If you asked me my thoughts on this game a year ago, I think the score would honestly be lower. I've come around to this game a lot over time, but its still pretty heavily flawed.
The gameplay is honestly pretty good, but my main issue with this game is just the plot. Despite my love for MGS2, it left the franchise in a bit of a rough spot because of its purposeful ambiguity. It works for that game very well, but makes it a pretty hard point to continue off of. The way this game handles it, through its numerous retcons and reveals, is mostly kind of stupid. Between making the MGS3 crew the people behind the Patriots, to the way it explained away a lot of the supernatural aspects of Metal Gear with the infamous "nanomachines" excuse, its not the greatest. It doesn't help that the cutscenes this time around, aspects I've never actually minded despite others complaints about them, are very noticeable when they go on and on with exposition. Not all cutscenes are bad though. The Raiden vs Vamp fight was excellent, for example.
Metal Gear has a pretty big problem with misogyny in general , but its really rough in this game. The Beauty and Beast unit are almost comedic levels of terrible and the way it handles Naomi's character turns an intriguing character from the original MGS into another fridged woman to traumatize Otacon. EVA's also used as a tool for exposition before also dying to make Solid Snake sad, but at least that served more of a narrative purpose along with Ocelot and Big Boss' deaths. I do enjoy how Meryl is potrayed in this game though, as well as seeing Mei Ling again. No idea why she got paired off with the gag character who shits himself.
I've been pretty negative to this game so far without mentioning the fact that I actually genuinely like the way they end Solid Snake's character arc in this game. While the way it resurrects Big Boss is a bit stupid, getting that closure between the two of them is bittersweet and feels like the most appropriate send off for both of these characters. Ocelot was also handled excellently in this game, the final fight between you and him is amazing and features great callbacks to every game. I have some issues with the way they handle Raiden, but I overall think they handled the character well, as well as the dynamic they had with Solid Snake in this game being honestly a highlight to the writing.
So yeah, overall a pretty mixed bag. I think it concludes the series well enough for me not to hate it, but its definitely the most rough game in the series.
The gameplay is honestly pretty good, but my main issue with this game is just the plot. Despite my love for MGS2, it left the franchise in a bit of a rough spot because of its purposeful ambiguity. It works for that game very well, but makes it a pretty hard point to continue off of. The way this game handles it, through its numerous retcons and reveals, is mostly kind of stupid. Between making the MGS3 crew the people behind the Patriots, to the way it explained away a lot of the supernatural aspects of Metal Gear with the infamous "nanomachines" excuse, its not the greatest. It doesn't help that the cutscenes this time around, aspects I've never actually minded despite others complaints about them, are very noticeable when they go on and on with exposition. Not all cutscenes are bad though. The Raiden vs Vamp fight was excellent, for example.
Metal Gear has a pretty big problem with misogyny in general , but its really rough in this game. The Beauty and Beast unit are almost comedic levels of terrible and the way it handles Naomi's character turns an intriguing character from the original MGS into another fridged woman to traumatize Otacon. EVA's also used as a tool for exposition before also dying to make Solid Snake sad, but at least that served more of a narrative purpose along with Ocelot and Big Boss' deaths. I do enjoy how Meryl is potrayed in this game though, as well as seeing Mei Ling again. No idea why she got paired off with the gag character who shits himself.
I've been pretty negative to this game so far without mentioning the fact that I actually genuinely like the way they end Solid Snake's character arc in this game. While the way it resurrects Big Boss is a bit stupid, getting that closure between the two of them is bittersweet and feels like the most appropriate send off for both of these characters. Ocelot was also handled excellently in this game, the final fight between you and him is amazing and features great callbacks to every game. I have some issues with the way they handle Raiden, but I overall think they handled the character well, as well as the dynamic they had with Solid Snake in this game being honestly a highlight to the writing.
So yeah, overall a pretty mixed bag. I think it concludes the series well enough for me not to hate it, but its definitely the most rough game in the series.