Death Stranding is a realistic walking simulator in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world based in the territory of America where we play as a cargo porter.
It's story driven and has repetitive quests in a semi-open world.
Story is captivating and mysterious but I feel like there are some strange explanations inside missions and the initial tension and horror features evaporate shortly after experiencing them 10 times over.
There are long cutscenes and a lot of unplayable scenes which you will be skipping on purpose after seeing them so many times and this happens when delivering a cargo, going to private room, repairing a bike and even when entering a BT territory, game stops you and goes into slow motion, like if it was not clear that you are going into danger zone from the signs around put by other players and these zones are same. Even facing BTs who are supposed to kill you, you repatriate and you need to be very bad at game to get to 0 health because after 20 hours in, they still did not manage to kill me, on the hardest difficulty.
Walking is the most common way of getting around, the transport on bike comes into play after 7 hours but still walking will be required afterwards.
We have to balance our body so we won't fall and damage the cargo which in some cases can still be delivered if it's not too damaged. The problem is our character will start losing balance easily when carrying over 120 kg and everything above that makes him move very slowly.
When our guy - Sam - loses too much stamina, he walks slower, he can rest and sleep outside, refuel stamina by drinking a monster energy drink.
The bike is charged at the power station but the territory first has to be connected to the first main city which requires you to deliver certain supplies.
Besides taking 2 to 3 km walks across rough terrain with heavy load on the back, there are two types of enemies; BTs and MULEs.
First, they are ghosts presented in the very start, they appear in the rain which happens in certain areas. They react to sounds and drag you to death if you fail to run off. They can even throw you off the bike.
Second, they are bandits stealing cargos and use scanners to track your cargo whenever you pass by, they are using electrical weapons to stun you. They are afraid of rain.
The enemies almost always respawn in the same areas. Many players have put up signs of warning areas but still we can not fully avoid the danger zones, we can only maneuver in between them and outrun them when they start chasing us.
The bike can also be stopped easily and it's frustrating to beat the same opponents especially because we will be running back and forth a lot.
Your character is a one man army but without real weapons, he is using his pee and poo grenades and can throw cargo or ram enemies with bike. He can knock them out.
I see a big problem with building ladders and such to provide me the ways to cross some rough terrains, when going on the edges of areas, you are not allowed to build these bridges despite not being on the edge of the world map, just trying to avoid make a shortcut with a lot of fabricated ladders, the game easily prevents new players from seeing other players bridges and signs, why did the developers have to prevent a solo player from building in their single player game building anywhere they want when they grinded so long to have spare materials.
The game does not respect a lot of my time and fails a mission by losing materials due to aging rain or BTs, but even worse when an NPC warns me about a nearby body to turn to necro but there is none marked on my map, nor receiving any objective, a couple hours later, a game is over when this supposedly marked body was not near, and was secretly time sensitive main mission as I can progress a couple hours but I can not continue afterwards.
It is also dragging through its chapters like no other game. The story starts to stagnate just a few hours in, I reached only the 3rd out of 14 after 20 hours, still not completing all missions, you can see for yourself this game is grindy, frustrating and punishing despite not being very difficult.
Verdict:
5/10
If I took the story separately, I would probably say it is worth watching if you like a sci-fi horror movie but the gameplay drags it so low despite being rather innovative at some areas and definitely a good portion of the struggle I was having fun. I can not recommend this game to the general audience, nor to the fans of long story driven RPGs. It is an exhausting and not very rewarding experience. I almost loved it for its visuals but then I get reminded how bad the missions are and how grinding has not helped me at all.