Surprisingly, METAL GEAR SURVIVE is a pretty good game, so long as you go in expecting basically not a Metal Gear game.
Back when the Beta for this game came out and before its official release, I along with most other reasonable people had baked-in overwhelmingly negative feelings towards this game because it was made without Hideo Kojima, and the very concept seemed kind out outrageous for a Metal Gear game.
However, several years later and in desperate need of a new Fox Engine video game to play because I can only play MGSV repeatedly so many times, I decided well hey, Konami has forgotten about this game so hard that the game hasn't been updated for the 'new' Steam Library. Despite the fact MGSV has. So if you're looking to get this game on sale - forget it! There's even a KONAMI sale on at the moment, as I write this, MGS Delta is half off!
And the discount for METAL GEAR SURVIVE? Nothing! None!
So with all that out of the way...
METAL GEAR SURVIVE is not quite as amazingly fluid and free as most base-building survival games because, your structures outside of your main base get destroyed all the time for no real good reason. Either because an enemy destroyed it, or it exploded at the end of a 'defense' mission or it just disappeared because it timed out. So let's just rip that bandaid right off - this is not unfortunately the game for you, if you want to play it like Valheim and build little mini-bases all over the game's open world.
However, you do get a grid-based base development system that is fun enough, in a constained, console-friendly, Japanese video game type of way. You need all kinds of structures to sustain yourself and your allies, as you might guess from this being a survival game featuring not only a hunger system but a thirst system,
Those systems are worth mentioning however as, what I would consider a big positive. The at somes simulationist nature of Metal Gear is actually lacking somewhat in The Phantom Pain. By comparison, Survive actually has a full on eat/drink need for your protagonist, which actually feels like it's hearkening back to the roots of MGS3 which is arguably the best in the series.
This is a huge plus for me because, while your character's stomach is not quite as robust as that of Big Boss, you still basically run around the open world, and when you see a living creature, whether it's a bird, a dog, a wolf, a sheep, or a gerbil, whatever, you can capture or kill that creature, and eat it. Ideally you take it home and cook it into a lovely soup or something first, but I am totally okay with that. Food even spoils in this game too! And of course, you also can find vegetables scarcely around the map, which can be eaten raw, which adds some spontaneity to your eating habits. I like that.
They also brought back the cure menu from MGS3! Which, again I think is awesome. Complete with having like 12 different maladies and methods of curing each one, reliant on specific medical supplies! You need styptic to stop bleeding and you need 'anti-bacterial drugs' to fix your sore tummy if you eat or drink something bad. There's no Johnny in this game, but if you named your character that, then I suppose you can recreate Johnny in this game. Mostly, you only really get ill effects like these when you let enemies hit you.
Which is worth mentioning also. This game, surprisingly, is actually pretty hard, especially if you have a mind towards melee combat. Melee combat is extremely challenging and you kind of just suck for a good portion of the game. So largely, I stuck to using a bow to deal with enemies since it's just much safer. Enemies in this game, if you don't upgrade your health, will sometimes kill you in only a couple of hits, which is insane given they have combo attacks and while you're being combo'd you are effectively stunlocked until they're done attacking.
Crowds are also absurdly dangerous in this game too, because, you are NEVER given iframes at any point in this game. If you are in the middle of an animation, or in the middle of getting beat up by another enemy - well that's just tough, now become a pink mist at the hands of like two enemies flanking you because a third one pulled you into an annoying grab animation.
Enemies also do NOT play nice and come at you one at a time or anything like that, so if you try and melee into a crowd, more often than not every single enemy will all try to strike you back simultaneously, and while you might get a good hit in, odds are like 2-3 of those guys will also hit you back thus interrupting your combo and potentially flooring you if you're unlucky enough. This makes combat extremely methodical to say the least.
I didn't honestly use like every melee weapon, I mostly stuck to one-handers, but two-handed melee weapons felt kind of crap, and I didn't use heavy weapons. Thrusting weapons, the spears, are actually pretty solid but they unfortunately occupy your back slot, which is where you would otherwise carry a bow, and you kind of really want to have a bow especially early game. Because yes, in this video game, they let you recover arrows from enemy corpses, making your ammo extremely renewable.
One thing I kind of didn't like, but I guess I can accept at this point, is that the game has a full on RPG level up system. It's almost like DARK SOULS except you have to pick up the 'souls' to raise your level from enemies by harvesting it manually instead of it magically appearing in your counter. But, there is a counter, and whenever you have enough to meet your next level, you can pay that 'Kuban Energy' to get a level or two. You also use this energy for literally everything else. Repairing, building, crafting, everything needs Kuban Energy.
Which is not to say all those other things are really competing for levels, especially later when you start needing very large numbers. Building and repairing and so on, are static numbers after all, unlike your levels which come at exponentially greater cost.
Anyway, I was okay with the levels thing, but kind of annoyingly it feels like there are many different points you kind of just have to take. Taxes, basically. You really want to max out your movement speed because it makes everything you do better and more efficient. But you need max stamina too so that's like 10 of your points right there. Then, there's a whole bunch of 'special moves' you can do, like drop attacks or CQC counters, but I think other than these being slightly cool to do, most of these seem more like they put you in danger more than the enemy, especially if other enemies are around. And there's no respec system of course,
So this being a survival game, you spend a LOT of your time in this game running around, picking up 'stuff' by holding the use key next to it, making food so you can prepare to go out on a long exploratory hike, and if you're me you spend a LOT of time exploring every corner of the map. You get an overview of the game's map in your inventory screen, which is nice, except the thing doesn't work most of the time and you have to uncover every inch of map, on the map, by exploring the map, so the map works... if this sounds like it makes no sense, well, yeah.
Basically you can only see anything on the map, once you've gone to that place on the map, then reported back to base to index the information, I guess.
And that's the general loop. Start in base, prepare to leave base, go somewhere, find things, uncover things on the map, return to base. Rinse, repeat. Amazingly, this game had the clever idea to vacuum all your loot out of your inventory as soon as you return, which is extremely convenient. You NEVER have to worry about micromanaging your materials or whatever, since it just instantly gets put into storage, and when you craft or build or whatever, it all draws directly from storage.
I'm out of space here, but basically, it's good. It's good! I enjoyed playing METAL GEAR SURVIVE! I recommend it, even.
