One of the cool feature of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is the buddy system. Unlike previous MGS in the series where you are to fight out on the battlefield alone, MGS5 TPP allows you to bring in one of your buddy to the field. To find out the best buddy for fellow GameTraders, we played over 60 hours of gameplay using a mix of different buddies and equipments to evaluate each buddy’s abilities.

D-Horse

In the beginning, your only buddy is D-Horse, which acts as a transportation tool more than anything else. While D-Horse is definitely useful in the earlier part of the game to travel across the vast land of Afghanistan, it does very little with respect to combat. Yes sure, you can get it to poo and it’s dropping will cause enemy vehicle to skid. However, that will require good timing and placing of the dropping. So far, I did not manage to do it even once. Either the dropping is placed off course or no vehicle is going through after D-Horse empty his bowel.

Once you start to use other buddy and not D-Horse, you may miss it especially when you need to run another 1000m to your next mission or checkpoint.

D-Dog

This little puppy that you have ‘fulton-ed’ earlier on in the game, grows up to be a ferocious dog (or wolf). D-Dog has many abilities that can be unlock with R&D. It can kill, stun, bark and even fulton enemy for you without expending your fulton. Also D-Dog can sniff out enemies, wild lives and plants and mark it conveniently on your map.

Personally, I don’t really find the bark ability useful in the field. Many times, D-Dog stays close to your side. If you command it to bark, it will only attract unnecessary attention to your hiding spot. You can ask D-Dog to wait first at your spot then move on to a new spot before asking it to bark. However, it is too tedious for me to manage a buddy like that.

Also, at any one sortie, D-Dog can only be equip with a single ability from the selection of kill, stun and fulton. So if you want the unlimited fulton ability of D-Dog, it cannot kill or stun enemy.

D-Walker

D-Walker has tons of R&D that you can buy to upgrade this machine. While it is rather costly, with enough investment D-Walker can be quite a killer machine to bring out for mission. We don’t suggest using D-Walker for stealth mission, but it maybe useful for missions where firepower is needed. Do note that in the earlier stage when you first get D-Walker, it is not advisable to bring it out to field just yet. You will need a number of upgrades before it is deem combat ready.

The good things about D-Walker is that no bonding is needed. Also, it can be used as a sentry gun with its intercept mode. In the video above, we see how this player uses D-Walker well using its intercept mode.

Quiet

For some people, you may never get Quiet to be on your team. In main ops 11, after defeating Quiet, you can choose to kill her or to capture her. Killing her will mean that she will not appear any more in the later part of the game.

Quiet has two modes of operation, the scout mode and the attack mode. Both can be access from the iDroid. In scout mode, Quiet will infiltrate an outpost that you specify on the map and marked out enemies for you. Quiet will then move into attack mode once all enemies have been marked. She will not fire unless you give her command to.

Quiet’s bonding takes time to build. Initially, with low bonding, she will not listen to you at all and that can be hard for your mission. But after your bond has max out or reach 50%, she will be a very valuable asset to you. To bond with her, you can visit her frequently on the medical platform other than bringing her out to the field.

For me, I would usually sent quiet out to scout out an outpost of base I am heading too. Her super human speed makes sure that she is always ahead of me. So before even reaching my destination, all the enemies are marked out nicely for me. Once you unlock the tranquilliser sniper rifle, you can essentially command her to take out the whole base of enemy while you fulton them away happily.

Quiet can get injured and will be place in the sick bay if her health has reduced to zero. To prevent that, whenever her sniping spot is compromised (you will know this when the enemy starts shooting at her or radio back to HQ that they spotted a sniper), select a new attack spot for her from your iDroid. If you get the silencer for her rifle eventually, the enemy will have a much tougher time finding her.

SPOILER ALERT:

Quiet will leave you permanently  (*soob soob*) starting from main ops 43. The easiest way to prevent this is to equip butterfly emblem before mission 41.

END SPOILER

And the award goes to …

Quiet! I mean Quiet ….shh……

Quiet is the most versatile and easy-to-manage buddy on the field. While D-Dog can mark enemies, so can Quiet. D-Walker is a bit too loud and clumsy for our liking although we love the fulton canon that can fulton even vehicle from a range.  D-Horse for us, is more of a transportation tool. Vehicles can be gotten easily on the field and can move as fast if not faster than D-Horse.

Quiet allows us to be super stealthy in our mission. At times, we even reached a outpost with all enemy tranquillised ready for us to fulton away! However, you would need a rather high bond with Quiet and the proper weapon with silencer for her before you can realise her full potential.

So that is our pick for Best Buddy Award MGS5 TPP. Although we think that Quiet is the best buddy for us, other buddies may better suit your gameplay. For us, we like stealth and fultoning people to mother base and Quiet is really helpful in that. Different buddies will require different tactics and way of playing..

Which is your best buddy? Let us know in the comments below.