I’ve gotten a fair bit through Death Stranding 2. Theres things I like and things I dont. The game is beautiful and story is more engaging than the first one. The gameplay has been streamlined more with many underlying systems. Kojima has managed to make it more compelling and you’re wondering what is in the next area or on the other side of the next mountain.  The score is also pretty good.

But there’s s stuff I don’t like. The two biggest issues of this game are engine and core gameplay loop. This is the most compelling gameplay loop package delivery will be. Theres a lot of hypocrisy out there with people saying they are cool with this. Imagine in Fallout 4, the game main loop were the Preston Garvey defense missions that took you through the commonwealth. These people would be complaining more than they did when it was a side mission. What if in New Vegas, the main gameplay loop was you making deliveries for Mojave Express? Walking across the wasteland and you walk by vaults you cant go in and only talk to them over the intercom with a bunch of random encounters and bandit camps. This would be a big criticism

For reviewers, they complained about The Order 1886’s mission structure, saying some chapters are only cutscenes. Chapter 2 in DS2 is just a cutscene and no one has said anything. On the PC side, theres the people saying its just a walking simulator, but they play Ark and Rust. They are just as or more boring than Death Stranding 1. PC players are also the people who made walking simulators popular.

Why was using Decima a bad choice? Its only good at graphics, the gameplay is usually meh with bad stealth. The stealth is usually hide in tall grass or behind a wall. Theres no sight meter to show when or how far away they can see you. Theres also no meter to show how well your camouflaged. So you will have people randomly see you from a distance. 

The boss battle and BT collision fight I did looked cool, but got frustrating. The issue is the baked in movement of Decima isn’t good for quick movement when you need to dodge.

The games UI and menus have issues that earlier games solved. When it comes to choosing items and weapons, all you had to do was press the dpad until you found what you needed in MGSV. In DS, you hold it down, its stops the game, use a weapon wheel, and you click to equip it. Then instead of just taking ammo from dropped guns, it picks up the gun and you’ll have multiple in your inventory.  I don’t know if the ammo pouch on your backpack fixes that, but it shouldn’t be the case to begin with.

The world building is another issue I have. I hate that we only deliver to the bunkers and put the packages on a conveyer belt. We never see the cities or the people in there, just the person who takes deliveries. Outside your private rooms, there’s not really any indoor environments.

The open world is beautiful and has some diverse environments. I don’t think it is needed. It creates further issues of repetition in a game about delivering. It would’ve been better if they had done a hub world and deliveries were done on smaller open ended levels. You don’t have to walk these great distances but it gives you the impression. Maybe the first one or two deliveries you have to walk those. 

The writing in this can be good, and other times it gets very simplistic to move the story forward. There were many times I just didn’t care. The deliveries when you’re talking to the hologram or when your having conversations when your loading up cargo, I didn’t care about. 

The story, I’m pretty sure Im working for the bad guys. Fragile comes out of nowhere to recruit you to a new company sponsored by mysterious people. The head guy uses a weird mannequin that moves its eyes to talk. What happened to the Kojima who made wild twists you weren’t expecting? Another thing is the names are lacking originality and it’s like he’s trying to be symbolic and simplistic at the same time. There’s no cool symbolic names like in his older games. It comes off as your just not trying. Hardman, Die Hardman, Tarman, Dollman, and Deadman are examples.  Imagine calling Vulcan Raven, TankMan. Or even calling Decoy Octopus, ChangeMan. I know in MGS Peace Walker the bad guy was Hot Coldman, but thats an exception not the rule.

There’s a lot of big name actors in this, but their parts are meh. Sam is one note and lacks any personality and flat. Its like in MGSV, Snake seemed to have lost a bit of personality when it went open world. Deadman tries to drop a crazy story beat and it fails. George Miller seems cool but its like he needed better lines. This is my favorite Lea Seydoux performance in anything. Shes the best written from what Ive seen and seems to have the most personality of anyone.

Does it go woke? From what Ive played no. But with characters like Doctor, it wouldn’t surprise me. I think theres been a few people that said it does so we’ll see. 

Is Death Stranding 2 an upgrade over the first? Yes. Is it better than Metal Gear? No, it has some big highs with great music and visuals, but held back by its core loop of deliveries with lackluster and uninteresting parts. The holograms conversations, in menu dialogue,  bad stealth, open world and frustrating movement hold it back. Like the first game, it has all the pieces to be a masterpiece. The game doesn’t put the pieces together correctly or learn from past games to do so.  Id give it a _7.5.

UPDATE: The review score is going down to a 6.5. After getting further I just don’t care anymore. The game loses all its narrative steam and the cool moments aren’t a good payoff. It keeps you in this state of if I stop playing Im going to miss the good parts. You will not. The writing doesn’t get any better, its still basic to bad. Now since episode 4 or 5, cutscenes Ive just wanted to skip and no one is saying anything. People complained how MGS4 had long cutscenes. Those were entertaining and gave you info without it feeling like it was being dumped on you. In DS2, with shorter cutscenes and dialogue it manages to be worse. It’s like they’re going down a list of stuff to tell you in the most basic way possible.