Adorable art, lovely music, charming writing, and overall a very comfy lil picross vn about witches. Only takes about an hour to play, strong recommendation from me!!

An actual criticism about the game: there's a point where it starts to talk about privilege and how it changes what peoples lives are but then shies away from actually saying anything in favor of being Cute™ and Wholesome™ which is a bit disappointing. Like, I dunno, maybe I shouldn't expect a small vn like this to have Big Things to say about life like that but also maybe don't invoke it if you're going to immediately step back from it, y'know.

As someone who loves Hideo Kojima and the Metal Gear Solid series to death, to say that I was pretty excited for Death Stranding is an understatement. Since Kojima left the evil empire known as Konami around the time Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain came out, that meant that he was able to make any type of game with any type of story that he wanted, regardless of whether it made sense or not. Now that I’ve finally completed the game, I’m glad to say that I loved Death Stranding, although I completely understand why other people don’t.

Death Stranding is one of the most unique AAA games I’ve ever played, and a lot of that is thanks to the gameplay itself. The gameplay mostly centers around delivering packages to isolated people across the UCA (United Cities of America) after a mass extinction known as the Death Stranding occurs out of the blue. A lot of people consider Death Stranding to be a “walking simulator”, and while I do see where they’re coming from, I loved the gameplay a lot. A lot of Death Stranding’s fun comes from trying to find the best route to take in order to keep your cargo in mint condition, which allows for some really cool moments of creative thinking and player freedom, especially when enemies like BTs or MULEs start to pop up.

Hideo Kojima’s games have always had exposition in them, and while I never minded it before due to how complex his stories are, I felt that Death Stranding has just a bit too much exposition. I thought that the story was still great, and the dialogue never reaches Christopher Nolan levels of expository drivel, but I still think that the exposition should’ve been toned down a bit. I also wasn’t a fan of some of the boss battles. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the boss battles are great, but some of the more gun-centric ones, especially the ones against Cliff Unger, aren’t as fun to play as the other boss battles. I think that this is because Death Stranding’s gameplay is centered around traversing the world rather than gunplay, so shooting bullet sponge troops and scouring the area for guns isn’t as fun as some of the other boss fights. Despite those issues, Death Stranding is a fantastic game that proves that Hideo Kojima can make a terrific, albeit polarizing game without the shackles imposed on him by Konami.

The story is basic, but still fun to unravel. The real reason I really really liked this one was the atmosphere. This game so wants you to think it's a horror - you feel unsafe, you don't know what happened to your family, there could be ghosts or demons, everywhere is dark, and a thunderstorm booms outside. This game really wants you to be scared as it tells you an uplifting story. A coming of age romance for the sister, a tragedy for the previous homeowner, and a drama for the parents. It's not exactly reinventing the wheel in terms of story or gameplay or puzzles, but the subversion of expectations is lovely.