Spoilers ahead
Haven't found a topic discussing it on this sub, and I know the game is over a year old now, but I'd like to address it, so I see other people's (who dared going through it too) opinion, and warn any person interested in pouring dozens of hours into that game that they might regret it.
The first game
Played the first one, and surprisingly loved it. Loved the chill concept of making deliveries, reconnecting the world through them, and facing all kinds of challenges, preparing each travel, gearing up accordingly, unlocking new useful tools to achieve your goals. The story was weird and sometimes a bit exaggerated too, but it was overall believable in its own and far fetched scenario. Took me 2 playthroughs to fully understand it, and even appreciate it.
Now I was excited to play the second opus on PC, because I was a fan of the first one, so I had no negative preconception of the game.
Gameplay
Gameplay, graphically and environmentally speaking, it's the exact same as the first game, so you don't really feel like playing a second, improved and better game, you just feel like continuing where you stopped, launching into a (big) DLC.
Story and characters wise though, that's where the thing gets stinky and deeply flawed.
Sam
Sam has always been an odd character, you like him or don't, I suppose most don't because a lot of people don't like his actor Norman Reedus or don't like his nonchalant and weird, almost autistic behaviour but I actually liked the guy. He was weird but had balls and got shit done, not scared to trace a path and fight things bigger than him along the way to pursue his goals of protecting his BB and finding his sister Amelie. Connecting America was just a secondary task in his journey allowing him to achieve his main goals.
In this second game, Sam has lost any humanity and is just an empty shell, a boring background NPC barely nodding and mumbling words, not expressing ideas, emotions, not any stance or refusal, nothing. He just dumbly follows what mostly Fragile, but other women too, tell him to do like a lost child in the mall, on the brink of panic but acting on robot mode.
Even in the beginning after a very intense scene where he literally loses his child because of her, he still, without emotions, follows her like a puppy and gets in her adventure, without even dragging his feet. But this sets the tone of the game really, Sam is not human, Sam is not a man, he is made to obey, follow and serve, and when possible, being bossed around, bonus point if this is Fragile or any other strong woman like the fierce blonde mutant or the oh so brave single mom chased by meanie men with forks and flashlights because she was "different" (see the allegory here?)
The cast
Speaking of strong woman, there's of course that odd looking bald black woman with the fish eyes that we see in every modern audience game nowadays, playing a brave doctor sheltering pregnant women who are in great danger, because, in her own words, the world has collapsed, there are no rules, so men are after them and are going to harm them. I kid you not.
The setting
The game takes place in Mexico for the tutorial and Australia for the majority of the adventure, and I'm not even exaggerating when I say I still struggle to see what even makes the map and the people you meet over there even remotely representative of what you would imagine of Australia. Most people you meet through shelters are 50/50 male or female leaders of course, but there is an enormous part of them being straight up asians, (there's even a cringy k-pop streamer manga female avatar one, talking with a kid voice, not kidding) and there are even some indians (???). You barely meet any Australian with the "Oi mate" kind of cliche in the game.
A big portion of the music in the game are japanese, or from the three same bands, half of it being from Woodkid alone. So you won't feel in Australia either through the musics in the game, albeit I'll admit the music still are good and fits the "what the fuck is going on" overall tone of the game anyway.
The story
No really, when I say the story and dialogues are an absolute fucking mess I'm not exaggerating, it feels like it has been pitched both by an 8 years old on the verge of autism and his teenage cringe feminist big sister. A character you thought was dead somehow returns (Higgs, Troy Baker) and the baby gets killed because of it.
For instance, you learn that Sam was cucked by his wife while she was pregnant of him but he still mourns her and was willing to raise, what he thought was her and her lover's baby.
Sam gets his life saved multiple times by bigger and stronger mutant team women throughout the game. He also gets his ass kicked multiple times by the same villain, yet never reacts when facing him and just stares at him, listening to his never-ending boring and cringe speeches with a dumb look on his face the whole time.
The game "deepens" on one aspect of the game (the BBs pods) and now it suddenly was in fact a big meanie operation of the white men led "Drawbridges" which snatched and smuggled dead pregnant women from Mexico to the U.S to make some experiment, insisting on the minorities yet again suffering and doing the "dirty work" for what remains of the U.S.A.
And if the feminist sad violins throughout the whole game wasn't enough, you're often reminded in the terrible dialogues and cinematics that you're in fact still a man walking across the continent to save the world on your own, fighting ghosts and robots while carrying 300 pounds of cargo on your back, but I quote "women and children are the first victims in every war and they're those who suffer the most of it" (I shit you not, Fragile literally says that shit straight to your face).
Beyond the wokeness
But even the femcel activism put aside, the rest of the story is still absolutely boring and way too "what the fuck", even for Kojima. Scenario shortcuts everywhere, too many "somewhat he returned" plots and way beyond fan service moments that it makes the game almost a parody of the previous one. I'm talking a degree of ridiculousness that I had not seen in any game yet, like some "previously-serious" character during a serious cutscene which out of the blue starts a musical, dancing like a kpop singer whilst singing his song then returning to normal, and the characters watching him quietly as if this was totally normal during a key moment of the story. The main villain of this game (Troy Baker but emo) is the same as the first one, under a mech form fighting with... an electric guitar weapon. He's insufferable, sounds like a B list kid movie bad guy having supposedly "deep" monologues which turn out to be unbearable to listen to, probably because of the Troy Baker fatigue that I have, and the fact I think he's actually a pretty mid voice actor, way too overrated and who does too much, like a theater kid, to have the spotlight. I bet you all those sequences of him singing (yes he does) in this game were pushed so he could, somehow, kickstart his failed music career (spoiler, it did not). But it's representative of the dialogues in this game, they're supposed to "ring", but I don't know to whom, probably that modern audience we still haven't found yet, so they just sound childishly bland, redundant and annoying.
The ending
That shit soup of a story ends in beauty, with one of the female mutants being, apparently, Sam's daughter, so guess what she does? That's right. She becomes a porter like her daddy (whom she calls Sam by the way, not even father) and everything points out to her taking over the adventure now, because she's fearless and better than him, that goes without saying. That wraps it up for Sam, from suffering and miserable rebel immortal man fighting his way through the afterlife, ghosts and bandits to protect his own, to an empty shell following his feminist crew like a sheep to achieve their goal, take no credit, and step aside for his powerful slay queen daughter to take over the next game
