This is basically the sonic equivalent of getting hit by a car as soon as you leave the hospital

If I wanted to experience a neglectful father rebuilding a relationship with his son, I would just watch Bambi 2

A game with so much ambition behind its themes and story that you cant help but appreciate its existence.
However I want to bring up the problems I did have with the game before I go into the good.

The characters are definitely the weakest part of the game, they are not awful but weaker than the 1st game. None of them really go through many personal character arcs but they still have some interesting interactions with each other, except for Raiden and Rose, their interactions were horrific and felt like a an awful rom com, luckily most of these interactions are optional and you only hear them when you save.
Speaking of Raiden, he is a fine protagonist, he starts of very naive and at time very stupid but him learning the reality of his situation was nice to see and gives him room for good growth.
Snakes appearences were fine too, most of the good stuff with him revolved around his dialogue and how he encourages Raiden and playing as him in the beginning was good and leaves some nice insight on whats to come.
Otacon was alright, you learn a bit more about him and he gets his own dramatic moment but it was a bit more on the weird side.
Everyone else is honestly not that great to the point where I dont have much to say about them, except Rose, I fucking hate her.

Even tho it lacks in character, it makes up for it with its story and themes. I was blown away with how it talked about its ideas and themes.
Although they can be seen as exposition dumps since it more codec conversation than a cinematic cutscene, what was said was incredible and almost terrifying with how much it reflects reality, with themes of censorship, free will, misinformation, and patriotism.
They are told in such a haunting way that the game pretty much predicted the future of the internet and to me that is insane, it almost feels like a warning, a warning we didn't listen to. Its honestly something that you need to see for yourself with how mind blowing it is.
Some parts of the story can be pretty convoluted but I heard that is the norm for metal gear and I plan to do my own digging to try and understand it better.

The gameplay was ok although at times can be very clunky with the gun aiming but luckily the 1st person camera is a huge help. I was dogshit at the small platforming segments, whether it be slipping on bird shit or just falling because the platforms are tight and the moving is super responsive causing me to fall but that is just me being bad.
The Emma Emmerich escort mission honestly wasn't the worst escort mission ever, like I was worried about the water part but the swimming controls are actually very good so it wasn't really a worry and luckily she doesn't move on her own, she will actually wait until you are ready to move.
The back tracking in the game did get annoying at times, worst one being when I had to go back and get the sniper rifle to take out some bombs that were far away.
The stealth was also fine too but there were some mechanics I didn't know about until looking it up like grabbing enemies, I dont know if they explained it and I already forgot or the game just straight up didn't tell me.

Overall an very good game with some strong and incredible themes, decent characters and fun gameplay to create something that is so relevant to our society, I cant get over that this game came out over 2 decades ago!

This game was definitely a victim of false advertising as it was not newcomer friendly at all but even from a newcomers perspective there was still so much wrong with this game

The story is directionless and almost feels episodic with a lot of random moments happening that honestly just feel like filler and you could remove and the story wouldn't feel all that different like the plot with Jessie or Dr. Hojos lab.
There are so many moments in the game where it feels like you are supposed to know what's happening when in reality I have no clue, its just very vague. I have no problem with the game adding some mystery but its portrayed in a way like we are supposed to know what it is going on such as all this talk about fate or the promised land. The ending also barely makes any sense to the point where I decided to do research and try to understand it and even with that understanding I still thinks its really stupid.
It doesn't help that the game has absolutely atrocious dialogue, any time the characters try to be funny or deep it just comes across as very corny and at some points I was cringing or even laughing at how dumb some of the serious lines were, maybe it could be due to the delivery of some of the lines.

The voice acting itself isnt horrible but there are some really awkwardly delivered lines that can honestly ruin the mood of the scenes they are used in, mostly with Cloud. I do think Cody Christians voice suited Cloud well but there are some lines he just delivers so awkwardly to the point where he sounds like he is whining. Whenever there was an attempt at an emotional moment with any of the characters most of the time, I felt nothing because most of the delivery is just really flat and felt emotionless except for maybe Barrett.
The rest of the performances are just forgettable, nothing amazing but nothing terrible either

The characters are also one of my biggest issues with this game as they are so poorly emphasised and you don't even get a full party of 4 by the end.
I do not like Cloud at all, honestly he just comes across as an emo edgelord that annoyed me a lot. His dialogue is atrocious and makes me want to slap him at times and I honestly didn't find his edgy behaviour all that believable. I would expect him to have at least a small change in attitude with someone like Tifa as she is someone from his past who is still alive, so it would show a more human side to Cloud if he was at least a little happy around Tifa.
Speaking of Tifa, she is honestly painfully boring that I really cant say too much about her, nothing about her character sticks out other than her design and again every time she opens her mouth I just want end because her dialogue is also terrible.
Barrett could've been decent I mean his chemistry with Marlene is cute but the dialogue he is given sounds like its from a bad marvel movie to the point where he really annoyed me.
Aerith is easily the most likable out of the 4 party members, I thought her sweet and kind demeanor was really cute and she was the only character who had a small bit of depth to her, it wasnt great depth but at least it was something and sometimes her dialogue was shit but not to the point where I was annoyed or angry. I will gladly call Aerith my wife.
The side cast are honestly forgettable, I have no care for Jessie, Wedge or Biggs as most of the time they just annoyed me, Red XIII just shows up around the end randomly and I wasn't really given enough time to care about him, Rude and Reno could've been a fun dynamic but we don't see them all that often.
Finally on the character list that I want to talk about is Sephiroth, holy shit he is the hottest man I have ever seen in my entire life and he was my motivation to keep playing this mess, but im putting those thoughts to the side and I honestly think how he was handled in the story was very poor. His introduction was amazing but was done way to early as I felt it took away the mystery on why Cloud is afraid of Sephiroth because Sephiroth basically explains what he did to Cloud to make him fear Sephiroth.
Sephiroths motivation though is quite the mystery because he just shows up whenever the fuck he feels like it and says random shite that you will probably forget about after he disappears as what he says has nothing to do with his motivation at all and again from newcomers perspective I have no idea what the fuck he is doing. Overall I do love Sephiroth as a character but how he is handled in the story is just really flawed

The gameplay was decent but there isnt much all that special about it.
A lot of the time there isn't really a lot of strategy to the enemies and bosses, normally you just hack away and they will be dead. Just so you know I played this game on normal mode and most of it wasn't a struggle. The dodge mechanic honestly sucks as even when I timed a dodge perfectly, I still got hit, maybe im just bad or something? The stagger mechanic was honestly really satisfying to pull off and made me feel like I was a God at the game. The upgrade system is fine, nothing too mind-blowing just fine.
I did have fun fighting the bosses except for that fucking house I felt like that thing was never gonna die.
The side quests were honestly super dull and boring to the point where I just gave up doing them because they were not fun.
There are also so many long walking or climbing segments that I felt only exist to stretch game time, like those fucking stairs at Shinra HQ, I had no idea that was optional because Cloud suggested using the stairs so that was me thinking that was the game telling me to use the stairs, so I did and I wanted to throw my PS5 out the window, the scene was so dragged out to the point where it wasn't even funny and the higher you go up the stairs the slower you move which was really frustrating.

The overall graphics and presentation look really nice, however the biggest fault are the NPCs who look so flat and lifeless. The music is honestly pretty decent like I liked the ending song that played during the credits so I will give it that praise.

Overall an absolute mess of a game with directionless story, unlikable to annoying characters, horrible dialogue and a terrible beginner for newcomers which has me concerned on how the rest of this story will play out in part 2 and 3.

Played this game completely wrong, but honestly its an effort to replay and get the "good" routes. But maybe

2022

Very adorable and looks beautiful with amazing music and nice atmosphere but I wasn't a big fan of how the narrative was told, it felt spoon fed and was more tell and not show.
I would rather B-12 didn't exist I understand his purpose to translate and hack but when they gave him a character it felt predictable and I just didn't really care for him.
The gameplay worked well for the most part but the jumping can be a bit messy where the cat just doesn't jump where you want it to and I did encounter a few glitches where some things were stuck to the point where I couldn't progress and had to reset so I hope in the future it gets some patch updates, it also suffered a few performance issues but that was the least of my problems in terms of presentation.

Overall a nice but disappointing experience that was definitely interesting in concept but flawed in execution

Its silly to take this game seriously as it has so many ridiculous moments like the dialogue or even some of the situations that i couldnt help but laugh my ass off.
If I was to take this game seriously I would have a lot of complaints about the story and characters such as it being really short and underdeveloped for example I thought raiden and sams chemistry as rivals would be further developed but it wasn't, they only interacted like 3 times which was disappointing, but its so ridiculous with how its portrayed that I just ignore it.
The gameplay and bosses are still really fun and have a decent amount of variety in terms of moves and weapons.
The memes tho is what is talked about the most and yeah they are really fucking funny, makes me glad this game exists because of the memes.
But yeah most of my enjoyment of this game is irony

Kinda miss when this game was popular cuz it was fun as fuck

The mini games can be fun and the characters roster is really good but my god I hate how small the boards are, it just kinda makes the experience less fun and strategic

I know this is our 1st introduction to mario kart but it has really aged like bread

Only this great when you buy expansions lol