options in the casette menu.

I don't give MGS5 a 10/10. There really aren't any perfect games in my book, and that's coming from well over 30 years of playing. 

Granted, that was a lengthy post, but you didn't read it for comprehension. The point was for me to play any game into the triple digits, is a rare anomaly given that I just don't have the patience to waste that much time on a single game. 

For whatever reason, MGS5 has given me more satisfaction than any other game in years despite its flaws. 

I think I've spotted which is the main The Phantom Pain's problem:

There's a lack of personality here. Let me explain, and for comparison sake, I'm going to use both Ground Zeroes and Peace Walker, which I don't consider they have a personality problem.

Most of the content thrown at the player is a redone version of something previously, whether it is extract tanks, dispose of a combat unit and so on. Even story missions, most of them, are a consequence of this. My most hated main mission, "Back down" or something like that have you extracting tanks, like the side ops things, but with the gimmick of a time constrain added to it. That's it, there's not much more to it.

So like the 65% of the things you can do in this game are something you've already done, with a gimmick, or just plain the same thing. Fortunately, in my opinion, the gameplay is so solid I didn't mind it in most cases, but I was just talking to a friend here who share the common opinion. This game would have been much more amazing had it had a little bit more of personality.

Let me explain in detail, now. Ground Zeroes gave you one single story mission, then about five side ops to do. Out of those, there were two fairly straightforward missions: the main mission - which is rescuing two prisoners - and the eliminating the snipers one - which was killing two soldiers -. Then they started getting creative, one has you storming through an helicopter the base itself trying to rescue Kojima, the later gets injured and you have to carry on the battle on ground while protecting his unconcious body until the helicopter has enough ground to land. On The Phantom Pain, rescuing Kojima is exactly the same mission as rescuing Kaz, except that, worse yet, there's nothing afterwards. You just grab him, put him on the helicopter and done.

What about blowing up the anti-air placements? There's a twist, once you've damaged them enough, then a timer will start until you finish your objectives because the base you're standing on will get blown to pieces. That's something you couldn't predict from the start.

The worst offender, I think, is that I've just unlocked Raiden to use on the game. Here, in Phantom Pain, Raiden is merely a costume for Snake. That's it. In Ground Zeroes, Raiden had a whole mission dedicated to him, which was also a tribute to another Kojima game and tons of easter eggs to find (like erasing the Metal Gear games logos!), plus fighting some alien shit, even if they were just a re-skin of normal soldiers. See where I'm getting at? Not only that, but you could unlock different colours for Raiden armor as you progressed, but in TPP you're stuck with the normal clothes. What about Deja Vu mission? A whole tribute to the original Metal Gear Solid, which also gave you a PSX textured Solid Snake and Gray Fox? Same thing in TPP, Gray Fox is merely a costume, and Solid Snake can only be unlocked if you played GZ.

Then there's like 16 missions of defeating tank units; the only thing they are all different is that they all take place in different places. That's it. How awesome would have been doing like mission 6 of it, only to find that, I dunno, it's actually a decoy group to capture Snake, and you have to fight your way out of a ridiculously numbered army waiting for you? Maybe I'm overthinking this, but that's the serious problem with the game: things have zero personality whatsoever. Never thought I'd say this, but outside the cutscene "heavy" story moments in TPP, Ground Zeroes had probably more personality poured in it. I bet being semi-open world helped much more too, so I wonder if the trade of complete open-world in TPP was worth it.

Now let me point at Peace Walker. Peace Walker is for me, a boring game, because of the game design (it's much better played on a portable IMO. Tried the game on console thanks to the HD version and...no, just no. Had to force myself through it, and it wasn't enjoyable). And yes, the game has tons of filler. But do you know what it also has? Some of the most creative side missions I've played in a game like this. Seducing Kaz, Monster Hunter mecha hunts and some others come to my mind. Was it so hard to replicate some of those in TPP? Or just use the same philosophy on it?

And to my final point: Dispatch Ops. Completely wasted. In Peace Walker, you had to create your own combat units, choose how many soldiers per units, which vehicles, weapons, tanks and Metal Gears were going into whatever mission you wanted. In TPP, you can only choose...ten soldiers, and everything else gets automatically assigned, and not only that, but there's just one Dispatch Ops worth mentioning, and you have zero control over it. And its difficult is merely an artificial barrier. There's no reason why you have 50% of possibilities to win. Also, did Battle Gear do something? Using Metal Gear in Peace Walker had the risk that enemy could blew it up, but it definitively helped winning so many battles. Battle Gear was here merely for Huey to have some deja vu moment, as Big Boss points out. Another thing wasted, another lack of personality.

There, I think I've covered it well.

Finished it now. It was weird. I don't know.

The Venom thing and we playing with a character that isn't Big Boss, although it was something that went through my mind at the beginning but then I just forgot it and moved on. The chronological events and such make sense I guess.

Anyway, fans were expecting Solid Snake, Gray Fox and the likes of them to show up. They didn't. It is a great game in terms of gameplay and the story is ok. It is about Miller's revenge and that was concluded. There is almost no connection to MG1 and MG2 but I guess that's fine, yes?

Just wish more time was put into development and we had more things, more mission variety, altough it is great as it is, and more details to the story. Like you say in your last post, that it had more personality, like the other MGSs. It just all feels a bit weird, but it is a great game. I think it deserves a 10 for what it is, and how great it plays. But then again, I don't give that many scores to games.