The last time I played the first installment of the Ghost Recon series was over a decade ago, so coming back to its successor felt naturally exciting. The differences between Wildlands and the original are vast. Thanks to that, I enjoy exploring the game more than I could ever hope for. This review will surely give you heaps of insight into the game, without a single spoiler.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon® Wildlands (GRW) is a PvE-focused military tactical FPS, where you assume the role of special forces operators, known as Ghosts, in a reactive and immense recreation of Bolivia to take down the savage drug organization known as the Santa Blanca Cartel.


GRW features 21 provinces inside eleven highly detailed and realistic ecosystems, making each visit to these areas feel like a whole new experience. From shallow swamps, open green lands, elevated forest valleys, lakes, waterfalls to snowy mountains. With the character creation available at any time, you can customize your whole squad - composed of Nomad (your playable Ghost leader), Midas, Holt, and Weaver (your AI teammates) - to alternate their appearances and fade into nature’s background. While most locations and the geography of the world are purely fictitious, a few recreated landscapes are based on their real-life counterparts, like the terrifyingly accurate Death Road, or the beautiful shallow salt lake Red Lagoon, and many more for you to explore.

Although made up, all other locations still feel believable enough to be indistinguishable from real life, with NPC civilians all having proper interactions with each other and the environments, like celebrating in costumes, playing football, or simply swiping the floor. Watching them react is fun and intriguing, which is something I rarely enjoy in any other games. Sincerely, I think this fictional version of Bolivia has become my new standard of how an open-world game should be.
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Since the world is reactive with weather conditions, day/night cycle, along with enemies and civilians acting accordingly to their set daily routines, you too can choose how to handle them and use the environments to your advantage. Almost all cartel thugs, even the Unidad - dirty government soldiers - sleep and eat at night (except during special operations), making them vulnerable to a stealthy operator. During nights, enemies are harder to see, and so are you. It'd be wise to scout out the whole area using a binocular or a drone. With night-vision goggles equipped, you'll be the unseen ghost, silently striking enemies' bases when they are at their weakest. And operating in the dark during a thunderstorm or mist? That’s when the immersion hits through the roof!

Or perhaps you’re just a casual player who wants to shoot bad guys and blow things up to have fun? Then, go loud, spray and pray with LMGs in broad daylight, when you can see everyone and become the spotlight for all guns pointing at you.

Be warned though, as carelessly acting like that is not favorable in higher difficulties like Extreme, aka simulation mode. And for any hardcore, masochistic players or Ghost Recon old-timers out there, Ghost Mode with permadeath is awaiting to challenge you. Always planning, strategically maneuvering, paying attention to your surroundings, and being precise with your bullets are the keys to enjoying GRW. Playing on Ghost Mode, Tier One (increase the challenge, earn exclusive rewards) with Extreme Difficulty, and limited HUD (Minimap, Ammo, and Items shown only) brings me back to the punishing experience of the original game.
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GRW provides you with over a hundred firearms, with the option to carry one primary, one secondary, and one handgun, so choosing your favorite can be tough. Each gun is made distinct, not only on the model but also in the sound, both suppressed and unsuppressed. Bullet drop, recoil pattern, penetration power, and attachments contribute to that factor, too.

Gunplay is easy to learn for the most part, but hard to master if you, like me, prefer to use sniper rifles and attack from afar. Sniping over 500 meters and watching the enemies confusingly running and hiding behind cover is amusing, as they are clueless to find you since the gunshot source is too far away from them to know where to look. But if you shoot loudly about 150m close to them, they will hear, react to your shot and try to run towards the sound, so don’t camp and be on your toes.

That being said, sometimes they can magically spawn a vehicle to pursue you if you are too far away even though logically, they shouldn't know where you are, which ruins the immersion. Oddly, corpses disappear way too quickly, in under 30 seconds. The fact that you can't carry them around to hide or dump in a trash can where they belong to feels unpolished and lackluster in a AAA tactical shooter like GRW.
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GRW allows you to co-op with your friends or resort to public matchmaking to find randoms, so you can role-play together or have some dumbass ruin your plan by not communicating and exposing your position. The best thing about the co-op is that no matter where you and your friends are, all players’ progress contributes to each other. This means you can operate on one side of the map, while another player is at an airport over 15km away, to steal a resource plane and fly to the finish point. All of the players in the match will receive the same rewards.

Check out my Fallen Ghost review for more details.


Overall, it’s a solid installment to the franchise. Without all the changes in this game compared to the original, I probably wouldn’t have had a memorable and immersive experience, with over hundreds of hours of role-playing as the Ghost and exploring this recreated Bolivia. Wait for the occasional sale, even if you intend to play as leisurely as I do.

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