24.9 hours played
Written 29 days ago
Initial Impressions: After playing for just 20 minutes, I already felt that the game was a major downgrade from Far Cry 4, since the once dynamic and realistically animated vegetation now stands motionless when you walk past it; instead of the natural, immersive movement, the developers decided to replace it with stiff, Call of Duty–style animations that simply do not inspire the same level of engagement. Furthermore, there are no indicators for headshots or kills, and the removal of all looting animations only adds to the feeling that the game is merely a cheaper, less thoughtful version of Far Cry.
Edit after 1 1/2 Hours: After an hour and a half of playing, it became increasingly apparent that the game offers far fewer activities overall compared to Far Cry 4, and on top of that, the companion system is so infuriatingly unpredictable that if one partner is detected by enemies, you lose the opportunity to earn the undetected badge upon completing an outpost; upon realizing this, I immediately decided to remove the companions, although I may consider experimenting with animals in the future.
Edit 2: At this point, the absence of a minimap is glaringly obvious because when you mark something on your map, it results in the display of huge, winding paths along the road, which, combined with the fact that you can kill civilians without enduring any consequences and that your health automatically refills while you begin the game with nearly every weapon at your disposal, leaves you with the impression that the developers might not have put in much thought. The writing throughout the game is simply awful, and to compound matters further, the character we play remains completely mute while there is an actual cash shop for silver right in the first store I entered; although I must admit that the game’s performance is somewhat improved with slightly enhanced graphical fidelity, it is hard to ignore that the NPCs sport eyes that are ridiculously oversized, and you only catch a glimpse of your own character on the status or clothing screen, which contributes to a more cluttered inventory compared to the fourth entry. Additionally, the playability has taken a step backward since you are now forced to run up to certain objects and press a button in order to interact with them instead of simply being able to deactivate them by shooting from a distance, and some main missions don’t even include a dedicated cutscene—what’s up with that? As if that weren’t enough, certain unmasked enemies require four or more headshots to take down, and even the seemingly exciting act of driving a big truck has been rendered boring and dull.
Update 3: On a slightly brighter note, I must admit that Jess manages to be edgy in stealth mode and remains impressively accurate; however, the partner characters continue to be plagued by glitches, as they will sometimes get stuck in the ground or refuse to follow your commands despite holding down the command button, and the music throughout the game is extremely monotonous, leaning heavily towards a pop-country style that fails to enhance the overall experience.
Edit 4: Overall, the gameplay loop feels horrifically dated and unimaginatively simple, consisting mostly of three or four repetitive activities that are constantly interrupted and undermined by enemy encounters, while the game itself can be glitchy as hell—NPCs are regularly found getting stuck in the environment’s geometry. Moreover, you are required to fill four progress bars for every county, and most of this progress is achieved through so-called “main missions” that resemble side missions or fetch quests at best, all while the game offers very little in the way of a coherent or engaging story.
Edit 5: I got to the bosses and those are the worst contenders I've seen in a long time. Man, they really thought making these bosses bullet sponges with one move is great. They'll just spam their only option, and nothing else. After 10 hours, I feel the gameplay loop is slowly becoming unbearable to me. It's just no fun most of the time. Sometimes I get killed from enemies that supposedly exist but didn't spawn in quickly enough. Also, I strongly feel those visual filters and effects become too much sometimes. I get you're being drugged or dazed, but having 50% of the screen covered in blur and chromatic abberation while you're just trying to see stuff has me wondering why it's in gameplay and not exclusively applied for the cutscenes (that are pretty rare to see). The story continues to be bland. I thought getting companions will alleviate my thoughts about the writing. No, it didn't. Instead you get 1 short cutscene that will not matter later on and they will continue repeating their few and only oneliners they have at their disposal. There's barely anything else. If you have the dog, he'll get downed pretty much instantly on normal difficulty in almost every scenario. At least that one doesn't blabber repetetive oneliners every few minutes. Once you're able to spawn in weaponized helicopters, taking over Outposts is way too easy and this behaviour is not being punished enough.
Edit 6: It got very tiresome to take over the regions. Will finish the main story at least once and probably will never play it again. It's just too lackluster for me. There's some older rock radio songs, and that's fresh wind compared to the rest of the soundtrack. I swear if I ever hear that preachy acoustic guitar tune again, I might as well go crazy. Sometimes there is so much stuff going on, you can't tell if you're playing Borderlands 3 or Far Cry 5. In Far Cry 4, it was very controlled and not too crowded. It's got the same progression problem as the newer Forza Horizon series. You continuously do background tasks until it's filled up and you can do one important event and it's so lazy. I admit some devs poured some love into it, but there's not enough variety for me to go on after my initial playthrough.
Last edit: It's not worth more than 20 bucks with every DLC. A one and done experience. The kidnapping is just too much. The game's story is just very linear with no different path. You'll still end up farming missions or encounters just too advance the story. There's really nothing this game excels in. Absolutely nothing.
It's done. I've chosen the resist option and the endings and the last fight are obnoxious. It's completely unsatisfying. But I am able to tell you what's satisfying-- Uninstalling this dumpster fire and never ever wanting to return to it. I crossed it off my bucket list. Wasted 30 hours of my life for this. I was really trying to enjoy this game but I feel like only 25% of the time it felt like fun, the rest was a slog to get through.