The word I would use to describe the game would be “interesting”. I think it should be taken with a grain of salt since the game isn’t that great from a gameplay perspective. But the story is interesting enough (at least for me) to want to play it until I finish it. Having that said, let’s see how the Far Cry 5 Review will be.
Far Cry 5 Review Pros and Cons
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Cons |
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Story
Without spoiling too much of the game, I can say with certainty that it has intrigued me from the beginning. Religious cults are often a taboo subject and here’s Far Cry 5 making a whole game about that. Overall I like how they linked everything and I feel like they have represented a “bad” cult pretty well. All their flaws, but probably some of the more positive aspects also.
The ending is also pretty different compared to other stories. It gives you a bit of food for thought and it leaves you wanting more. I do not know if they will even continue this story, but it sure feels a bit disappointing if the game ends at that point.
You basically start from the perspective of “Rook” who is a rookie that has been assigned to the mission of arresting Joseph Seed. A prophet who thinks he was chosen by God to protect the people of Hope county and have a new beginning after the world collapses. Of course, he has some unorthodox methods of doing that and it has attracted the attention of the feds. And here’s where I’ll stop because I don’t want to give spoilers to any of you.
Quests and side quests are mostly enjoyable. Basically, you have to go for the main quests and while you are doing the main quests, you also do the side quests. It’s a little trick that allows you to finish 80-90% of the game without feeling that you have missed out on a lot of extra content.
Having that said, I still feel like the story of the game is kind of short and a little bit repetitive. Even though they successfully integrated side quests quite well, the main story lacks a bit. If you strip the side quests, then you’re left with very little.
Gameplay
Game Mechanics
This is where Far Cry 5 starts to fall a bit. It is decent, but there are some aspects of the game that make me feel that it wasn’t finished. If you watch the Far Cry 2 vs Far Cry 5 comparison, you will see what I mean. There are many features that were making Far Cry 2 awesome (from the perspective of game mechanics at least) and they aren’t present in the latest title. Here’s a video explaining why that might be.
Hunting
I personally do not like the hunting system. It feels shallow because basically, all you can do with it is to sell hides for money. At least in Far Cry 4, you could upgrade your gear in order to become stronger.
Skill System
The skill system is also pretty shallow and it doesn’t offer you many cool stuff. I would have liked to see “builds” more than just ticking on some features you should have had from the beginning or by skinning animals like in Far Cry 4. For example, if I want to focus on stealth, I would expect to have many skills dedicated to making that happen. So even if I had finished the game, I could still have many locked skills. This would allow a lot more creativity from the perspective of the developers and players would be able to develop their characters as they please. This idea would be also useful in Arcade mode in multiplayer especially. All in all I’m quite disappointed with the skill system, but it’s not game breaking.
Buddy System and Companions
The companions themselves are great and they each have some useful skills depending on your play style. My main disappointment is regarding the buddy system. Basically, whenever your companion dies, you can pick him up and he can fight again. It’s a bit of a downgrade compared to Far Cry 2 where you had to heal them with your items in order to pick them up and if you were getting injured they would come and rescue you once. So you didn’t have infinite chances of continuing the story.
Map
The map is pretty well built. You have 3 zones that you explore at your leisure right from the start. All of these zones have different environments. My personal favorite one is the Jacob zone. It has amazing mountains and you have to climb a lot. The map is also pretty intuitive and easy to learn. You have some iconic places and you can learn the landscape pretty fast.
Treasure Hunting
I really enjoyed the treasure hunting part of the game. You can find some stashes with loot throughout the map. Usually, there are 3 perk magazines waiting for you at the end. These treasure hunts tell interesting stories sometimes and it’s fun to solve the puzzle.
Too many random enemies
This is my main complaint regarding the game. You go and do your business. Maybe hunting some animals, or maybe fishing and guess what? A freaking helicopter comes outta nowhere and hunts you. Or some random peggies stumble upon you in the woods randomly. Going on the main road is a death wish since an enemy car passes through there every minute at least.
Capturing Outposts
While this sounds fun at the beginning, it gets boring pretty fast. You have some amazing tools at your disposal but you can’t really use them since the enemy system is quite restrictive. If you go for a direct attack you’ll have to expect a lot of reinforcements, so you need to eliminate the sirens before you attack. If you go stealthy your best shot is a sniper from the distance. Even then there are high chances that you will be caught since the enemy is alerted easily to the sound of the bullet. If you want to go melee you have to be equipped with a lot of patience since it’s very hard to just distract an enemy with a rock and stab them in the back.
I don’t say I don’t like the challenge. The problem is that it feels repetitive, restrictive (even though you’re supposed to have freedom of choice) and annoying.
Enemy AI
I’m sure you have seen at least one meme regarding the AI from Far Cry 5. It’s pretty bad. They drive planes into trees. They walk into water randomly. Even friendly AI gets scared and you can’t talk to them even if there’s no one around. They have weird patrols and as I said, they come when you are fishing or hunting animals like they knew you were there all along.
Weapons
Now this one is quite disappointing. You do have some unique and interesting weapons, but most of them are the same. There is little variety overall and there are many weapons with the same specs. Obtaining weapons is quite boring also since you don’t even have to give money for most of them. I would’ve liked to see the degradation mechanics from Far Cry 2 at least.
Vehicles
Vehicles also have very little variety. There are some different ones and you usually have to obtain them through missions, but they are all basically the same (almost). Helicopters and planes are very similar. Some vehicles do have some weapons attached, but it sure feels like that’s the biggest difference between them.
Graphics
Overall the game has a nice atmosphere and it looks good. There is no major complaint here and they did a really good job with the optimization and the number of objects that fit in your field of view. You can basically see an entire zone from the start to the end without any lag. Of course, they change textures as there is a bigger distance between you and an object, but that’s usually not observable.
They have done a good job mostly. Even if you set everything to the minimum, you can still enjoy the game without any major differences and the game should be playable if you have a decent enough PC.
Arcade
Arcade is almost a separate game. You have the choice of playing official or user-made maps and you can complete the objectives on them for some XP and you can get rewards as you level up and you can also play multiplayer maps. Some of them are really cool and some of them aren’t that cool. The main complaint here was that they wouldn’t give you the official maps separately from the user-made ones, but I think they have solved that problem since I last played.
Far Cry 5 Review Conclusion
To sum it all up, it’s a good story with shallow gameplay (at least in my opinion). You can do many things but it lacks the realistic element I crave for. This game is basically made for the people who just hop on their PC or console and play for a few hours and then they log off. I understand that it’s made mostly for those people, but they should try and find a middle-ground for this. For example you could unlock the “realistic” features if you had a higher difficulty on. I really liked the fire spreading mechanics in Far Cry 2. Of course they would have to change a lot of other stuff also in order to make this possible, but it would be a way better game in my opinion.
I will have to give this game an 8/10 GamerSeal Rating.
Rating:
8/10