Metal Gear Rising is the best Hack n Slash game of this generation.
Firstly the story is terrible. It's just a bunch of psycho's who want to destroy life because of some stupid psychotic mentality as usual. To me however, I couldn't care less about story. I want good gameplay. (If you want a good story go watch a film or buy the last of us). Also the story doesn't last long at all. Some have reported to have completed it in 5 hours. I did it in 10 hours on hard mode. Finally unlocking the harder modes requires multiple playthroughs which is an annoying, cheap and easy way of making the game last longer as I've always said in the past.
I bought this game for the gameplay and after playing it can confidently say that it is excellent. Slicing people up into a million pieces is really entertaining. The battle engine is superb. Especially when trying to S rank the whole game on the hardest difficulty (revengeance mode), it becomes really hard and requires a lot of patience, since you have to complete the game without recieving any damage from anyone including the bosses. This game gets your heart pumping and ready for action. You feel alive after playing this game.
More downfalls of the game include there being no multiplayer / online modes which could have been really competitive and fun, yet I don't know if it would have worked because of the (slow motion issues). Also there are side missions called vr missions which are set in a yellow arena where you complete a mission in a certain time frame mainly to train yourself for the story. The vr missions in my opinion are again a cheap and easy way of making the game last longer. All they've done is put a bunch of enemies and platforms into a yellow box in different variations. To me, this makes it seem like the developers were lazy and could'nt be bothered to design more levels for the story mode.
Overall I give it an 8/10 and thats because the gameplay alone is the most action packed I've ever witnessed. I had lots of fun 'playing' this game. The boring story becomes fun when you finally beat the bosses and get a chance to decapitate their heads off to finally shut their annoying mouths.
Everyone knows that Konami produce quality hits and as this was a spin off, maybe thats why they didn't focus as much in other areas. I however hope that they have seen success with this game, and decide to carry on raidens adventure. I'll certainly be buying the next MGR if konami do decide to continue on this new sub franchise.