After trying this game on release 4 years ago and being intimidated by just how HUGE this game felt I finally decided to give it another shot after watching my friend play for a bit and I don't regret it in the slightest. I had this preconceived notion that the game was going to be evil and tedious, as I am a huge fan of Metal Gear Solid and I've heard the rumors of Kojima trying to make "The End" bossfight in MGS3 2 real life weeks long, I assumed that since sony gave Kojima free reigns with his new studio that this was going to be the most unhinged Kojima product I have ever played. Coupled with the fact that my first playthrough was like 3 hours long and I hadn't even left the tutorial place I didn't think this game was for me. Upon my revisit of the game, on the director's cut version for PC, mind you, I found myself enjoying it far more than I did the first time. Once the gameplay loop clicks in your head it makes so much sense, and once the game starts making sense they love to completely flip the script on you. The gameplay is so varied, initially I found myself meticulously planning out the smallest of routes and trying to find the perfect footpath to proceed, to forging literal highways that united every single spot on the map, to going back to making on foot deliveries in the snowy mountains, making a system of ziplines for speedy deliveries, all the way to just completely conquering the floaty jumpy movement system and flying everywhere with my "Stabilizer" which doubles as a makeshift JETPACK and jump ramps that let you bust out a silly move while throwing yourself several hundred meters forwards. This game is often described as a "walking simulator" but I found myself playing 20 different simulator games as I progressed through the game. The story is amazing, too. I found myself loving every single character, even the random ones you never speak with again after finishing all of their deliveries. Throughout the game, you are rewarded with emails from all of the people you have delivered too, and it really does a good job in making you feel like you are uniting the world. Once you finally add the occasional social recluse to the UCA and they start getting delivery requests from random ass dudes you met 20 hours ago it really starts to feel like you are reconnecting people. I also really like how everyone is referred to as their occupation, or as what type of value they bring to the world. It shows you that every order is just as important as any other. While you may see the value in connecting someone like a doctor or scientist for the information and medicine knowledge alone, you also start to see the value in stuff like the cosplayer, or the video game collector, who provide the people of this broken world with freshly sewn underwear and cosmetics or act as an impromptu historian, telling the history of how humans used to act before the stranding through the mediums of video games and music and art. I also wanted to mention that I played this game at the same time as my friend and finding structures that they had built and random shit that they had left on the ground always made me smile, I can only imagine how it must have felt playing this game at launch and seeing everyone's evidence of tomfoolery and experimentation. My biggest complaints are the fact that if you want to 100% this game you have to do a racing minigame using the terrible vehicles that you have the option of using in the game, and once you conquer your fear of BTs they become more of an annoying hindrance than an exciting encounter.