This has kind of fizzled out for me now. After about 95 hours, admittedly, but it just doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
I love the basic mechanics of it. Infiltrating bases, abducting soldiers, building weapons. It's incredibly solid and extremely 'gamey'. It's the ultimate Metal Gear in terms of actual gameplay.
But it's also very repetitive, and the story is, well, nonsense. I got to a point a couple of weeks ago where I'd finished the main bad guy and it seemed like Game Over. Credits rolled. But then Chapter Two popped up and there was a preview of a load more cutscenes, so I carried on but it's all exactly the same. Repeating the same missions as before, but with the occasional new one thrown in.
I was getting tired of it for a while, but the bit that tipped me over the edge was when <ludicrous plot spoiler> I was summoned back to the base to find them torturing Quiet. I mean, why the hell did that happen? I'm the Big Boss, right? I'm in charge, it's my goddamn private army. Quiet has been my sidekick for the majority of the game, and is the reason most of my soldiers are alive. Yet my own employees decide to tie her up (how did they do that when she can just vanish?) and start electrocuting her because they think she's a spy. And the cutscene after that, well, it's ridiculous even by Metal Gear standards. So she can speak, but she doesn't because of some parasite that would infect everyone if she so much as uttered a word of English. But any other language is fine. And yet she never thinks to get a pen and paper to communicate. I guess they didn't have text messages in the 80s.
I played on for a few more missions, but I haven't touched it for a while and I'm pretty certain I'll never go back. Life is too short for this. So, great game but it outstayed its welcome like nothing I've ever played before.