Context: I've been obsessively playing every entry in the series repeatedly since mgs1 on ps1. I'm a huge fan and I'm always willing to overlook some of the faults to appreciate the good.

Currently replaying MGS1 on the master collection (yes, they botched it and I'm sad about it; I just want to play it again and I'm really happy to do so). I just played through normal twice. On the second run, I did a no kill (aside from obligatory kills), no alert, no ration, no continue, and only saved a few times. It was tough but it was a lot of fun.

Now, for the first time ever, I'm playing on extreme, which I was scared to do, given that you have no soliton radar, you can only carry one ration, and the only way to get rations is from very rare enemy stealth kills... there are none in the environment. Also, bosses take a lot more hits, do more damage, and, in the case of Sniper Wolf, are inhumanly fast and precise.

Aside from the boss fights, it is absolutely exhilarating to play the game this way. Every corner I turn must first be scoped out with a wall check. If I enter a room, I knock on the wall to see if there are enemies. Running under cameras means actually looking at them. And that last part is what I love about playing this way: I have to constantly use the triangle button to survive each area. Patiently stealthing my way through the environment is so fucking cool and I find myself using things that normally I had ignored, like the cardboard box, or crawling under specific crates/tanks/etc. I'm telling you, it's so fun to play this way.

And now I'm left feeling like the radar makes the game too easy. I really love playing it this way except for the bosses and rare ration drops. Sometimes you absolutely need a ration to get through the next boss fight, so you end up having to enter and exit the same area over and over again to make enemies respawn so that you can choke them out and hope they drop a ration. It takes a long time and it isn't fun. And yeah, the bosses. Ooph, some of them are just too hard. Sniper Wolf takes 0.0001 seconds to shoot you with perfect precision when she gets into position. That's just one example, but there are others.

Anyways, if any of you have mastered extreme, I'd love to hear about how you did it.