Are the GZ extra missions worth playing (or should we skip straight to Phantom Pain)?

[tripecac]

Hi, I bought Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain last year, but made myself wait until I'd finished all the previous MGS games on the PS3. That took several months! Anyway, I'm now finally ready to play Phantom Pain.

I have finished the main Ground Zeroes mission, and am wondering whether it's worth playing through Ground Zeroes' extra missions... or should I just proceed to Phantom Pain?

The reason I ask is: in Peace Walker, the "extra ops" were mostly just little bite-sized challenges. They were fine for practice (or fultoning personnel to your base) and occasionally amusing, but were otherwise repetitious and grindy. I didn't hate them, but I got a little tired of them after a while.

Are the Ground Zeroes extra missions similar to the ones for Peace Walker: great for practicing and tiding people over until Phantom Pain, or are they worth playing through before tackling Phantom Pain? Do they contribute at all to the overall story? Do they add gameplay elements (or situations) that don't already occur in Phantom Pain?

Thanks!

[ShikenNuggets]

If you're in it mostly for the story, you might as well just move on to the Phantom Pain. The extra missions are fun, and they have a little bit of story, but they don't contribute to the overall narrative.

You could try out a few of them anyway though. They won't take you very long, and you might as well get the most out of the game before you move onto the next one.

[tripecac]

I tried the first one, where you have to eliminate the eye and the finger. It was very hard, since it was stealth-focused and I am not very patient with stealth. I died 3 times. My score at the end was negative (rating of E). So, more frustrating than fun, although I'm sure once I get better at stealth it wouldn't be so painful!

Are the other extra ops similarly stealth-focused?

[tripecac]

I decided to start Phantom Pain and see how it felt. I played through the prologue (Awakening). Wow, that was intense! I think whenever I need a dose of calm, deliberate gameplay, I can come back to the Ground Zeroes extra ops.

[Laptop]

All of them are "meant" to be done via stealth I guess, but you can do them how you want to.

They are not really story based, but there's no reason not to as they can be fun and show how well they can re-use the same map without it getting boring.