Hello,
Just so you know, I am not writing this review in an irrational attempt to lower it's rating because somehow the perfect 10 score convinced me to buy a game I didn't like. No. The review I am giving it is an honest opinion of what I didn't like about the game and what I expected and I felt like the game did not deliver.
First, I am a huge fan of old metal gear games, about Metal Gear Solid IV is when I felt like the genre was going downhill with its gameplay.
Since then, the gameplay has become less and less intuitive, switching from an old fixed camera perspective to a pure following 3rd person camera just felt like the games was leaning toward a typical 3rd person adventure gameplay. But this wouldn't be a problem, if the game followed any of the common movement schemes, which it doesn't.
At the start of the game you will be finding yourself confused by the many buttons and the game's lack of intuition.
Your character will be jumping out from behind hallways, jumping out of doors, accidentally getting up, not being able to turn around, wondering why the melee attacks don't work, barely climbing any ledges, and of course sabotaging any single stealth element to the mission.
The gameplay mechanics of the game just don't deliver the espionage experience that a good third person shooter beings to the table. The movements are just too abrupt, the button hints aren't there, and the wrong buttons perform the worst possible actions. The camera angles don't help at all, the camera does very little to inform the player of where nearby enemies are. Walking into an enemy on patrol has become an even easier occurrence than it would be in an FPS game.
For example, there is no button that makes a character enter cover, the user needs to press forward on the analog stick to perform this action. This is a very inconvenient system, because you cannot enter cover simply from any of the three, standing, crouching, or prone positions, you must be positioned at the right height of the wall. Then pressing the analog stick in the wrong direction will make you leave cover and set off an alarm.
And after the espionage element is gone, the combat becomes a very lousy and cumbersome run and gun 3rd person shooter, again, with nothing memorable.
The story is interesting, but the characters don't seem very interesting. They resemble various blends between old american action stars and male entertainers. Weird haircuts, weird dialog, and weird animations don't help draw me into the story at all.
Speaking of the score, I did not find the story anywhere near as involved, complicated, or interesting as the Witcher 3, and the gameplay nowhere near as creative, complex, and intuitive as great 3rd person titles like Assassins Creed Unity
Overall, I think game needs a lot more work, and more options for users to change the way the game behaves. Adding a button to hide near cover would be a great start, but even then, the game would still need a lot of work to become a real ext-gen title. For now, please don't believe the hype.