Realised I never gave this a review to finalise my history with this game. So here goes.

This is a good game with some horrible choices. If you wonder why I will likely never finish this game in its entirety, it's because of how the entire story is spread out across multiple playthroughs where one has to repeat many things they did in past playthroughs, and yes, it is a massive slog. I've played through Edelgard's route and most of Dimitri's, and by that point I lost all motivation to experience all there is to offer. I couldn't stand the Monastery, which loses all of its novelty after that first playthrough as you are forced to go through if you want all those bonuses.

Speaking of the Monastery. It's awful. It's one of those things that looks impressive at first, but ultimately the areas you get to explore are so devoid of anything interesting that making it a streamlined process probably would have made for a better, and less tedious, game. Combined with the game's awful graphics and textures, and you have a recipe for something that needed to be cooked for longer.

The saving grace for this game is the story, the characters especially. These are some of the most memorable in the entire franchise. The conflict between Edelgard and Dimitri felt natural, while Claude was... nice, I guess? I dunno, it was more about the former two for me. If I had to be more critical, Dimitri was probably the best character while Edelgard the personal favourite, despite issues I have with the way they handled her narrative. Those issues asides, we have here an engaging narrative that gives a reason to slog through all the unnecessary filler. Sadly, it wasn't enough a reason for me.

This could have been an easy 5/5 had this game not made some crucial mistakes. Not having the motivation to see a good chunk of the story all because of its horrid pacing and requirement of going through the exact same content is a massive issue. I'm sure it won't bother many others as it does me, but I do have trouble with attention span, which this game reasonably stretches and asks too much of. An option to skip or streamline that experience would go a long way to making it much more accessible to someone like me.

Metal Wolf Chaos is incredible and terrible in equal measure across every element. The story concept is completely insane and hilarious, but the game feels like it's missing 80% of the cutscenes that explain how anything gets from one point to another. There's a point where you talk to a character, it fades to black, and in the next cutscene they've been kidnapped and ask if you can ever forgive them for betraying you. There is zero explanation for this series of events and it is never addressed afterwards. The voice acting is "terrible" in the best way, but the writing itself is clunky with abysmal broken English and lines of dialogue that get cut off mid-sentence. The action is completely over the top and it feels great to save America by blowing most of it up, but weapons do a seemingly random amount of damage on every shot, anything that's not a rocket launcher is effectively useless, and the bosses have unbelievably cheap attacks that tear through your health faster than an executive order. A total lack of checkpoints guarantees you'll be slogging through entire levels, bracing for the return of a boss' third-phase invisible attack.

To the outside observer, Metal Wolf Chaos is loud, obnoxious, deliriously over-the-top, with explosions and patriotism as far as the eye can see. To the player, it's a series of half-baked systems designed to undermine the entire experience and, in some ways, actively work against its enjoyment.

To put it simply: it's the perfect American game.

While it is undoubtedly one of the most influential games ever made, I don't really think it holds up that well on a gameplay perspective. The momentum physics feel like you're constantly running on ice, luckily there's not too much platforming to worry about but for some parts it can definitely be upsetting. Most the levels themselves end up feeling pretty repetitive without much variation. The hammer bros are a particularly frustrating enemy that certainly poses more way of a threat than any other that it feels feels like a nuisance, especially on 8-3.

I probably wouldn't recommend this if you're actually looking for something fun unless you use save states on it. As an experience to learn more about game history it's fine enough though.