Ground Zeroes is one of the greatest prologue chapters in gaming history, it's an absolutely perfect introduction to The Phantom Pain.
Speaking about TPP, its gameplay is one of the most fun experiences I've had in a game in a very long time, probably the best in the MGS series. The story is obviously the weak part of the game but unlike many others I think it has its good moments and also I didn't really mind the concept of listening to the audio tapes, some were actually really good (especially the ones you get after beating the game).
Overall despite the lack of KoTF (the infamous mission 51) I have a very positive opinion of this game, I still play it from time to time

What do Rulers use to bring people together? It's Language.

And Ironically, like these words said by the code talker, I do wish this game stick to it's own story-telling language to communicate with us it's philosophy better unfortunately.

I don't know what can I say what hasn't been said numerous times, but anyway I will still want to convey my thoughts about this game.

When I started playing this game, I was already 1 year late so I heard all of the problems about this game. Also peace walker experience was still hot in my brain so my expectations was low as a pebble about this game. But strangely I found a game that actually had potential, even more than peace walker. Because rather than continuing the big boss's already concluded story, it "tries to do" something with other characters and villains. But decides to stop doing that and just wastes everything away.

Yet also, I love this damn game. It was a blast to go through for me from an other side. Because like I said, I really didn't had any "story expectations to begin with" after mgs4 ended everything conclusively.

(SPOILER WARNING)

Ground Zeroes

The tanker chapter of mgs2 but less impressive version of it. It does have the biggest single enemy camp in the entire mgs franchise(bigger then Groznyj Grad from mgs3). So it's fun to play inside it but unfortunately only have two objectives(if you don't care about side ops). That is: Save Chico and Paz. That's it. Because of that it doesn't have the feeling of you are part by part progressing a giant ship from mgs2 for me.

Story-wise it's a nice hype demo for the players. we learn Chico and Paz captured .Of course as a snake we want to save them because we care about them so we go to Camp Omega. But while we go there, there is an nuclear inspection going on at our mother base and ends in a cliffhanger.

It's a fine mission on it's own right. It's sets up a new villain and actually makes you wonder what the heck is going on with this new villain. It gives you hope for a potential of a new good mgs villain.

But once you learn the existence of casette tapes you learn how psycho he is. First it gives you more hope about the villain but if you think about it more than a second and think why the heck it's in a tape rather than a flashback scene and that thing is... actually a big first glance to upcoming mess that is mgsV's story telling.

MgsV-Main Game

After the events from mgsV, we open our eyes on a hospital Ocelot helps us escape? And we find ourselves on a new beginning. We set up our new motherbase, a robotic arm and then settle in afghanistan for our first mission to save Miller. After saving him we promise for VENGEANCE and with that game truly begins.

In the whole game, we save hostages, destroy camps, collect datas and try to get everything about Skull Face. Unfortunately game never goes deep in the story department and just fills you with tapes.

Then that finale mission hits. Everything ends in a rushed way and we of course get bunch of "Casette Tapes".

Wait... what?

I don't know if I manage to give you the impact of the cassette tapes, but this game botches it's own potential with relying to stupid casette tapes rather then let the cutscenes do the talking.

I watched all of them years later and yeah like I said they wasted every potential with tapes, especially in the "truth" tapes...

Also of course let's not forget about the cut finale 51. mission... no... "Missions" as well. Maybe I am gonna say something controversial but... I don't believe a sudden dlc for cut missions will fix this game. It's reliance on casette tapes hurts the story so much that not even a big witcher 3 level of dlc can save this game's story in my opinion. It's problematic in it's roots. It's impossible to save this story without redoing everything from scratch.

Btw when it comes to twist, tbh I don't feel anything about it. I know why everyone pissed about the "truth" twist but in my opinion it changes nothing. Story is already feels botched anyway because of the casette tapes. The twist itself is just a cream on the already badly cooked cake.

Unfortunately and ironically mgsv is a failure when it comes to communicating it's story to the players and because of that sends it's every potential to hell. But was it really that important story to get pushed to it's potential?

Not Really, Actually.

While truth tapes are really important, in the end of the day, mgsV is a phantom game. A story that doesn't need to exist in the bigger picture. It can just be in a lore file somehwere. I still consider everything ended with 4 and this game nor peace walker won't change that for me.

Gameplay

I said this game was a blast tho isn't it? Because it does one thing expertly, even better then every game I had ever played. What it does expertly is the freedom on stealth. I have never played a game where you can infiltrate in every way you want with the gadgets that feels almost endless, also with the buddy system that makes you feel like a commander, also with the shocking clever and defensive ai as well. Fixes all of my issues with peace walker for me.

Combine this with a more open soldier collecting system that gives you more choices to collect wherever you want that scales with you unlike peace walker's linear forced way of collect system. This makes the game 10 times more interesting when it comes to progressing.

I had so much fun with the gameplay that I stopped doing main missions and went with side ops all the way. After all who cares with that botched casette taped filled story right? Not me.

Only thing I can say bad about the gameplay is, open world feels unnecessary. We always go back to chopper anyway so.... I am not sure what is the point of this big of an open world I don't know. It just forces you to waste time with running to the chopper for hundreds of meters after every mission.

Also I heard some people pissed about there is no big base as big as camp omega in mgsv, I kinda get them but main game itself have lots of variety in it's missions when you combine them so I still left satisfied.

So yeah this is mgsV. A mess of a story but a brilliance when it comes to gameplay. You can consider this one the worst mgs story because of the botched telling but in my eyes...

It's the best stealth game I had ever played.

"Big Boss can go to Hell... I'll make the phantom and his sons stronger to send him there. For that, I'll keep playing my role."

Probably the most theory heavy game out there and, sure, you could say "Well, fans make up the theories to cope for the incomplete story line!! 🤓" But, we're talking about A Hideo Kojima Game here, they are almost made specifically for the fan theories and heavy speculation, given how complex and cryptic this series and Kojima is as a person, half of the fan theories I wouldn't even be surprised if they were actually real, but I digress.

Why I bring up theories is because I feel like they are what complete the game for me, not Konami or Kojima, but the blank spaces that are hinted towards, even in Ground Zeroes, that really makes you think about not just Venom Snake as a character, but the course of events throughout the whole game. There are so many subtle innuendos through the story that if you blink, you almost miss it, in classic Kojima fashion too. But, yeah, sure, Chapter 3 would have been nice, where did Sahelanthropus go? What happened to Eli? To be fair, at least one of these questions can be answered if you have a history with the franchise and where in fact you know that Eli is literally Liquid Snake, I guess you can really make the rest up and come to your own conclusions? Maybe I'm reaching a bit here in an attempt to defend this game for some of it's flaws, but to me, the missing chapter isn't that huge of a deal when you see what it's about, everything else felt like it was somewhat wrapped up and left up for interpretation, so...

But that's what I loved about this game, interpretation and the aforementioned theories, it just makes the game that much more eerie and interesting. For example, I've seen a lot of complaints towards the game's ending twist, people either felt betrayed or thought it was just shock value, where in both cases I can see where those people are coming from, but personally, I think it's one of Kojima's most ambitious twists, up there with Metal Gear Solid 2, and probably one of the most ambitious twists in gaming and to say that it... comes out of nowhere? I really don't understand that take, did we play the same game? Did we not see The Boss' AI pod literally refer to Venom as not Jack??? Why did Volgin back off??? There are SO many subtle references leading up to the twists that any other fan would kind of question themselves about these strange, unexplained occurances, it's like Kojima is almost feeding you the spoilers before you get to them, hiding in plain sight.

In any case, there is one glaring flaw this game does admittely have... where the fuck are the codec calls? Is half of this game's story really told through casette tapes? You will miss out on a lot of things if you don't listen to them, such as Venom literally being responsible for having a village wiped off the face of the map, that's never even mentioned by the characters outside of those tapes, it leads a lot of room for exposition that was needed tremendously, because otherwise, most people wouldn't even understand what the fuck is going on. And, look, I get the reasoning for removing codecs, it does sort of interrupt the flow of gameplay in the older games and to be fair, this game itself has a lot of content already, the story is pretty long, just imagine how much longer it would have been with all those codecs and extended plot exposition? But, it still would have been nice to have a few of the very, very important ones and honestly I see their exclusion more of a "we don't have the budget for this" than "think of the gameplay", very much one of the aspects I agree is incomplete due to either time constraints or Kojima blowing the game's budget on other things.

Gameplay wise, though, this is probably the best in the series. Perfecty blending stealth with action, there is no correct way to go about things (unless absolutely required), you can tackle your objectives with different approaches. Take the classic Metal Gear route or take Venom Snake to his full potential and put that rocket or stun bionic arm to work and fuck their shit up. FOX Engine really was a godsend and it is a shame how hard it is to work with and even moreso that it had to be abandoned, but all these years later, it's aged so well and I'm intrigued to see what they come up with next for the MGS3 Delta remake.

A pretty choppy review, but a revised one in retrospect to how I feel about the game now having played the whole series months later, a new found appreciation for this game and what it's trying to do that just makes it much better.

The balls of Konami to explicitly call this "The Definitive Package" knowing they sold Ground Zeroes separately is astounding. If you want an excellent introduction to MGS5 that isn't the 1 hour crawling simulator in the hospital, this is the way to go. At the time of writing, I have yet to finish Phantom Pain, but based off of what I have already experienced, this is the first Metal Gear game where I have truly enjoyed the gameplay, enough so that I want to delve back in to the earlier games with a new set of eyes.

A Kojima masterclass that's considered incomplete and it still manages to wrap up this series to its end perfectly in my opinion.

This game serves to explain a lot of stuff in the metal gear solid series and fill in some gaps of knowledge we did not know before and also to pad onto metal gear and metal gear 2. MGS V also helps expand more on Big Boss legacy as a character as he is one of the most influential aspiring characters in this series. This games gameplay is also the peak of the metal gear solid series, absolute peak.

"Now do you remember? Who you are? What you were meant to do? I cheated death, thanks to you. And thanks to you I’ve left my mark."

"I'm Big Boss, and you are too. This story, this Legend, its ours... Carry that with you wherever you go. Thank you my friend."

knotty, novelistic, sprawling and more than a little exhausting in its sometimes repetitive and always bordering on non-linear structure...if i could give a score to the first like 30ish missions i would probably give this another 5/5, but i have to admit the extremely long time it took me to finish is to the game's detriment, and that's 50% life events but 50% a near-constant gamer fatigue!!

it's all actually encapsulated nicely in the first and final mission; almost exact mirrors with minor differences and of course a new perspective the second go round...the issue is that this novelty applies to the cutscenes and not so much to going up against all the same obstacles...it felt tedious in a way that's surely intended but comes off flat-out unenjoyable rather than reflective or even meditative, as Death Stranding would achieve across my entire playtime

i think a lot of that comes down to the incongruity between incentives and aesthetics; we feel compelled to keep the story moving in the same sense as the prior games, complete the missions and move forward, and yet the open world formatting invites us to linger, challenge ourselves, breath in the environment...but when one does that you start to notice how quickly the novelty of these environments, these copy/paste setups...it lacks that Death Stranding mirage, the way it feels like you're lingering as you're still pushing things forward, that clear distinction between what's optional and what's core to the experience

as much as i want to engage with this directly as is, i can't help but see in its feverish ambition yet numerous failures to reconcile incentive and aesthetic nothing more than a really pretty dry-run for Death Stranding...it makes me appreciate that even more for what it manages to do without ever showing its hand, the tightrope it manages to walk between linearity and open-world sandbox

i don't think MGSV pulls that off anywhere near as well, in fact, i think it could have been better served by a less is more approach, sharing the same density of storytelling as an MGS4 but with its evolved, silky smooth gameplay...it's not that the decision to scatter narrative to the wind bothers me so much as the incongruity between form and function

still, i have been and will be chewing on it for a long time to come...and i do not regret even a second of the year+ i've spent finishing out the Metal Gear series///i feel like it was a great way to clearly understand the strengths and weaknesses of this medium i'm still only sorta familiar with, and i look forward to comparing every single subsequent game i play to its exemplary invention, it certainly casts a wide fucking shadow...the series already takes up more room in my daily thoughts than maybe any body of work period!!