It just kinda sounds like you’re mad that he made a game about his own ideas rather than your ones.
It also had to do with my expectations being set by the Metal Gear games. While they certainly all had a touch of absurdity in them, there are messages in those games that I largely agree with such as the notion that war begets revenge which begets war (MGS V) or massive data collection resulting in population control (MGS IV).
But it's all subjective and I can totally understand other people enjoying this games story. I just personally didn't.
I've learnt to not have any expectations about what I'm going to get from a Kojima game, and instead just follow along whatever journey it is he wants to take me on.
I will say that I was pretty disappointed by the massive amounts of reviews claiming it was a walking simulator when they clearly put a lot of work into making the balance system a pretty innovative mechanic. Furthermore, games like Red Dead Redemption 2 (which I absolutely love, btw) consist of large portions of traveling and get little criticism for it.
I think one time that could have been better is the occurrence of encountering "random side quests" as was done in rdr2 often was extremely successful in making the world feel alive as you traverse it. But that mechanic doesn't really belong in the mostly empty world of Death Stranding.
That was one of the things I really liked about it. The side quests are really rewarding (in terms of powerful upgrades), and you can happily complete the entire game without touching most of them. So you end up getting rewarded for exploring and taking on non-central-story deliveries. The materials rewarded for a lot of those quests is also very, very useful. I felt as though I was engaged in the side quests a lot more than I typically am in games like say, Assassins Creed, where end up only picking them up if I was low on money. RDR2 was also incredibly successful in achieving this, but I'd just say via a different approach.
If you want to play a deep game with an immersive and engrossing story play planescape torment.
Planescape: Torment is on a very short list of games where some of the story or setting just randomly pops in my head again. Really one of the best.
The gameplay was pretty awful though, and I never really got into the incredibly cluttered Infinity Engine graphics. Would love a proper 3D remake that either improves the gameplay or makes it even less relevant.
Kojima makes unique games, and his best work has come from him forging ahead with his own ideas of how to do things. You risk mass appeal by doing things that way, but if you want a mass appeal product, there’s really no shortage of them.
Personally, I liked the handcuffs. Long-winded and contrived exposition is part of Kojima’s style, so I knew what I was getting in to. I liked the game in general. I even thought the product placement was hilarious. I liked God of War too, and the latest AAA FPS Game™. I’m happy they all exist.