Game is fun as fuck. Moment to moment gameplay is more or less what one expects from Far Cry since 3, except it's extremely chaotic. Enemies, both human and animal, frequently try to get up your ass, or even up each other's asses, which makes the game a constant stream of very entertaining chaos. Even fishing is dangerous, as I was constantly assaulted by the wild life and cultists as I tried to peace out, peaking when a bear straight up came out of the lake I was fishing and mauled my ass (or tried to, anyway).
Mission design I find a lot better this time around. There's less repetitive missions, and you can basically tackle nearly all missions at your leisure after activating them instead of being locked into them like in past games. I felt this was a very good improvement.
Similarly, exploration was greatly improved by doing away with towers. Now you get most of your info about the world from signs, magazines, NPCs and the such, making it all feel more organic. There's also way less collectibles, and they're a tad less pointless since they're tied to missions, too. However, I did run into the issue of certain things being harder to find than I'd like (such as cult destructibles).
The story surprised me. I didn't expect to like it as much, but it was surprisingly solid and I felt the ending was genuinely good (and well foreshadowed). Mind you, I don't think it's anything deep, but the game definitely kept me entertained with its story and some very well realized cutscenes and set pieces. Also funny how a mute deputy is a better character than Ajay and Jason were!
Now what I think is the game's biggest flaw is another one of its not experiments: resistance points. On their own they're great, gating progress by making you progress missions and do live events as you explore. But they did this dumb thing where you get kidnapped and forced into story missions when you amass a certain amount of RP. This is extremely annoying, and frankly silly with how many times it happens. It does not matter what you're doing, you are FORCED to do a story mission. Thankfully, since I'm on PC I alleviated this by using the Resistance Mod, but I still call out the flawed design here.
Also the soundtrack was surprisingly solid too, I expected nothing on that front though because the past Far Crys didn't have particularly strong soundtracks.
All in all? I greatly enjoyed this game, and I liked seeing it try to experiment with shit even if it didn't all pan out. Story was a nice ride.
Mission design I find a lot better this time around. There's less repetitive missions, and you can basically tackle nearly all missions at your leisure after activating them instead of being locked into them like in past games. I felt this was a very good improvement.
Similarly, exploration was greatly improved by doing away with towers. Now you get most of your info about the world from signs, magazines, NPCs and the such, making it all feel more organic. There's also way less collectibles, and they're a tad less pointless since they're tied to missions, too. However, I did run into the issue of certain things being harder to find than I'd like (such as cult destructibles).
The story surprised me. I didn't expect to like it as much, but it was surprisingly solid and I felt the ending was genuinely good (and well foreshadowed). Mind you, I don't think it's anything deep, but the game definitely kept me entertained with its story and some very well realized cutscenes and set pieces. Also funny how a mute deputy is a better character than Ajay and Jason were!
Now what I think is the game's biggest flaw is another one of its not experiments: resistance points. On their own they're great, gating progress by making you progress missions and do live events as you explore. But they did this dumb thing where you get kidnapped and forced into story missions when you amass a certain amount of RP. This is extremely annoying, and frankly silly with how many times it happens. It does not matter what you're doing, you are FORCED to do a story mission. Thankfully, since I'm on PC I alleviated this by using the Resistance Mod, but I still call out the flawed design here.
Also the soundtrack was surprisingly solid too, I expected nothing on that front though because the past Far Crys didn't have particularly strong soundtracks.
All in all? I greatly enjoyed this game, and I liked seeing it try to experiment with shit even if it didn't all pan out. Story was a nice ride.