I have recently begun playing through the entire main metal gear series. I started with the 2D games, which I played through MGS3 in the HD collection. After those, I got to play my first ever 3D Metal Gear, kind of. My experience with this series has been minimal before, but it has always intrigued me. Before this playthrough, I had played a bit of MGSV and Metal Gear Rising, and enjoyed what little I played of them, while also being aware that they were fairly different to previous games especially rising. With that said, I overall loved my time with Metal Gear Solid. For a game with graphics that make the characters look like wooden blocks, they were able to make me care about these characters. The story was good. I don't think it as masterful as some others say it is, but to each their own. For me personally, I did not care at all about the romance between Snake and Meryl, and felt that it was corny in a bad way(unlike the other corny/cheesy moments that feel intentionally funny and campy) and also just very forced. It didn't help that Meryl's voice actor wasn't the best. The gameplay was honestly surprising in how well it has aged, though there were some clunky moments. I didn't care for any moment where you were forced to fight enemies head on, like in the elevator ambushes, and I really did not enjoy the final boss fight with liquid snake, which just felt like a clunky, unfair mess. Overall, the story was good, but had some parts I didn't care for, and some not so great performances, and the gameplay was incredible when it was more focused on stealth and the more intense and fun boss fights, like the Grey Fox fight and the Vulcan Raven fight. Plus, this game, along with the rest of the series from what I hear, does a great job of utilizing the video game medium for some cool fourth wall breaking moments. From psycho mantis reading your memory card and making your controller vibrate, to having to look on the back of your game case for a codec frequency(which was annoying considering I played it digitally on PS3 but eh), this game didn't always take itself so seriously and I really appreciate that.