Recent reviews by Matsuya

The attractive art style implies a quality which is unmet by most other aspects of the game. As others have covered, the game is easy and limits your exploration far more than most adventure games. Puzzles are not satisfying to solve and have little creativity in their solutions. As someone who values a great adventure games, this particular one falls flat and is far too dull to push through. I will keep an eye on the developer for future releases but I would only recommend a purchase of this title on heavy discount.

The game constantly switches between 30fps and 60fps caps based on what is happening in the fight. This is by design and it's incredibly jarring. Why they can't just keep the animations at 30fps but allow them to be rendered at 60fps is beyond my understanding. Very disappointing that they kept this issue from the previous games considering this game was built on this "new graphics engine" advertised in the games description.

I know it seems like a small issue but for me it really affects my ability to enjoy the product.

Must buy if on sale. The game can be finished in a single sitting, I beat it in what steam counted as 3 hours but it honestly felt even shorter than that. $20USD is a difficult value proposition even though the 3 hours here are of seriously high quality, if it were $15 I would be totally satisfied (even though the devs spent 6 years in development).

The puzzles are imaginative and enjoyable and never feel to tedious or finicky. The difficulty of the puzzles are a bit easy, however this means that you will never be stuck for more than a couple of minutes which keeps the flow of the game and story moving along at a nice pace. This might be a great game to play with friends who aren't traditional gamers.

The story of the game is very mysterious, starting you on a cold open as a child running away from an unknown organisation. As you continue the world develops however the story takes a fairly esoteric turn without any much exposition which may be a turn off for some players. A lot of the story beats are visual and in the background and can be missed if not paying close attention. The ending sequence builds into a really big and satisfying crescendo that is really worth playing through, but ultimately closes to what some might find an unsatisfying conclusion.

There is no dialog in this game and the sound design is intentionally minimal.

Only get this if it's in a significant sale and you have enjoyed the previous entries in the series.

Pros:
- The graphics are of high quality for a 3D rendered adventure game.
- Each case has a different theme and unique locations\set pieces.
- Voice acting is totally passable.

Cons:
- Very short, only 5 cases the last of which isn't really a proper traditional case. I would estimate around 9 hours without skipping any puzzles and collecting all clues.
- The game is filthy with terrible mini games, lever\switch puzzles and stealth sequences, none of which are done well. There is absolutely a place for puzzles with their own UI, but not these simple tacked on time wasters. Unnecessarily pads the game.
- The ending forces you to replay large amounts of QTE's and dialog until you get the sequence correct.
- Crashed a few times but nothing serious.

In short, it's still satisfying to consider the web of interwoven evidence towards the end of the case when selecting the perpetrator, however the path to get there is far worse than previous entries. There is a good game here but what is good is only a small fraction of the total package. Play Crimes & Punishment first if you have yet to try these games.

Unplayable, where is your QA rocksteady?

Was released in a broken state, unplayable for first day, zero communication from publisher/developer/valve. Game jumps back and forth between 30 fps and 60 fps which is very jarring and unnecessary.

During the story you fight characters that are inexplicably not playable in the game (even though their move-sets are complete) such as Rain and Baraka.

Very disappointing product.

Jumps between 30fps to 60fps constantly and is very jarring. Graphic quality is nothing to write home about.

Runs like a dream. Goes to show Hideo Kojima has kept his sense of quality and values of fine execution well into the new generation. This product really exposes the flaws in the development cycles of other developers, especially in this christmas release period. Extraordinarily high detail squeezed into a 3GB download. Good replayability and lots of extras\easter eggs to find. Promotes high expectations for the full MGSV release early next year.

Poorly Optimized. Framerate regularly stutters and behaves erratically on 'low' settings on my overclocked 770. I wouldn't look at getting this until it's had time for the post release patching to mature. Ubisoft QA is a joke.

Disappointing.

The narrative consists of a naive, barely post-pubescent foreigner whom, although speaks 'perfectly fluent' Japanese, knows nothing about any of the standard Japanese tropes such as vending machines everywhere etc. The game also includes ridiculous sexual\romantic scenes which are inserting with less subtly than an elephant in a human man costume. There's just nothing in the story to latch on to at all.

There is a huge lack of art in this game which is a huge shame considering that the imagery is its main draw. Each location consists of 2 or 3 different pictures of the area, and is constantly cycling through images you have already seen. The game is constantly alluding to food or objects\phenomena that just isn't shown even with a simple pop-up graphic or anything.

The only innovative thing here is there are google maps links to some of the locations you visit, which I haven't seen in a game before.