After marinating on the game overnight, here is my vague impression:
I think a lot of the weirdness I feel after beating this game is because so much of its themes are front loaded and blatant. And it has to do this, because every aspect of the gameplay reinforces the core themes (this is Cool and Good). Itxs like Kojima desperately trying to sell socialism and the value of communnity to shut in nerds. People are stronger together so you should want to help other people out, because life is hard on your own. A country's strength is it's people overcoming differences. Kojima hates nukes and killing so he made a world where killing someone makes them a nuke. Also, pay your taxes so the government can build roads, which might be the best thing ever. This game is the greatest road propaganda of all time. The gameplay itself is weird and clunky and the boss fights are kinda inconsistent and it shouldn't really work at all but it's still weirdly addicting.
So now the rest of the plot is a character drama in this weird world. And I like the characters, I really do. They are all strange and slightly wacky and likable in that weird Kojima way. Amelie is the only one I didnt really care for. But I think icon is right - it isn't really that deep! The characters and the concepts in the story don't really feel too fleshed out for the amount of time you spend with the game, and that's a bummer.
That said, it's still enjoyable, I just think it maybe isn't worth the bad pacing. It gets overwrought at times but I think it stuck the landing. On a technical level Kojima has improved a lot in this actor-heavy cinematic style compared to MGSV. I don't think he's quite at the level of Naughty Dog in TLOU and UC4, which maybe isn't fair to say but it seems pretty obvious to me that's where he is trying to be. We even got Troy Baker twice! But I'd love to see more of this so keep on keeping on.
So overall, more than like...actual quality as a game, I feel like Death Stranding asks two questions: "how much can you tolerate Kojima's bullshit" and "is a Hideo Kojima Game better when he has total creative control? " To which my answers are "surprisingly a lot" and "uh...I dunno about that."