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It's a Hideo Kojima game with little corporate oversight. People who are opposed to the niche appeal of auteur projects will inherently be turned off by this game, as will people who have negative opinions about the creator based on past work. The lack of oversight means that a lot of decisions that would have been made for broad appeal were never considered. It also means that there were less heads turning Hideo's vision into something that is more easily parsed by the player.
It is an original IP. As it has to explain everything about the world, lore, rules, and consequences, it is difficult to immerse yourself in if you aren't immediately receptive to what the game is doing. It breaks the fourth wall constantly, which can make it difficult for any sense of immersion to take hold, doubly so when it has to interrupt it's storytelling to explain everything, and triply so when you critically question what the game is saying in the first place.
Similarly, another issue is how to even approach categorizing this game. It doesn't neatly fit into any genre, and the decisive term "walking simulator" drastically undersells the mechanics related to traversal, weight distribution, routing/pathing, and combat. And none of that even considers the narrative aspects of the game, which are at times opposed to the gameplay itself.
There are undeniably problems with pacing, specifically cut scenes. For example, the deluge of cut scenes in the beginning of the game will near-invariably inhibit a new player's ability to engage with the game on a level that allows them to judge if the gameplay itself is a fit for them. Players with limited real-world time may waste an entire play session just getting through the dialog between chapters.
Another issue with pacing is that the difficulty of the game is front-loaded. Sam is the worst at everything in the beginning of the game, player skill aside, and you start with no options for circumventing the difficulty presented to you. While a player familiar with the controls and mechanics can trivialize the difficulty the game presents, there is a reason that the Support Skeleton was added to the Eastern Region in the Director's Cut.
From a gameplay level, it clearly makes sense for Sam to start relatively weak and grow more capable as the game goes on, but unless the challenge was preemptively ruined for you, the hardest part of the entire game might just be the first delivery to the Wind Farm in Eastern Region, just because you don't have the tools necessary to respond to what the game is putting against you.
And that brings me to the combat itself. While it doesn't necessarily feel out of place, and can in fact be very satisfying when performed at a suitably skilled level, there are parts where it is obligatory, and if you don't have the skills/weapons/desire to engage in combat, it can sour your experience by a large margin. While turning the difficult down can always be an option, it still can ultimately be a detracting part of the game for some players.
Some of these complains are more valid than others, but they will invariably impact how someone engages with Death Stranding from first boot. This game asks for a lot from it's players, and if you pick up what it's putting down, it can be a phenomenal experience unlike what most other games on the market can offer. It can be introspective, cathartic, and rewarding on an intrinsic level. But it can also be off-putting, annoying, obtuse, and difficult to control.
Of course, this is just scratching the surface of a critical response to Death Stranding, and there's a lot of intent in every decision made in this game's design regardless of what the player feels. Hopefully it can at least provide a little perspective, though.
1. Too many long cutscenes
2. Can't understand the story
3. Not enough shooting
4. Too much walking
I love the game but I absolutely understand why someone might not like it and I don't blame them for skipping it.
But as somebody who loved MGS games for the story I'm so far finding the story very intriguing and am loving coming to a completely empty zone, and seeing it get connected with roads and bridges, bringing this barren world back to life again.
It's 100% not for everyone, and thats why some people love it so much, most popular games these days aren't really that "good", they are just generic enough that everybody kind of likes it, enough to play it a bit at least, but they don't love it because it was made to appeal to as many people as possible. Kojima meanwhile seems happy to appeal to a niche, without diluting it to ensure a wider audience will enjoy it while the people who love his games end up liking it less.
I myself did hateplay the game towards the end of the game, i found the story got more tedios towards the end and i enjoyed the early "by most people marked as boring part of the game".
i think that may be it right there.
i love almost every aspect of the game, in particular the world building, lore, aesthetics, story etc, and first and foremost the quiet and contemplative atmosphere.
it helps that i quite enjoy hiking IRL, and one of my favorite moments in the game was fording a difficult river, arriving on the other side exhausted and it was raining. i found a small outcrop in a cliff face where i could sit down for a few minutes and rest, just watching the scenery, listening to the rain, and feeling immersed in it all.
so with that in mind, from my perspective negative criticism along the lines of "all you do is walk" comes off a lot like if i would try a FIFA game and complain that "all you do is play soccer".
anyway, death stranding is easily one of my favorite games, and one of my most memorable and most immersive gaming experiences ever.
took me ~160h to finish the story over ~6 months, variously playing and variously contemplating, and i absolutely loved it.
finally, its so deliberately and unnecessarily vague and convoluted. the story isnt difficult or complex, but its told in such a way so as to be forceably messy and waffly. this is because kojima mistakenly believes that using 40 vague words instead of 10 direct ones makes a concept feel deep.
i stuck it out til the end... well im told theres MORE after this bit, but the beach bit with the credits is such a poor design decision that its killed the last of my goodwill for it, so i just quit. ill watch the rest of youtube. Gamers deserve better than this.
the game did have some interesting concepts and that along with the cutscenes and the at times tranquil concepts of just... walking... are what kept me going. but the payoff was not worth it for me. it never brought it together in a way that <connected> with me... and everything from the bit after cliff steadily made me hate the game. such a shame.
i know people here like it, and thats fine. my comments are subjective to my own feelings and nothing more, and i really feel let down by this game. i love kojimas weirdness... i really enjoyed phantom pain... but kojima without boundaries and restraints is not a good thing.
It do look decent enough, and runs stable.
D.S is different compared to other games. The graphics were great and amazing in some parts and I always had a chapter to come home from work to. But now that it's finished....that's is the only sad part.....Now what do I do?