This took me a while a couple playthroughs to get into but most of that was shedding the 'Action' and leaning more into the 'Tactical Espionage'. You have to play this game slowly to play it well (at least if you're playing normally) but they give you all of the tools you need to survey the area, including a top-down view that used to be mandatory outside of this version. Stealth fans are eating WELL tonight! Though I personally prefer the snappier arcade-stealth approach of MGS2 I can still appreciate the feeling of methodically working your way through an area, even if a lot of it involves just crawling mostly everywhere for the best outcome.
The story is also the best in the series, only MGS1 can hope to match this level of cohesiveness which is unheard of from Kojima these days, where every plot of his is just pumped with more and more concepts and made-up terminology like a bad anime.
Easily one of the best stealth games ever made.