We had the great luck to test Kojima’s last game of the worldwide known series. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the grand final and the close up of the whole story at the same time. The expectations about this game are extremely high and that is the reason we want to keep this review free of spoilers. We can say is, that this 80-Millions-Dollar-Production offers a lot of great entertainment.

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Nobody believed Hideo Kojima when he sad that this game will be 200 times bigger than Ground Zeroes, but he was right. Kojima’s last Metal Gear Solid game offers all in all about 150 sidequests and the primary story line which includes more than 30 missions. We think that you will need more than 30 hours to play through the game. The side-quests also need the same time. That means that you need more than 80 hours to play the whole game.

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As we said, we do not want to tell you more as we need to. To keep this review free of spoilers, we just give you only a quick view on the story. We think, that you should have played the prequel Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, because the game’s story begins after the events in Ground Zeroes.

Snake had an accident in the previous game. After nine years he wakes up in a hospital in Cyprus at the right time because the hospital is being under attack. Their goal is to kill Snake/Big Boss. Thanks to his friends you are able to escape out of the hospital. This loyal friends are Benedict „Kazuhira“ Miller and Ocelot.

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What we don’t like is, that every main mission starts with its own opening credits and its own short final credits. The developers wanted that the game is build like a TV-series with his own episodes. We think that the concept does not work here. It is also strange, that you are running on the mother base between this episodes. This doesn’t fit together. The worst thing is that every opening credits spoilers, which characters (including the bosses) will appear in this mission. We would prefer if the story would surprise us more about what is coming next.

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On the one hand there is no evolution of the characters to see, for example the bosses did not get stronger or more influence. On the other hand, the character’s performances are unbelievable good. Because of the great sound design, the persuasive speakers and the stirring background music, which includes great 80’s-Pop-tracks they are great staged. What we like is, that the boss-fights challenging us much more than in other games.

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What we like are the called companions of the game. While you are running through the dessert you meet some characters, animals or machines which you can use to support you on your missions. You can only choose one of them at the same time, but it is possible to switch them at any time. At the beginning of the game you have a horse which helps you to travel large distances. You also get a dog which helps you to find enemies. We do not want to reveal more at this point. What we can say is, that you have to pay attention to find this companions. We think, that the skills of your companions are extremely useful and can even be extended. Thanks to your mother base you are able to improve their equipment.

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Fans of this series know the Mother Base from Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. You can use the Mother Base to build your armee, add new departments such as an infirmary and use it to research and to develop new weapons and objects. It is possible to run around the Mother Base for the first time.

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The strategic elements, that the mother base adds into the game working excellent. You get more opportunities to achieve a mission if you develop new gears and weapons. We love it that the mother base helps that the game gets more and more diversified but it is important that you are open to it.

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You collect new resources for example by using the Fulton rescue balloon. With this you are able to collect new soldiers, weapons and vehicles. Who has already here a problem with the unrealistic approach, that people should know that fun was always more important for the developers of Metal Gear Solid games than realism. So if bosses appear with supernatural abilities, enemy vehicles slipping on horse excrements or enemies are distracted by a refined cardboard with a Pin-Up Girl Poster on it, this all is quite typical for the series. A good portion of absurdity belongs to Metal Gear Solid.

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Unfortunately, we have noticed that the enemy’s AI is not the best one but on the other hand, this game offers players a lot of different ways to complete a mission. At the beginning of the missions you can choose the time of day you want to start. Here’s an example: In one mission you have to kill a general. If you choose to start the mission at the day, he is awake and is protected by fewer guards. If you choose to start the mission at night, you could have the luck that he sleeps. That’s makes him an easier target but on the other hand he is protected by a lot of more guards.

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What we like is that you can replay all missions but this does not mean that you can achieve it the same way. Your enemy will remember how you outsmarted him the last time and adapts accordingly to it. For example, if you hit the enemies with a lot of headshots the last time, they will wear helmets the next time.

What we also like is the dynamic weather. Your and the enemies opponent is severely limited in sandstorms. Strong rainfall effects on the audibility of your steps.

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For the first 12 hours of the game you are in Afghanistan. The landscape impressed due to the powerful Fox Engine. Not only the landscape, the whole game including the cutscenes and cinematic videos looks fantastic. The game is full of details and great animations and because of wonderful facial expressions the characters feels real. Despite of the high resolution the game still runs smoothly.

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At the beginning of this review we sad that we do not want to spoiler anything. What we can also say is, that it’s worth to play the whole game until it’s end. Not once we were very surprised what happens in the story.

Unfortunately, we think that real Metal Gear Solid fan would like to have a much deeper story and that they will not be happy with it. Especially for a Metal Gear Solid, the story is one of the most important aspects. We liked it.

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On the other side, the gameplay mechanics are also important. We love it that this works evermore excellent. We were very motivated to develop new gadgets and skills on the Mother Base and to try out the new opportunities we get because of it. We also love how good the developers add the companions. We had a lot of fun to work with them together.

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We think that Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain is a marvelous game. Kojima can hereby adopt with head held high. We had a lot of fun with this game, and yes, if there would be a next one it would also stay on our “games that I want to buy”-list. Hideo Kojima, thank you very much, not only for this game, for all time and work that you invested to make us such a pleasure with all Metal Gear Games.

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You can find our multiplayer-mode-review further below.

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Kojima says goodbye with a debriefing video.

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