TL;DR: you could build a mountain out of the complaints thrown at this game, but you'd only get a molehill out of the ones that are actually valid

left alive isn't metal gear. it has a fair amount of low budget jank, but outside of the inconsistent performance, some weird animations and a few ai quirks here and there, it works as intended (if you can handle literally anything made by cavia, you'll be fine.) that said - depending on your playstyle and willingness to experiment, the experience is either gonna be totally exhilarating or completely exhausting

let's dispel the myth once and for all: not only is left alive not metal gear - it's not even a stealth game. enemies are armed to the teeth. these aren't dudes in military garb - they're soldiers with armored exosuits. it'd be stupid if you could just 'stealth takedown' them. so what's the solution, especially on higher difficulties? (read: any one that isn't the casual mode that they patched in for people who refused to play the game properly)

RUN LIKE A BITCH

oh, but if only i could easily obtain tools to distract or disarm guards to avoid the constant gunfire. if only i could plant traps or obscure my trail with smoke bombs. if only i could slide tackle into enemies while sprinting as if this were vanquish and knock them on their asses. oh wait - i can do all of that. soldiers are spongy, but the sheer amount of ways you can manipulate them justifies that. sure, it'll take eight headshots to kill someone, but what about when while they're too busy shaking off a molotov cocktail to retaliate? or trying to dismantle a barb wire trap?

on paper it might seem like you've got all the tools you need to dispose of anything, but ammo is fairly scarce and you can't carry much of it. maps are visited under different circumstances by all three characters and the loot in each area is finite. stocking up on ammo or all the scrap you can find might sound like a good idea at first, but you could be giving your other characters a much harder time for lack of preparation

narratively, i don't have a lot to say without spoilers. as a front mission fan, it's certainly cool to dicaprio_point.gif at all the familiar terminology and factions. definitely feels like there could've been more on the narrative front, but what's here is cool and the cast carrying things is surprisingly high profile - even nigh animation-less sidequest npcs are absurdly well voiced. the morality decisions are also interesting and fairly pivotal (ranging from survivors killing themselves because you told them the wrong things, to actually important characters dying unjustly for your actions). i like that what you get out of the narrative is reflective of what you put into it. moreover, i appreciate that because this is a front mission game i can pilot wanzers. that's pretty cool too

look. if you're still here then your curiosity must be sparked in some manner. i'll be frank: this game gets cheap. i bought it for $6 and i'd have gladly paid multiples of that. there are great ideas here and they're not even deeply buried under jank. this is just a fun and unique experience through and through. easily recommended to anyone with passing interest and an open mind. play on the hopeless difficulty too - it isn't - it puts you in the right mentality to get through novo slava as intended. don't sweat the side missions too much - they're tough and staying alive is hard enough as is

moral of this story: never fucking trust game critics or youtube funnymen. seriously. most of the negative reviews on steam have less than an hour of playtime and yet they act as if left alive assaulted their family and left no one alive

it's embarrassing