I'm still hesitating. It's hard to trust gaming media to fairly judge Kojima's games after all the unwarranted praise they gave to overpriced demo (Ground Zeroes) and unfinished utter mess which was Phantom Pain just because those games were signed with his name. Don't get me wrong, I like Kojima, but I feel like the press tends to give him way too much pass on all the things he does wrong and if it was anyone else doing it, they would be really damn critical about it. So I'll wait for more detailed reports from regular players.
As I said, I'm not a fan of kojima so I'm not buying the game because he made it, actually my main concern was exactly that he made it (too much fear of another Vamp, quiet or beauty and beast unit, or cardboard boxes).
I already understood the game from the last gameplay videos and I was totally into it, I needed confirmation that what I saw was the game and not scam. I got it.
I have a trusted website (not english) that I've been reading in years (I actually know its boss since we're almost the same age and attended highschool in the same city, so we have mutual friends and I get in touch with him from time to time) and I know how they write and what they look for in videogames.
I also know what I do like and what i do not like in videogames, so even though they awarded borderlands 3 with a 90ish score I know I'll never buy it since I HATE looter shooters and borderlands' type of irony. Or they gave 70ish to anthem because "we're sure bioware will improve it since it's a GAAS and they are strongly investing on it" which was a totally bullshit point of view and, now we're sure, wrong. Do you guys think I bought anthem? I knew it from E3 2018 that game was pure shit.
So I'm not buying death stranding because they say it's a good game. I'm buying it because I like what I saw and they confirmed me that's how the game is. It's also very lenghty (30ish hours if you rush it, it can go up to 90ish), perfectly optimized and polished, so it's good also on the technical point of view. I'm not wasting my money.
Regarding players' opinions, it really depends. They're definetely better than journalists in talking about bugs and stuff like that (that's why the metascore means nothing), but too often they can't understand game mechanics and their importance. For example, if you read players' opinions on RDR2, way too many complain for the animations which are -according to them- too slow and boring. Those animations were actually perfect and extremely important for immersion, which was Rockstar's purpose. Or people complaining because there's no freedom in RDR2's missions. Rockstar wanted to make a full story-driven game, not a sandbox. So journalists understood it and valued the game for what it wanted to be (and achieved), players wanted a frenetic sandbox with valuable loot. As a matter of fact, RDR2 is one of my favourite (if not THE favourite) games.
Lots of journalists can't do their job, that's true, you just need to find some you share your tastes with and filter their opinions according to your personal taste.
P.S. we're all here hyping for cyberpunk, but what was said for death stranding is valid for that as well. Nobody can guarantee it will be a great game. Nobody. We just need to trust CDPR and wait for people who will try it. As a matter of fact, I've seen more problems (or things I don't like) in CP77 than in DS so far.