Metal Gear Solid V

[Gunstar Green]

Play Ground Zeroes first. It sets up the entire story and it takes like an hour. There's really no reason not to. It's basically the prologue mission that's in every MGS game except it was separated from the main game.

MGS V is the first and only Metal Gear game I've ever gotten into. It made me interested in giving the series another chance. It does start to feel a little tired by the end but it's so fun to just mess around and try different things.

[noiseredux]

I started Phantom Pain again this week.

I love that prologue mission. There's so much stuff in that opening ~hour that just shows the stuff that I think Kojima is great for. This constant juxtaposition of kind of gritty realism and absolutely bonkers off-the-fucking-wallism. The creepiness of that little red-headed floating thing in the straight jacket and gas mask? The fire whale and unicorn? And even though there's *some* stealth stuff, it's not undo-able for me. That part where you have to hide under beds that the guards are shooting through - it's scary to me, but I can do it.

Getting into Chapter 1 proper though... ugh. I'm so bad at this game.

The first little mission I had to do was to get intel from that tiny village. So I take my time, case it out from afar. I can find two guards and tag them. I go around the village and approach from the side I think is clearest. I make it in - seeing a third guard in the process - but manage to get into the room w/ the intel. As I'm reading it, that third guard pops into the room. Thankfully, I manage to take him out and now I panic and flee out the door alerting other guards in the process. There don't seem to be too many, and I figure out how to get my horse to come pick me up and we take off. So, mission accomplished though it's certainly not clean.

So now that I've got that intel, I know where they're keeping someone prisoner (was his name Miller? I'm bad with names.) so I head to another bigger camp/village thing. From the distance I start looking for guards and tagging them. There's one... another... third... hmm, oh another... and five... and shit, six, seven, eight... Okay, awesome. How do I approach this then? I know: like a total fucking moron! Right. Here's a brilliant idea - I'll just start shooting a shorter range gun from way up here in the hills then - instantly alerting all eight of them in the process! So now they're launching MISSILES at me up in the hills! Excellent. Such a good idea. I'm the best.

It's dark out so I figure maybe I've caused a distraction and can sneak around the side of the camp without them noticing. This ALMOST works except there was a ninth guard I never saw over on the outskirts of the camp who sees me approaching now and he lets the others know. I take one guard out and I'm pretty sure at least badly hurt another but run out of ammo in the process. Meanwhile countless bullets riddle my body as I jump BACK on the horse and haul ass back up the hill. They don't even try to stop me because, well, I think they felt bad for me at this point.

There's so much stuff that's awesome about The Phantom Pain, yet I fear I'll never get to any of it because missions like this just aren't something I can deal well with.

[Sload Soap]

Unless you're worried about mission rankings, you can just kill them all. The good thing about MGSV is that you have a lot of freedom to approach situations as you see fit. I was the same at first and got hung up on the idea it was a stealth game so sneaking was the optimal way to play but that isn't really the case.

[noiseredux]

oh I don't care at all about mission rankings or whatever. I wanted to kill them all haha. I just want to get THROUGH the missions. Running out of bullets was bad, though.

[ESauced]

Unless you're worried about mission rankings, you can just kill them all. The good thing about MGSV is that you have a lot of freedom to approach situations as you see fit. I was the same at first and got hung up on the idea it was a stealth game so sneaking was the optimal way to play but that isn't really the case.

Kill them all? At no point in the early game did I feel as though I was capable of killing all the guards in a mission. Maybe I’m just bad at it but it always seemed like there was an insurmountable amount of guards for me to do anything but sneak primarily.

If it’s any consolation noise, I suck at the game too. I put 20 hours in then got burnt out because of how long every mission took me. Still want to revisit it at some point

[Sload Soap]

Kill them all!

[isiolia]

Unlike most of the other MGS games, you really don't need to worry about how you get through an objective the first time because you can simply replay them. (as opposed to needing to do stamina KOs on bosses to get special items or whatever). Heck, the "second season" of the game even mixes in a fair number of replays with additional caveats (these aren't required, far as I recall, to unlock the new story bits). So, just going full Rambo if that's what's fun is fine. That said, alerted guards will tend to try and call in reinforcements, so it's usually better not to do that.
It does help that most of them are...not the brightest. In some cases, you will also have things like weather that'll provide cover, or a good back way in if you look for it.

You do also end up better equipped to not fail spectacularly. As you may have noticed, once you've tagged enemies in an area/mission instance, they stay tagged, even if you end up restarting from a checkpoint. Also consider your sidekick - right now, you probably only have the horse, which is...not much of a tactical advantage. You may get an objective to rescue a wolf pup (or something like that), which after a little in-game time will grow up into D-Dog. Bringing him on missions will auto-tag enemies near you. Once you have Quiet around, she can also do some recon, and help clear enemies as well.
Or just generally, as you build up your staff and dismantle the enemy networks, you get more information to go on and they can call in fewer reinforcements (they will, of course, adapt to your strategies if given the chance).

Your loadout is part of the strategy, and keep in mind that you can have supplies parachuted in to restock during a mission. There is a cost to it, but, there's a cost to any mission prep really.

Main thing for me, starting out, was trying to treat it all too much as open world. I mean, it is, but it's massively time consuming to run between points of interest. Having a chopper drop you near a mission, doing that mission, and then getting extracted winds up being a lot more efficient.

[Gunstar Green]

The game gets easier and easier as it goes along and you get deadlier weapons and more useful buddies. I am absolutely terrible at stealth games but MGSV is only a stealth game in the sense that it's still a stealth mission if nobody lives to tell about you.

Kill them all? At no point in the early game did I feel as though I was capable of killing all the guards in a mission.

"Quiet!"
*BANG*
"Quiet!"
*BANG*
"Quiet!"
*BANG*

*Repeat about 30 more times*

"Enemy outpost captured"

Or load up with a rocket launcher and airdrop a tank. Or just go machine gun crazy in D-Walker.

[isiolia]

I think it counts it more by alert status, but it's not super picky about that outside of challenge modes. You have that whole second-chance thing when they're about to spot you, and/or Quiet killing them in that state, if she's got line of sight.

Worst case, I mean, the game does have the white tanooki suit chicken hat if easy mode is required.

[noiseredux]

alright so it sounds like you guys are saying that it's only really difficult because it's early in the game and I have no cool guns, no helpers, or anything. I guess maybe I'll look up a guide or something to see how I should best be approaching this particular mission and do my best to hang in there.