Portable Ops is an odd entry in the Metal Gear franchise. Be it because of its poor accessibility on a handheld console that can definitely not hold its weight, be it because it has sprung countless arguments online to whether it is worth it to play or even debating about its place in the canon story line of Metal Gear, be it because ever since Acid and Acid 2 and countless mobile games people just stopped caring about the handheld titles in the series, being overlooked as mediocre or simply not giving them a try... Pretty much everything that could go wrong with going ahead and making a fully-fledged story made to fit into an already established and moving story line is simply been overlooked and underrated by many.

I've got to say that my first experience with the game wasn't the best. I first picked it up in my PlayStation Vita console, installed a patch that could let me play with dual stick controls (...because if you don't do this, the only way to move the camera would be with the D-Pad that is very conveniently placed on top of the movement stick in the console), and so I booted it up. The first look at it wasn't really all that great.
I noticed how the game ran pretty poorly in its actual hardware, a sub-30 fps at all times wasn't great for a series that is usually pretty slick and smooth in a technical level, coupled that with the fact that I was pretty much counting pixels on my screen when I was trying to take a guard down with Snake's tranquilizer pistol, it wasn't a really great two first hours and I kind of dreaded the fact that I was gonna have to be playing this but not Metal Gear Solid 4 or something else.

So, in my journey to see how could I improve this game experience I noticed that there was a 60 FPS patch for use with the PPSSPP emulator, and naturally I just had to try it. I put my save file in my computer, increased the internal resolution to 1080p and keybinded in dual stick controls... And, oh my god. This game is literally just diet Metal Gear Solid 3 absolutely shackled and limited by its original hardware its insane, and it doesn't surprise me how this didn't catch on to people even today.

Portable Ops is a following story to Snake Eater, if you think about it, it's kind of like a neglected Metal Gear Solid 3.5 and its main catch is on how the operation rolls out. In most Metal Gear games it's mainly Snake sneaking into some sort of facility without any prior objects of utility or weapons, these having to be found in the facility itself in order to get to advance forward, beat bosses easier or take out guards faster. And in that regard, this game is completely different to any other entry that tries to put its spin into the Tactical Espionage series.

In this game, due to how the plot is set up very early on, Snake doesn't have to work all alone anymore, but you instead have to sneak into different places around San Hieronymo and convince the guards that you take out to join your side to aid in the creation of weaponry, medicine, scouting different places to inform you of valuable arms that might be useful for your own mission, and with this you practically get to create your own army that's out to rebel against Gene who longs for a country inhabited by special soldiers at the expense of some of his own troops... And eventually Metal Gear coming into question.
A lot of these recruits have their own special abilities and are more fit to be dispatched in certain areas (such as tech or medical) than to use in battle, because you can opt for playing as 200 or so characters that you can recruit yourself, some even secret only able to be entered through passwords, they can all be equipped with their own weapons and if you have an unit that gets eliminated or depletes its stamina you can just roll out with another one, this works a lot for gathering objects when your inventory full.

Now, the bad part about this system is that in order to recruit members you have to take out guards, generals, medics and scientists, and that's fine since the stealth aspect of this game is pretty easy, but the one thing that turns away people the other direction is having to drag their corpse all the way back to the spawn area behind a truck to count them in. This process takes a long while if you're doing it by hand and you most likely will because I've found that the mechanic of leaving people nearby cardboard boxes with the other members of your team around for them to get captured simply doesn't work. I personally had to use fast forwarding in my emulator to make it less of a chore, and even then I had to repeat a few missions so that I could gather enough members for a sustainable medic team or spy unit, but it's something that you'll do once and never again hopefully, since most of the time you'll use Snake anyways, and unless you fight bosses there's no need for more than your trusty Mk22 since the enemies' routing is pretty basic and most of the maps you're gonna sneak into are pretty much enclosed, smaller spaces because of the console it was put on (but also works at its advantage because it makes for a bite-sized experience you can either binge or hop in and on every so often).

Having explained how the recruitment system works, the only thing that there is left to say about this game is pretty much its story, it's surprisingly good for a spin-off game of a seemingly low budget, it has great pacing, a great retrospective on Big Boss's actions through MGS3, and even a glimpse into the future that is the start of the whole franchise and a small array of familiar faces who make for bosses that are pretty much on par with mainline. I particularly like how they adapted the story to be in this very rough comic artstyle that fits the tone of the series perfectly and manages to absolutely bring the same movie-like vibe and action of the 3D titles to the portable system.

It's a shame that a lot of people won't look back to this game because it's been argued forever whether it is worth it or not because "it's not canon", when it was made carefully so it didn't contradict anything from the main story, expanded upon Naked Snake's story and even had the approval and overseeing of Kojima himself even if he didn't direct or write for it (he literally didn't want to drop MGS4 until this one was finished and out), and people worry about it because it didn't show up on a timeline? Gimme a break, the story is excellent for what it is and you best bet it's canon, it'd be a waste if it wasn't. (Manifesting it shows up as a remastered version in Master Collection Vol. 2 whenever that comes out three years from now on)

Overall, pretty surprising. Calling to the Night is a really good credits song, too.