I think there's a lot of broad problems with certain parts of the ending and how the writers don't necessarily know how to write a story that doesn't end with all the characters getting paired up. There's a few points I would've liked the game to commit to or elaborate on, and some other weird writing choices here and there. Might put those problems in a rot13 comment later.

But for the most part, the experience of 13 Sentinels is really something special. A complicated web of a story that's arranged to be completely baffling for much of its runtime. It plays a number of tricks to deceive and confuse you. Much of the game's run focus on the player just utterly confused, trying to decipher all the bits and pieces and try to make it all even vaguely coherent in their heads. The real magic trick is that, by the end, the entire game makes perfect sense. All the game's spinning plates land perfectly on this immaculate dinner table its created for you to feast on. This game has some of my favorite characters of all time in it and even the characters I didn't connect with are endearing in some way. Its a truly incredible work of fiction and its a miracle it all flows as well as it does.

Even beyond all that character work, the gameplay was a delight. The real time strategy sections are crunchy little delights that reward a player's experimentation and care. I specifically want to praise the distinctions between the PS4 version and the Switch version I played. The Switch version gives each character unique attacks that weren't present in the original game. It helps differentiate your playable characters and helps encourage switching them out to see what everyone has to offer.

All these little factors combine together in one of the most overwhelmingly satisfying games I've ever played. There's a part of me that was dreading continuing because I didn't want the experience to end. I wanted to spend more time with these characters. Experience their everyday lives and conversations. After 36 hours, I wanted more. And that speaks to the incredible depth Vanillaware managed to put into this experience. One of my new favorite games of all time. What a phenomenal journey.

A mildly interesting, though, ultimately flaccid entry for the larger Metal Gear Saga envisioned by Kojima. It’s got quite a lot going for it on the conceptual level; despite being just Snake Eater But For Babies, it makes some solid compromises to be a serviceable Metal Gear game on a portable console. The leaning towards motion comic styled cutscenes never felt like an obvious limitation of the hardware but a natural step to dive into. After all, Yoji Shinkawa has taken artistic inspiration from western comic book artists like Frank Miller and Jim Lee, explaining how reminiscent Metal Gear is to a comic book in the art department. I did like the idea Kojima had for wanting this game to be centered on co-op, or “friendship”, through the way every mission op to the mother base management feeds into this mechanically. However, if you don’t really have access to most of those features to engage with properly (like me!) then you’re left with a game whose limitations are pushed all the way to the forefront. I said this plays like Snake Eater But For Babies yet it only barely feels like that. Strip mining just about every interesting stealth combat mechanic that MGS3 introduced into the series and left with essentially just a jankier MGS4 but scaled down. The level design is the most linear out of all the games, offering some branching pathways to head to your next destination, but never making them feel like environments rich with stealth combat problem solving beyond the bare basics. Evading past enemies, or confronting them, never felt like a tense challenge to overcome because of how easy it was to just tranq-headshot them and send their bodies flying Fulton Recovery style. I’ve only ever faced real difficulty when fighting the bosses who all took way too long to beat, even trying to work with the grind set of the content, giving you an increased arsenal of weapons.

What carries Peacewalker beyond these set of problems is undeniably its story, which even then my praises are mostly super faint. It serves as a small epilogue following the events of Snake Eater that meditates on the impact left by the ending, the repercussions which paved the way for the rest of the Metal Gear Saga to mold itself into. Though I still sorta question, even finishing my playthrough here, whether it was necessary because Snake Eater’s ending was powerful for visually speaking a thousand words in how things will change. I’m not sure that it needed to be set flat on a table and ironed out to make the subtext digestible as literal text. Like, oh -- did The Boss actually do what she did for the absolute sake of her country, or was it yet another government cover-up to make the truth sound easier to swallow? Does any of it really matter since either way it showed the true worth of ideals, loyalty, and identity in the face of the world wanting to take that away from you? Well, to people like Big Boss and Dr. Strangelove it certainly did. And I’ll admit, this is an interesting story thread to dissect, especially with how it reinforces the recurring themes of the other MGS games regarding the blurred lines between artificial reality and the emotions you always carry. Where this all stumbles lies in its characters. Besides Big Boss, whose arc is actually more impressive when I think back on it, the cast is just paper thin and doesn’t play enough into the theming beyond characters having names related to “peace”. This is meant to move the Metal Gear Saga into a different direction with Ground Zero and Phantom Pain attempting to develop further into what Kojima laid out here, but I hope this ambition is paid off good enough because I wasn’t hugely impressed by this. And by now, the bar I raise for Kojima is pretty high because of how I was being constantly impressed by what he and his team can cook up to shake the medium.

There are three Metal Gear Solid 4:

- The MGS4 that wants to push the ideas of Metal Gear forward exploring the concept of war economy and mass produced soldiers as a product of capitalist greed aided by gene manipulation and nanomachines.

- The MGS4 that wants to burn everything to the fucking ground Hideaki Anno style and spit on MGS fans for asking for more games. And it'll make sure that any grave that the franchise has left is getting pissed on.

- The MGS4 that's a caring and touching love letter to everything the series represents. A celebration of everything that's dumb and fun of Metal Gear.

Three games, three different core ideas and themes, and and it doesn't mesh all that well. It's a freaking mess of a game and has both the lowest and highest points of any Metal Gear.

But despite its flaws, I had a lot of fun.