Thoughts / Review: Far Cry 5 ( PC )

Far Cry 5 Review / Thoughts

Time to beat: 5 Days

100% Playthrough

Difficulty: Hard

Far Cry 5 is an action-adventure first-person shooter game developed by #Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Toronto and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is the eleventh entry and the fifth main title in the Far Cry series, and was released on March 27, 2018.

The game takes place in the fictional Hope County, #Montana, where charismatic preacher Joseph Seed and his cult Project at Eden's Gate holds a dictatorial rule over the area. The story follows an unnamed junior deputy sheriff, who becomes trapped in Hope County and works alongside factions of a resistance to liberate the county from Eden's Gate.

Far Cry 5 had the potential to say something interesting by setting the game in America but does it live up to been as best as Far cry 3 or been an good game as Far cry 4 was, Well…. Sort of, Here's my Thoughts / Review of Far Cry 5.

Pros:

+ One really good change they made was making FC5 more free form and open. Once you finish the prologue you can go anywhere and do anything, which ofcourse comes with both positives and negatives.. Exploration feels more natural now because random NPCs and notes will mark points of interest on your map. The world map also feels appropriately hostile because of the constant random events happening - it reaches almost comical, Far Cry 2 levels because you can walk a few feet away from the location of a random event, and another one occurs in the same spot. Sadly, these completely disappear once you finish / complete a region.

+ Gameplay is a blast, they've definitely stepped up there game from the last two. Throwing shovels at people is the funnest thing this game brings to the table.

This time around you play as a sheriff’s deputy, part of a task force sent into the fictional Hope County, Montana. Rural #America may not be quite as exotic or exciting a playground as a tropical island or a secluded mountain, but it’s a gigantic open world where things are constantly blowing up, wild animals are pouncing, and a never-ending supply of cultists are lining up to be your target practice. The mountains, valleys, plains, forests, rivers, lakes, and caves of Hope County make it a place where there’s never a dull moment.

Far cry 5 have an western like feeling soundtrack which is just Great, You can pause the game at any time and just listen to the soundtrack rather than playing, That’s how good the soundtrack is.

+ Guns for hire system, An new system is actually really good and useful at times. In an expansion of the buddy system from FC2, you can recruit any random NPC with a gun as a companion. They will tag along and attack enemies with you, and will revive you when you go down (though their pathing is wonky and the AI breaks fairly regularly).

The game also has a cast of colorful characters you can recruit who are specialists and fill a variety of combat niches. I had a lot of fun running with Boomer the dog which tags all the enemies nearby and Hurk Drubman Jr which have an RPG to blow stuff up on your order ( and mostly random as well ).

+ Co-Op system is great and now you can play the main mission story-line with your friends as well, or just screw around and liberate outposts. ( Only problem is who invites you will only progress and save, you will have to do it yourself again if you are not the host of the co-op game )

+ After an long wait, WE FINALLY can speak to random NPC and they will have stuff to say now, they can tell you about locations, bases, hidden stashes, etc. Some even have conversations with each other that are fun to listen to ( sometimes ).

Fishing is good and an fun addition to the game, but it just there for if you need money to buy Helicopters, Guns or Cars, and probably 2-4 side missions and THAT’S IT, nothing for more.

Cons:

- Far Cry 5's story is bad. Putting aside politics, it's just super weak. If you think about it at all for longer than a couple of minutes, it has more holes in it than a chunk of Swiss cheese. You're a cop, helping "good" militias fight "bad" militias who also happen to run a Christian Doomsday cult. Instead of doing anything interesting with the cult aspect, the cult just mind controls everybody with a magic drug that can do whatever the lead writers needed it to do. Bliss, the drug in question, is FC5's equivalent of nanomachines. The villains suck and it's no better than Vaas or even Pagan Min, and so that makes it's clear that Ubisoft is still trying to ride the coattails of Vaas, 3 games later.

- The story is literally the worst in the series, in a series that has never been particularly strong in storytelling. I'm going to have to break what happens in the story-line down into parts, as this factor alone is enough to make me mad:

- The kidnapping mechanic gets extremely old quickly and requires a significant suspension of disbelief because A. even though you're doing terrible stuff to these people, they STILL basically spare you for apparently no-reason and do not kill you, ALSO they can reach you no matter what is happening, AND ALSO B. the drugs they use to do this basically have no rules and can be used to control, capture, or drive crazy seemingly interchangeably. ALSO Getting kidnapped once is a dramatic story choice but getting kidnapped multiple times just makes me wonder why they don't just kill me already. Not to mention that this game has a lot of optional story missions that can disappear if you get forced into the unskippable missions. Games have had missable content before, but FC5 is really bad about it.

- Speaking of drugs, As Internet says, Far cry game is not a game without a Drugs use / scean, the Far Cry series needs to let go of this absurd erection they have with mind altering substances. It was a neat novelty in 3 with the fight with Vaas, but ever since they've insisted upon keeping it going as a running theme. 5 simply takes this way too far. One single drug that can turn you into a sleeper agent, turn you into a stupified zombie, turn you into a murdering maniac, and somehow turn you completely to Joseph's entire cause in a second. Bliss acts literally any way the developers want it to: it serves as the major way a lot of the conflict starts in the story.

- While games don't always have to have a voiced protagonist, there is a significant downfall in not having one in this game. Cutscenes feel like they're looking for a response and end up suffering in awkward silence. Characters have intense breakdowns (some of which you shouldn't even be able to see and it's never elaborated on why you can see it) and your character stands there blankly, only occasionally nodding or shaking his head.

- Speaking of story, Remember “that” Secret ending in Far Cry 4, how well it was done and actual effort went into it. It was a completely different from the rest of the story and dropped major character revelations that you would otherwise not learn until really deep into the main game. Far Cry 5 also has a secret ending. It's about 30 seconds long and its not good. The difference between how these games handle their secret easter egg ending is typical of pretty much everything Far Cry 5 does versus past games.

- The overarching narrative is even weaker than usual because you can bounce around between all 3 regions, each of which are controlled by one of the cult's lieutenants and have their own story arcs.

- Guns for hire system is an good addition but it has its problem, The main issue with companions aside from questionable AI is that they have a very limited set of voice lines and they will repeat them over and over. If you have 2 companions in your party they will go through their very limited set of chatter repeatedly, sometimes starting over the conversations several times until they can finish them in their entirety. With that they also talk during main mission dialogue which gets annoying to hear it OVER AND OVER Again

- I hate how every Far Cry game feels like it has to have a 'moral dillemna' ending, because the lead writers keep displaying how inept they are at creating one. Every bad guy questions if you're doing the right thing, calling you a monster.. The main bad guy does this as well, insisting that every bit of suffering is by your doing. This would work if there was any footing to stand on, such as the cult never killing but instead capturing at every opportunity. This is not the case. You can find bodies tortured to death around the entire map of Hope County, people murdered for being 'weak', etc etc. Any power of the antagonists calling you out falls flat and feels pointless.

- Outposts are sparsely populated to the point where it's way more fun to just let the alarm go off so you have more than 4 enemies to fight. Chain kills and the like feel a lot more finnicky to use. Deploying your wingsuit feels a lot less reliable. There are lot more recycled death animations and player animations are very canned and limited. Driving, which hasn't really been this series' strong suit, feels weaker as cars feel too slippery on turns this time. They went to the effort of licensing a ton of music in the radio, but you can't hear the radio in a lot of the game's vehicles.

- While Firing a Weapon and shooting is the main fun part of Far Cry Series, FC5 has very less variety of guns to buy and use than FC4 or even FC3 had. Its disappointing.

Perks feel underwhelming compared to previous games.

Microtransactions has to stop in video games which cost $60, or Microtransactions should only be used if it bring something useful for the player. In FC5 Microtransactions is used for skins. Why was this necessary? It doesn't even cost much to unlock things with in-game money.

- Customization is weak in FC5, you can only customize your appearance ( which why would you if you do not see yourself throughout the game and the game is on First-Person ), You can customize Guns , Helicopters, Planes and Cars only ( Helicopters, Planes and Cars are only customizable of Re-skins, There are, off of memory, 6 different Magnum revolvers and 5 different AKs without any real stat differences between them and customizable of only silencers, scopes and extended magazines, but at least you can now put silencers on almost everything. Yay for progress, Gone are the unique versions of guns with unique attachments and stats that were rewards for collectibles or side missions.

Hunting is useless in FC5, In FC3 / FC4 you could hunt to craft new armor, or something else but here in FC5 its only yields you money, gone are the days of crafting upgrades, which is a huge shame, the old system was much more engaging.

Final Score: 7.5 / 10

Am i disappointed and would say Far Cry 5 is Bad, not fun to play and not worth it, NO!. Far Cry 5 is another wide-open playground with all the necessary ingredients for causing a real ruckus: loads of enemies and allies, temperamental wildlife, and plenty of explosions, though it’s not the most memorable in the series. Far Cry 5 is such a conflicting experience. I see true enthusiasm and craftsmanship for this game that should be applauded after the travesty that was Primal. And i would recommend this for $60, The successful transition from exotic locales to America’s backyard makes me excited to see where the Far Cry formula goes next. ( SPACE MAYBE! )

In Short, Far Cry 5 can be boils down to this:

* If you want this game because of the gameplay, Shooting stuff and co-op experience, and have zero interest in being invested in the story, then I recommend it to you.

* if you are those people who consider the story more important, then it's probably best to avoid the game until it is on sale.