Finished it last night at 2am and went to bed, and now I think I am able to process my feelings on this game somewhat.
I have to give some respect to Kojima for making the game that he wanted to make in the end, seemingly with little compromise that I could tell. The game is not my favorite game by any means. Fuck, the game is not even close to being my favorite game of this year alone. But I'm kinda settling on an overall "it was.... not bad."
This game is definitely more than the sum of its parts. The game had a lot of stuff I did not like, at all. Dealing with BTs was more an exercise in annoyance, as it always tended to drag the game down considerably, both in terms of enjoyment and in terms of pacing. I feel like invisible enemies is hard to deal with anyway, but it wasn't very well executed here (although, my mind is reminded of those invisible enemies from Resident Evil Revelations 2 and how annoying those were to deal with; I couldn't imagine dealing with that for 30+ hours). And the enemies that you can see are not great either, as it's a lot of Sam inresponsively stumbling around through tar seas. The combat is acceptable... but the encounters really let it down. I do not think that you should have fought Cliff three separate times when his boss fight is pretty much the same each time. Fighting stuff like Higgs's giant man BT or the giant whale BT are cool in theory, not cool in execution when you're just blindly firing up, can barely see what's going on around you, and you're just fumbling through tar shit or getting stuck on stage geometry.
But the game does excel in pretty breathtaking landscapes and the travel, can at times be something to really take in. This is of course when you're traversing an area that wasn't just made to annoy you (like having to deal with rocks everywhere while on a bike).
The story is... well, it's pretty dumb. Not fun-dumb like in a MGS, Policenauts, or Snatcher kind of way. It's just... really, really dry. It has one real theme that it never stops shouting until the end of the game and it never has the characters let up in shouting this theme of connectivity. The characters are mostly one-dimensional to the point where Kojima has to have their main character trait as their name for people to not miss this. Higgs' performance is mostly betrayed by a pretty stilted script, but then you fist fight him and that's over with, I guess. And then Chapter 10 up to the end of the game starts getting filled with exposition dumps to explain every. single. loose end in excruciating detail. And it's usually stuff the player has already figured out or another character literally told you before. I did think that the game was going to stick the landing with Die-Hardman's breakdown (although hammy, there is genuinely some good acting here) and the trip to the incinerator. But... then it is more cutscenes and a twist about Sam that... I am not sure was entirely needed for this story, but was more a twist for the sake of it. If someone were to ask me to describe my feelings on the story of this game, my reply would be "exhausting."
In all, I don't regret that I bought this for full price. I don't regret that I played through the game, because nothing would have done it true justice for me than going through it myself. But am I eager for more Death Stranding in the future? Nah, not really. Is this a game I will ever play again? To be perfectly honest, probably not. But this was all a different type of experience from most games these days, so I have to give Kojima credit for that.
... and now I really want to play Red Dead Redemption 2 after DS's open world for some reasom, as I've never played it and now there's a PSN sale on it. Odd.