After Ground Zeroes, I had mixed expectations going into The Phantom Pain. I didn't like the new, more serious tone at all. The plot devices in Ground Zeroes were gross, insulting, and exploitative by any measure. To top it all off, the idea of an open-world Metal Gear game based off the generally agreed upon weakest entry in the core series, Peace Walker, didn't sound in the least bit exciting.
One hundred and twenty hours of gameplay later, I can say without hesitation this is the best game I have played of this generation.
What makes this game so much fun is while at some point open-world games like Grand Theft Auto stop fleshing out core content and start adding mini-games, most everything in this game feels as if it is at the service of the core game. The programmers seem to have thought of about everything the player might want to do. Want to set mines under a vehicle to flip it into a watchtower to take out a guard? Go ahead. Want to fulton everything rather than disposing killing objective like the mission briefing states? Go ahead. Side ops range from taking out tanks to disposing of mines, and while they can get repetitive, the varying terrain and bases do keep things interesting through most of the game.
In past Metal Gear games, the story has made up as much as half of the game's content between codec conversations and cutscenes. There is a healthy amount of story in Phantom Pain, but it is distributed fairly unevenly. You will go through a significant chunk of the game before seeing a great deal of main storyline development before it finally kicks into gear. Without spoiling things, the story is thematically interesting, though quite a bit different in tone from previous games. There is still a bit of the fantastical tone that has been present in the series, but there is a lot less mirth in the process. If you want to spoil the story for yourself, there is certainly a healthy debate out there you can read into. I actually enjoyed the story, including the more controversial pieces that came near the game's conclusion, even if some of the execution was off at times. The cast was a little less interesting than some of the earlier entries in the series. Of the characters in the game, I found Quiet the most interesting.
Speaking of Quiet, it's a shame they went in the direction they did with her embarrassingly skimpy attire. It's unnecessary cheesecake: a naked attempt to add sex appeal where it isn't needed. To put it in perspective though, this is the lousiest type of cheap appeal to those who need exposed breasts shoved in their faces at all times and less the icky, offensive type of misogynistic storytelling that plagued Ground Zeroes.
The online FOB system riddled with microtransactions is rather lame and adds little to the game. Invasions are not particularly fun. Perhaps the online component will improve upon the full release of online features, but multiplayer Metal Gear play has not really worked for me in the past. To make matters worse, the need to incorporate free-to-play style microtransactions bleeds into the single player component in the form of timers when you research new weapons and gear. What is particularly inexcusable about these timers is they only continue to count down while the game is actively on. It would be less of an issue if the timers remained at the 15-30 minute level they start at, but by the end of the game, it can take upwards of three hours for something to finish researching.
Despite a few negatives, it doesn't significantly detract from one of the best full packages available in gaming today. There is just so much to do here, and unlike most open-world games, most of it is fun. I rarely found myself bored during my time with it, whereas I could look at games like Dragon Age Inquisition and say "that could have been fifty hours and it would have been a better experience." If you're in any way a fan of this type of gameplay, you owe it to yourself to give this a go.