When I was playing this for the first few days, I was very confused. There's a lot of instructions even though I was just moving cargos/things from point a to point b. I felt like they made the game a bit confusing with so many details and they could have simplified it. There are also these "like buttons" and things left behind by other players which sometimes are just junks.
The cutscenes are pretty long and I wasn't really getting the story early on. The graphics are amazing, however the setting doesn't look very diverse. Aside from the usual scenery, there's the Mars like setting, snowy mountains, hexagon rock formations and a farm. I feel like 75% of the places looked the same especially the man made structures. A lot of those stations lacked personality.
Its weird for an open world videogame, it took me some time to free roam. I wasn't sure if I could go to the other side of the map very early in the game and not screwed myself over. When I reached the second region, I still didn't free roam until the main/side quests require me to go to those places. For the first four episodes, I was constantly doing story missions. It took a couple of missions before I get to fight the human enemies, build a bridge, ride a motorcycle and fast travel. The pacing was slow. I feel like this game requires a lot of patience in order to do the more interesting stuff. Delivering/going to different stations was not fun as you are going to trek there for minutes. There were a couple of missions in which I had to walk for thirty minutes just to deliver something and it was timed, early in the game that was so tedious. Towards the end, I also walked for like forty minutes just to get to the next cutscene.
It wasn't fun to free roam or just focus on side quests because you need to pay attention to everything. The baby cries. The shoes expire. Sam stumbles a lot. After the fourth episode, I wanted to finish the roads and get the "stars" before I continue on. A lot of side quests gave me tools that I wouldn't get just on the story missions. So there was a lot of back and forth between stations and grinding. Even though its easy to avoid the enemies it really gets tiring, especially the BTs. The locations that the BTs show up always rain, the rain in those locations is never ending and the rain deteriorates the cargos and vehicles. There were times that I had zero patience covering Sam's mouth and walk slowly so sometimes I was caught and killed. I couldn't get away when I was inside the car, and it sometimes led to a boss fight which damages the things that I was supposed to deliver. The BTs aren't hard to defeat if you know what you are doing but they are exhausting to deal with.
Whats also weird is you are accepting orders from so many npcs who are appearing through a hologram, yet when you go out there, there's no one out there but enemies. It wasn't fun to explore as you can't meet an actual person to help you. There are few delivery men that sometimes show up and a handful of npcs that came out of their bunker. But Sam rarely see anyone in the flesh and usually it only happens in the cutscenes. The "cities" also don't look like cities. The entire place just looks completely abandoned and lifeless.
The game started to become engaging when I got a car, when I finally started building roads, craft more things and send bots. I still felt the repetitiveness of the game but it was much better as I felt like it was truly an open world game. My favorite thing to do here is building the roads as it made it easier to go to a lot of places especially when delivering, the battery doesn't run out and no one can attack you in the road. I went to different stations just to get metals/ceramics to complete the roads. It was so satisfying getting those roads done. I also like that the playable character can pee, sit, rest in the middle of nowhere, drink, eat worms, make the baby sleep or happy. The playable character resurrects endlessly as well so I don't need to load a save file when he gets killed. There are stuff/vehicles that are left by other players which helped me a couple of times and saved me crafting materials. There are little features in the game that I appreciate. I liked the first WW1 episode. I like how this game is only less than 50GB and it loads fastly. However you can't listen to music while inside the car. They had a music section in Sam's rest room but you can't access to those songs while you drive for more than 10 minutes. Sometimes a song would pop up out of nowhere, but I drove the roads that I built like a hundred times and the only background music I heard were the noisy sound that was coming out of the car/bike and raindrops. After episode 5, it was back again to being so tedious especially when they took the baby away as it was faster to get spotted by the BTs. Hiking those snowy mountains was exhausting. The zip lines rarely helped. From that moment, I was done collecting stars as I don't want to hike to those locations again. I think I got about 15 stars for Sam's pants and it wasn't fast to get those stars.
The thing I hate doing here the most is if you kill humans, you will need to burn their bodies and you are gonna travel so far to do that. I was in a middle of a side mission hiding from the BTs, when the game turned white. At that time, I didn't know where to cremate the bodies and I left one of the bodies where the BTs reside. So I had to load my 2nd to the newest file, find out what to do next, quickly get a car to get those 4 bodies and hurry up to do the cremation thing, and repeat what I've already finished. It was so annoying. The game punishes players for using the guns that they've added in the game! So starting at that point, I didn't bring any weapons against the humans except for the bola gun. A lot of weapons in the game were no use for me. I also have an issue with the fast travel as your belongings are left behind in a storage. Unless you can afford to craft equipments again and again, and not mind leaving things behind okay. Fast travel here is not as simple as most games. I considered when to fast travel. There's just too many restrictions here. Then the last three hours of the game were cutscenes. Even watching cutscenes, they managed to make it a slog.
Overall, Death Stranding is unique, weird and one of the most tedious games I've ever played. I can see why this was nominated for Game of the Year. This kinda reminds me of Red Redemption 2. The story and concept are well thought and ambitious, the characters are interesting, the graphics are top notch but the gameplay requires a lot of patience. It would take a lot of hours before you access the good stuff. There were times that I was so eager to finish the side stuff that i was playing it non stop. But there were more of "this again?" and "what happened now?" especially towards the end. I don't know how many people managed to complete this and not feel tired a couple of times. I wouldn't recommend this to people who are just looking for a fun and easy going open world game. I played this in easy mode, it still frustrated me a couple of times. I don't know another game that stops your game when you didn't burn the bodies of your enemies, forces you to load your last save and bury those enemies just to continue your progress - in easy mode?! Why can't the character just bring a torch with him? There is a good game somewhere in this, but there are a lot of things that I just simply don't enjoy. Comparing this to the other hyped PS4 games I've played, I would definitely put this near of the bottom of the list. I actually can't think of a big/hyped Ps4 game that I would rank lower than this. Though I played and completed more side stuff in this compare to Metal Gear Solid V so there's that. As for a sequel, I don't want one.