Got further in this game than the first Metal Gear due to the the more complex AI and crawling adding more enjoyment to playing this game than the first as it's closer to a modern MGS game, but it still didn't hold my attention for too long. Saving also felt a lot fairer, and I'd lose 5 minutes progress at most with is much easier to make up for. The most interesting part to me is seeing Big Boss in a villain role, especially coming to these games after MGS3, but apart from that the story is what you'd expect and everything is kept pretty sparse.

Overall Metal Gear 2 is a better game than the first and I found it more engaging as it's more similar to a modern title, but I don't think it's worth my time following a guide for 5 hours anymore just to say I've completed a game I don't enjoy playing. Probably worth at least trying if you're a fan of the series and want to see where they started, but not much more than that.

i am conflicted

right off the bat, the game starts with an insanely good opening credits theme. this immediately sets the tone for an evolution of the same annoying earworm playing in the background that metal gear 1 was plagued with. im not kidding when i say that this opening theme is probably the best ive heard since gravity rush's discovery of gravitation, excluding full moon full life, but im not counting that. both have this indescribable feeling of something special, just conveying how much of a ride you're in for.

the ost as a whole has gotten a huge upgrade. there's tons of memorable songs, including the afformentioned opening theme, but also nearly every area theme. unfortunately, i found the "you've been spotted!" theme and the boss themes to be as lackluster as the first metal gear's soundtrack. they just sound like noise after a while.

another thing i liked about this one over the last was how much of an upgrade the color palette got here. it's much more vibrant and lush, compared to the muddy browns the first game was riddled with. seemingly, it's even more vibrant in the og release(i played the version that's included with mgs3 subsistence). another change in this version was the sprites.

the sprites in the og msx2 version are definitely giving off that vibe of "80s kids cartoon about a super spy". all buff macho men that are tanned to hell but contrasted to weirdly uncanny sprites of the female characters. i dont hate these sprites, but the ones in the subsistence version are definitely an improvement. perhaps that's just cuz i like anime style more but i cant really change that, can i?

the story for the most part is also stuck in the ways of metal gear 1, where it is too basic to take seriously. another casualty of the vibe of"80s kids cartoon about a super spy". that's what i would say if not for the end, where it raises some questions about war. being that this monologue was right at the very end though made it impossible to explore with any level of depth, but im gonna assume it's focused on a lot more in the solid series. the story is a relative improvement overall, though. it does it's job fine. felt a lot rushed at the end, though. it still insists upon cheesy b movie romance at the end, honestly the ending reminded me a ton of uncharted drake's fortune, lol.

youll have noticed im dancing around a huge issue i had with the first metal gear. ill just acknowledge it now, the game is still impossible without a guide. using a yt guide is how i even noticed the sprite and color changes between the versions. ill contend, maybe it's a bit less cryptic, but honestly, there's still plenty of areas you can just waltz right into without any way of beating the things that await you. that's just poor game design. without a guide id be so much more frustrated with this game, there's just too much that's not stated to the player in any way and it leaves them confused. im not from the era this was made, so this cryptic game design is foreign to me, and frankly i dont think it should've ever been this cryptic. im not against the openness of approach, but i wish it was more like "heres a bunch of paths you can take" you go to each of them but theyre all blocked off except one because you dont have an item, kinda like metroidvania progression. so it's still "open" but never confusing and you can only take one at a time.

another thing that makes me split on this game. the gameplay. dear god, the gameplay is as dogass as the first. enemy sightlines are still razor sharp and don't make much logical sense. you can walk right past them as long as youre an inch away vertically, but god forbid you walk in the horizontal sightline of someone on the opposite side of the screen. cuz youll be spotted immediately. there's no good or logical way to become hidden again. either you fuck with the game's memory by loading into another area and suddenly the entire base forgets about you, or you run for dear life like a chicken with it's head cut off. the jank way enemies see/forget you just breaks my immersion. honestly quite similar to hitman in that regard where they forget about you after a bit. another thing is the gunplay. it's still shitty. requires pixel perfect precision. clunky as fuck when you combine that with running away. it just flat out sucks. a lot of bosses are bullet sponges as well, which sucks. they are better than the first game's however.

so im very split on this game. on one hand, the ost is fantastic, the colors are better than the first game's poo brown, and the story feels like it's finally getting somewhere with what the solid games will focus on. the sprites also made me go "ooh ooh i know you youre that guy ive seen so much" . that being said, the game suffers a lot due to keeping a lot of the first game's shitty systems or cryptic gameplay requiring a guide. as it stands, i don't understand why i played these beforehand instead of hopping right into solid. maybe there will be some connections later on that will make it worth while like trails. but right now they do feel like a waste of time and disappointed me compared to what i had expected this series to be. ive had absolutely gargantuan expectations for the solid games for years given how much praise they get, and i feel like somehow ill be disappointed in them unless i temper my expectations. so ill scurry off and finish hitman 3 and cold steel 2 now. as for the game itself, the ost is really making me feel a 7, which surprises me, but that's what i feel mg2 is as of right now. maybe ill bump it down later, or even up, idk. hopefully ill be binging the solid games in May after i clear out the rest of my "playing" tab.