NOTE: Below are just thoughts I wrote down like halfway through the game, this is my actual review
My biggest gripe with this game so far is the excessively cruel checkpoint system at times; in the context of the series it has gone from generous to brutal. In older entries, entering a loading zone would give you an automatic checkpoint along with a full health revival upon death. In The Phantom Pain, you could spend 30 minutes carefully sneaking across a 500m wide base, tactically avoiding or taking out each guard. Then, as soon as you reach the objective, accidentally alert one of the guards, locking the door to the cutscene when you’re standing right next to it, so you die or reset to checkpoint, only to be placed half a kilometre away from the entire facility, tasked with the daunting prospect of having to do the whole thing again.
The good news, however, as I came to realise, is that this isn't always a complete disaster, as your knowledge of events will stay with you and can be used for a quicker victory. For example, one mission tasked me with eliminating a guy in a massive compound, the only lead being that he would meet up with another guy. I spent ages sneaking in, interrogating soldiers to learn their route, and attempted to sabotage the road but was caught and had to reset. 15 minutes of progress reset? Not necessarily. Using my new knowledge of where the vehicle the target entered was parked, I chose a quicker route to its hangar, rigged it with C4, and simply waited from a safe distance until the right moment.
My biggest gripe with this game so far is the excessively cruel checkpoint system at times; in the context of the series it has gone from generous to brutal. In older entries, entering a loading zone would give you an automatic checkpoint along with a full health revival upon death. In The Phantom Pain, you could spend 30 minutes carefully sneaking across a 500m wide base, tactically avoiding or taking out each guard. Then, as soon as you reach the objective, accidentally alert one of the guards, locking the door to the cutscene when you’re standing right next to it, so you die or reset to checkpoint, only to be placed half a kilometre away from the entire facility, tasked with the daunting prospect of having to do the whole thing again.
The good news, however, as I came to realise, is that this isn't always a complete disaster, as your knowledge of events will stay with you and can be used for a quicker victory. For example, one mission tasked me with eliminating a guy in a massive compound, the only lead being that he would meet up with another guy. I spent ages sneaking in, interrogating soldiers to learn their route, and attempted to sabotage the road but was caught and had to reset. 15 minutes of progress reset? Not necessarily. Using my new knowledge of where the vehicle the target entered was parked, I chose a quicker route to its hangar, rigged it with C4, and simply waited from a safe distance until the right moment.