Rewinding back in the series to play MGS3 as someone who played MGS5 first was admittedly harmful to my experience, as the movement and controls felt awful and awkward for my entire playthrough- In general there were many aspects to this game that are quite reminiscent to the annoying stuff you'd see in games from the late 90s and early 2000s. Obviously this game is very impressive for the time it came out though, so I cant totally hold that against it.

That said, it was clear to me while playing this game why it is such a classic. MGS3 is very much a Kojima game and it is certainly not lacking in interesting, eccentric characters and complex war-and-spy based story elements. It also delivers a pretty impressive sense of atmosphere for a game from 2004. It does however occasionally have some of the silly and eye-rolling moments you'd expect from a Kojima story, but it's all very charming and got a laugh out of me multiple times. Ocelot and the final section with The Boss were particular highlights for me.

Cool game, but ultimately I'd be lying if I said i loved it.