A masterpiece experience that is not for everyone.As I said before, I bought Death Stranding & playing over weekend to finally finish it after 4 days with total 50 hours. The usual review I made usually have 4 paragraph : short introduction, the good part, the bad part and conclusion. However, this time I really want to go much longer especially with non spoiler and non spoiler reviews. I will use spoiler tag so you dont accidentally see it.
Overall experienceThe game is truly something innovative that make you think differently you play. While essentially this is just a simple fetch quest story, there are other elements in the game that made it unique. In order for me to explain, i will have to deep details especially some of the general gameplay loop in order to understand why i so fascinated by the game despite it is boring for most other people.
1. Terrain & navigation.The terrain system in this game is really unlike any other game out there. In many games, terrain is usually is just place you can watch into, either it is a forest or big city. But in this game, the terrain itself is a gameplay. If lets say you know you have to cross a river, you need to bring some ladder to cross it or build a bridge. Even if you get powerful vehicle, you will have issue traversing rough terrain until you rebuild the road. And best part of this games? The deeper you are into the game, the more advance way for you travel around. Remember river you cant cross safely before? Just build a bridge and drive a truck and you can carry more stuff through it. The variety of terrain & encounter made it feel like you playing ever increasing challenging level (especially snowy mountain near the end)
2. Missions & experience systemThis game doesnt have meaningful experience system. Sure you can get more likes from building road or completing delivery, but most of the times it just make able to deliver more goods. You dont have to worry about building correct stats, just you need to learn to your tools at disposable. Unlike many other games where money is important, this game have many hubs where essentially your private bank. If you run out of them, just simply get an order to deliver resource to place that you need. Additionally, the story mission are generally required to move goods from one to another place, which sometimes give you some story or cutscenes after big successful delivery.
3. Inventory managementWhen you play game with some sort of inventory management, generally there are just list of items in your menu. Sure you can wear some gears to change your appearance, not many game do this kind of gameplay impact for the way you arrange your stuff in your backpack (generally physic based simulator). And this physically became gameplay limit allow simple taking all orders and delivering them in one go (you still can use vehicle). But my best part (and worse part as well) is the inventory matter the most when you fight the enemy. The BT encounter for example, specifically designed so you cant simply bring 100 guns to the fight (you required to fall down & drop some of your stuff). Of course this added some tedious to part where you have manage your inventory in middle of battle (boss fights usually).
4. Multiplayer & online systemI cant emphasize how I love this system. The game have some interconnected system where other players' building can be use in your world. Since you are limited to carry stuff, this building usually your safe haven that other people already build for you. If you run out of resource, as i said before you can request it and hopefully other player will fulfill the request. I was afraid at first, because like playing MMORPG you fill you just started the world already so advanced with tools. This game will limit you based on your technology level, that you wont see bridge until you unlock them. When traveling to certain hub for first place, you have this only access, making it much personal challenge to traverse the area. Best part definitely when you have band of people who finally build the road system that made your traveling so much easier.
Story & spoiler partThe story can be synopsis with simple words. Intriguing & confusing. It made me wonder why or how the world became like that. You will met several characters throughout your journey, and play important roles for most of your travel. Each of the network hubs you need to reconnect all have their own quirky story & unique stuff.
The game also play around symbolism alot. Most specific anything that have to with connection or rope. A strand is a like piece of rope while stranding it about getting lost. Connection is more about to rebuild the nations & bring people close to each others. A network connect will allow information to spread faster, thus improve many things in daily life. There are still couple of things like life & death that I would say Im also no 100% understood it. Perhaps I should spend some time reading the whole Death Stranding game meaning.
I will reserved some spoiler-ish story side below.
► Show Spoiler
The concept of this game is fairly confusing. You have unknown entities called BT that flooded to this world. Human who died can cause necrolysis & a voidout (basically a nuclear explosion). Baby who apparently a bridge between life & death, capable of detecting BTs on the field. The story pieces in this game are delivered in the chapters. Generally it is very simple : go to west, connect other people with our powerful WIFI. But along the way you will given pieces of story from memories about unknown character & what happened that might be related to your current situation.
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I thought I want to write essay about the storyline here, but lets just keep it short. Along your journey, you will meet several people that some have dedicated chapters story tied to them. Some of them have unique story, but mostly every each of them have some tied to whole Death Stranding phenomenon.
ConclusionDeath stranding is a masterpeice experience. A game that I cant put my controller or shift focus to anything else. A game that despite I already finished the story, I still want to try 100% it, because I enjoy the gameplay loop so much. It kinda remind me crafting survival or farming sim, where every upgrade improve your efficiency much more. Sure the game have some issue that sometimes made me rage, but nothing come close to the feeling of playing this game. If you think what I wrote interested you, then you should give the game a try.