Death Stranding was such a bizarre experience.

It was in my backlog for a while, and seeing some hype for DS2 got me to finally play it. I finished it just now, and it was...interesting.

Honestly, I really wasn't feeling it at first. The first bit, when you're basically just walking and occasionally sneaking, was...fine, but nothing particularly interesting or remarkable.

But as you get more tools, it really starts to click more, and especially once you start getting the ludonarrative elements. Like, being totally isolated in these big fields but also having you see a player's sign to help you or contributing to them building something or using their structures/vehicles or seeing that someone else used something that you built was such a cool feeling, it was like being on a journey with a bunch of other people while also being totally alone at the same time and I think they absolutely nailed what they were going for.

With that said, I found a lot of the actual writing to be...very bizarre? Which is par for the course with Kojima and all. I weirdly felt like a lot of things were underexplained and overexplained at exactly the same time. There were some concepts that were still a little bit muddy by the end of the game (though I didn't dig through the files, in total fairness, which I'm sure give a bit more information on things), but then you'd have moments where you'd have a twist revealed in a cutscene, then the game would immediately spell it out, and then it would spend like 15 minutes talking about it even though you kind of got it immediately. Or like, you'll meet a character for the first time and get a 30-minute scene where they explain all of their circumstances and backstory as Sam just stands around silently. It's just very odd writing.

Still, enjoyable game, albeit very strange. I wasn't sure that it was going to land for me at first, but I did have fun with it. I'll probably pick up 2 at some point since I've heard good things, aside from a few mentions of the writing being shaky.

personally, I wasn't a fan.

with DS2, I've only played a little, but I feel it's something that even as a fan of the first game, you might like/dislike depending on what you enjoyed with the first, despite them being really similar.

like, the traversal isn't as difficult since your vehicles don't get trapped on rocks as much, there seems to be more emphasis on combat, there's less world building (there's still a codex kind of thing that explains concepts, so you won't be lost) but more character interaction, and so on.