When I first played the ever-so-barebones Far Cry 2, I never imagined that the series would arrive at Far Cry 5 (even though it's technically the seventh game in the series because of Blood Dragon and Primal). And while Far Cry 3 and 4 were fun, if a bit overbearing and samey in a typical cluttered Ubisoft fashion... Far Cry 5 just does SO many things right and I feel like this is what a Far Cry game should have been from 3 onwards. It also does story horribly wrong, though.

Let's get this out of the way first, though in this day and age, it's almost redundant: the game is absolutely freaking gorgeous. The foliage, the water, the lighting, the character and weapon models, everything looks crisp as hell and I dare say that this is the only other Far Cry game post Far Cry 2 that was able to nail that insanely satisfying fire spreading mechanic (although fire does tank performance a bit even on my 1080 Ti). The sound design is also great and I really have to stress that the soundtrack this time around is absolutely AMAZING. I can't get the main menu theme out of my head, it's like a rural American Morrowind theme, and all the other songs and such are really well made and suit the theme perfectly. So top marks in the presentation department.

I also love what they've done to the gameplay. I used to kind of split up my playthroughs of Far Cry games into two "phases". First, clear the map as much as I could bother, i.e. clear the outposts, climb the towers etc. and then gorge on the story missions in one go. That way I would be able to really focus on the open-world aspects and the story without losing interest in either. So the way this works is that you have three regions and each has a leader, one of the Seed family. You gain resistance points by doing pretty much anything in the world - main or side missions, liberating outposts, collecting prepper stashes, doing random events etc. When you reach a certain threshold of points in a region (every region has its own track), the leader kidnaps you and you are forced to progress the story. Rinse, repeat. I loved this system because in the other games, I had a routine of sorts and it kind of got boring after a while, but I never felt the need to change it up because I knew that in order to beat the game, I need to do the story missions. Here, I chose to tackle each region differently and I still got to beat the game. For example, I liberated the first region by doing many different things, the second region by doing outposts first and then some side missions and the third by doing more or less missions only - I liberated maybe one or two outposts (as a result of two side missions), and the game still got beaten. As a gameplay mechanic, it's great because it never feels like chasing random events or taking a minute to help a random NPC is a pure distraction, it contributes in a small way towards progression.

However, as a driving point for the plot... it's terrible. Now look, this is 2010s Ubisoft, I never had any high expectations to begin with, and Far Cry 3 and 4 weren't exactly narrative masterpieces, but... there's just something so hollow, empty and pointless (and not the good, Far Cry 2 kind) about this game's story. Literally the only reason why anything happens is because you piss off a region's leader and get kidnapped. They ramble on about how edgy and messed up they are, and then, off you go again. Every character seems like they should be intriguing and multi-layered, but they're just not, there's nothing to them other than a messed up backstory. And the ending... don't get me started. A lot of people didn't like it and a lot of people thought it was some grand statement on the futility of... something something, I don't know. I played plenty of games that had an anticlimactic ending that resonated deep with me and made me question my own moral system and motivations as a player (like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., KoTOR II, BioShock and Spec Ops: The Line, to name a few), but this one did nothing to coherently make a point about... anything, other than "bad religious extremist cult is bad". I think they learned all the wrong lessons from Far Cry 4, to be short, but I can't say anything more without giving anything away.

So, when you put it all together: graphics - GREAT, gameplay - GREAT, story - just ignore it and you'll be fine. I could let the terrible story ruin my experience of this game, but it was just too fun and I'm not going to let it. I just hope Far Cry 6 will have a better story.

When I first played the ever-so-barebones Far Cry 2, I never imagined that the series would arrive at Far Cry 5 (even though it's technically the seventh game in the series because of Blood Dragon and Primal). And while Far Cry 3 and 4 were fun, if a bit overbearing and samey in a typical cluttered Ubisoft fashion... Far Cry 5 just does SO many things right and I feel like this is what a Far Cry game should have been from 3 onwards. It also does story horribly wrong, though. Let's get this out of the way first, though in this day and age, it's almost redundant: the game is absolutely freaking gorgeous. The foliage, the water, the lighting, the character and weapon models, everything looks crisp as hell and I dare say that this is the only other Far Cry game post Far Cry 2 that was able to nail that insanely satisfying fire spreading mechanic (although fire does tank performance a bit even on my 1080 Ti). The sound design is also great and I really have to stress that the soundtrack this time around is absolutely AMAZING. I can't get the main menu theme out of my head, it's like a rural American Morrowind theme, and all the other songs and such are really well made and suit the theme perfectly. So top marks in the presentation department. I also love what they've done to the gameplay. I used to kind of split up my playthroughs of Far Cry games into two "phases". First, clear the map as much as I could bother, i.e. clear the outposts, climb the towers etc. and then gorge on the story missions in one go. That way I would be able to really focus on the open-world aspects and the story without losing interest in either. So the way this works is that you have three regions and each has a leader, one of the Seed family. You gain resistance points by doing pretty much anything in the world - main or side missions, liberating outposts, collecting prepper stashes, doing random events etc. When you reach a certain threshold of points in a region (every region has its own track), the leader kidnaps you and you are forced to progress the story. Rinse, repeat. I loved this system because in the other games, I had a routine of sorts and it kind of got boring after a while, but I never felt the need to change it up because I knew that in order to beat the game, I need to do the story missions. Here, I chose to tackle each region differently and I still got to beat the game. For example, I liberated the first region by doing many different things, the second region by doing outposts first and then some side missions and the third by doing more or less missions only - I liberated maybe one or two outposts (as a result of two side missions), and the game still got beaten. As a gameplay mechanic, it's great because it never feels like chasing random events or taking a minute to help a random NPC is a pure distraction, it contributes in a small way towards progression. However, as a driving point for the plot... it's terrible. Now look, this is 2010s Ubisoft, I never had any high expectations to begin with, and Far Cry 3 and 4 weren't exactly narrative masterpieces, but... there's just something so hollow, empty and pointless (and not the good, Far Cry 2 kind) about this game's story. Literally the only reason why anything happens is because you piss off a region's leader and get kidnapped. They ramble on about how edgy and messed up they are, and then, off you go again. Every character seems like they should be intriguing and multi-layered, but they're just not, there's nothing to them other than a messed up backstory. And the ending... don't get me started. A lot of people didn't like it and a lot of people thought it was some grand statement on the futility of... something something, I don't know. I played plenty of games that had an anticlimactic ending that resonated deep with me and made me question my own moral system and motivations as a player (like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., KoTOR II, BioShock and Spec Ops: The Line, to name a few), but this one did nothing to coherently make a point about... anything, other than "bad religious extremist cult is bad". I think they learned all the wrong lessons from Far Cry 4, to be short, but I can't say anything more without giving anything away. So, when you put it all together: graphics - GREAT, gameplay - GREAT, story - just ignore it and you'll be fine. I could let the terrible story ruin my experience of this game, but it was just too fun and I'm not going to let it. I just hope Far Cry 6 will have a better story.