New Dawn is better than the sum of its parts, but those parts are still pretty bad.
THE GOOD
Mostly retains FarCry 3 gameplay - Capturing outposts above your level is tense and rewarding - Aggressive monetization doesn't impact gameplay too much - You can kick the crap out of Joseph Seed
THE BAD
Bad story, bad characters, bad villains - Horrible modern licensed tracks - No gun customization - Atrocious, though mercifully rare, boss fights - Fun upgrades come too late in the game
/////Spoilers follow/////
The most universally reviled of the FarCry games, it completely recycled the map from the already mediocre FarCry 5 and positioned itself as an absolute GAAS nightmare, introducing the by now Ubi-quitous looter element that has spread from The Division to Assassin's Creed to Ghost Recon and tripling down on the monetization scheme present in 5: where that game only allowed you to purchase premium weapons to bypass the main quest gear gating, this one flat out offers you to buy crafting materials and perk unlocks with real money, directing to the store when you run out.
That all sounds absolutely miserable on paper, and yet New Dawn is surprisingly fair when it comes to rewarding the player with a wealth of all the things it's trying to sell you, simply for engaging in side content that's pretty fun to begin with. The result is that you will never find yourself feeling the necessity to skip ahead in the grind by spending cash, simply because there is no grind. The only thing that matters in the game is the tier of your equipped weapons: if it's the same level as the enemy you are shooting it will deal good damage, if it's lower it will not.
The bulk of your upgrade materials comes from a risk-reward system: instead of featuring the useless option to reset all outposts, the game allows to reset them one by one. Once an outpost is liberated, it can be immediately surrendered back to the enemy and thus liberated again, only with enemies in higher numbers and of higher level. Being too greedy will mean making an outpost temporarily unbeatable if your equipment is inadequate, but successfully doing this will shower you with more upgrade materials you will know what to do with, and it can be done any number of times.
The downside of this is that all outposts will be pathetically easy the first time around, only becoming even remotely challenging on a second or even third pass, a problem further compounded by the fact that if you milk the early (and easier) ones early on, you will have no real need to do so with the later ones, leaving no real incentive to play them twice, or at all, unless seeking to compulsively unlock every gun and max out your upgrade trees. If that describes you then be ready to replay the same outposts and raids over and over again, but if you don't care about completionism you will experience no grind whatsoever.
Tackling outposts two or three levels over yours is a tense affair: you will have to be clever and absolutely avoid detection, or you will be toast. Stalking that last elite enemy, knowing he can quickly throw all your efforts to the wind is nai-biting stuff, and the kind of player involvement you hardly expect from a modern FarCry game.
By the time the story had progressed enough to unlock the third tier of weapons out of four, I was swimming in so many resources that only the top tier components were in need of finding, and ever so briefly at that, since all you have to do is go in an optional raid or two in order to receive everything you need. There are side activities like convoy hijacking, prisoner rescues and treasure hunts that present you with slightly above Bethesda-level puzzles to unlock caches, perk points and materials. It's all fun enough to do that it doesn't feel like a chore. Unfortunately weapon customization is gone entirely, meaning you are stuck with whatever attachments each weapon comes with, in an inexplicable step back. You can customize the looks of your character you can never see though, betraying the coop oriented nature of the game.
The game wastes no time in handing out all of the typical upgrades: wingsuit, grappling hook and the like, which are available immediately in the perks menu. It does however dole out some of the most fun upgrades (double jump, limited invisibility, super armor) when you are one hour from the ending, meaning you will have precious little time to play around with them unless you decide to go do the outposts again.
So the looter element and monetization are really a non-factor, and the gameplay retains the core elements that make the formula work, so then what is the problem? The problem lies in the fact that this is yet another cookie cutter FarCry game made almost entirely of recycled assets, and the story and characters simply cannot cut the mustard when it comes to upholding series standards. Which brings us to the Twins.
As per tradidion of the FarCry franchise ever since the second game gave us the Jackal, the seminal prototype for the charismatic in-your-face villain with a catchphrase, a trend continued with Vaas Montenegro, Pagan Min, Joseph Seed and more recently Giancarlo Esposito as Antón Castillo, New Dawn makes its own attempt by introducing the leaders of a bland gang of bandits (blandits?) whose main distinguishing feature is that they constantly listen to the worst music in the world. They are bossed around by two black girls going on and on about "solving problems like daddy taught us" (read: committing wanton murder), which is their store brand version of "the definition of insanity". They are the worst villains in the FarCry franchise, having nothing more up their pink sleeves than the most stereotypical loudmouth ghetto characterization this side of a minstrel show, no redeeming qualities, no character arc and no worthwhile sendoff.
The game tries its best to throw flashbacks at you to establish these two as victims of a domineering father, with their mother begging the children to not follow in the father's footsteps, but whatever good will that puts on the table is squandered by the rest of their character development, or lack thereof. They never show any kind of moral conflict or have any kind of disagreement with one another (to the point Ubisoft might have saved on voice actors and merged them into one character): all they do is mouth off and kill everything they see, and they still come off as completely unthreatening. As they lay dying after one of the worst boss fights imaginable, the game gives you what it thinks is a big emotional moment which hilariously boils down to "Shiet, I guess we dying huh? Dayum, we fucked up: momma told us no to become like our dad, but we did. We been bad" to which the sister replies "Shiet, but we had so much fun huh?" They laugh it off reminiscing of their murdering and pillaging and they die. That's very nearly a direct quote by the way.
Almost as an apology for presenting you with such useless villains, New Dawn brings back supervillain Joseph Seed and his religious ramblings from the previous game. He also gets what the game thinks is a redemption arc, involving his ambitious son who only comes off as a spoiled brat who wants to eat this apple of eden macguffin but his dad won't let him. The last thing Joseph Seed tells you before you unceremoniously shoot him in the chest is that he has been a bad bad man, and that only after seeing his son die following the worst final boss fight in the world. The game pats itself on the back, even though this only makes the character even more vile, as he only starts caring about what he's done after his son dies.
Hysterically, due to sloppy game design, the game lets you beat the everlasting crap out of Joseph Seed in front of his entire gathering of faithful and sworn bodyguards, who do not react in the slightest: at one specific point he is treated like any friendly NPC and you can punch, kick, shoot, stab him, set him on fire with no repercussion as he runs shrieking for his life in the most comically out of character way possible. He can't be killed, at most going down for you to revive, so you can just go to town to your heart's content, kicking him while he's down. The supervillain from FarCry 5, everyone, reduced to a complete mockery.
The rest of the cast are what you've come to expect from an Ubisoft game at this point: they look like the sort of people you expect to find at a TED-X talk, sporting ridiculous pompadour haircuts and yammering on and on with interminable monologues that the writers thought would be hilarious but can only make you groan. The one time I did laugh was during a completely unscripted moment in which a wolf interrupted an NPC's ramblings to start mauling them on the spot, evidently sick and tired of their unfunny verbal diarrhea. You'll even meet an assortment of characters from FarCry 5, though I dare you to even remember a single one of them, forgettable as they are.
Presentation-wise, the game looks marginally better than the previous one, with less static vegetation giving a bit more life to the world. The soundtrack is a real sticking point, however: as mentioned, the game uses music as a vehicle to characterize the various factions, with the good guys listening to a good selection of hits from the 60s and the bad guys listening to the most obnoxious dubstep and rap music known to man. This music will be blaring nonstop from speakers in their bases, and muting it is very tempting. The first thing I did whenever I approached an enemy location was finding their radio to destroy it with extreme prejudice. What's funny is that this was absolutely deliberate: the audio director evidently went out of their want to pick the most irritatingly noise that can disgrace the human ear to use it as environmental storytelling. Valid, but it's still horrendous music you're subjected to.
All in all, New Dawn is a pointless spinoff, a far cry (heh) from the glory days of Blood Dragon. No real need to play this, but at least it's better than 6.
THE GOOD
Mostly retains FarCry 3 gameplay - Capturing outposts above your level is tense and rewarding - Aggressive monetization doesn't impact gameplay too much - You can kick the crap out of Joseph Seed
THE BAD
Bad story, bad characters, bad villains - Horrible modern licensed tracks - No gun customization - Atrocious, though mercifully rare, boss fights - Fun upgrades come too late in the game
/////Spoilers follow/////
The most universally reviled of the FarCry games, it completely recycled the map from the already mediocre FarCry 5 and positioned itself as an absolute GAAS nightmare, introducing the by now Ubi-quitous looter element that has spread from The Division to Assassin's Creed to Ghost Recon and tripling down on the monetization scheme present in 5: where that game only allowed you to purchase premium weapons to bypass the main quest gear gating, this one flat out offers you to buy crafting materials and perk unlocks with real money, directing to the store when you run out.
That all sounds absolutely miserable on paper, and yet New Dawn is surprisingly fair when it comes to rewarding the player with a wealth of all the things it's trying to sell you, simply for engaging in side content that's pretty fun to begin with. The result is that you will never find yourself feeling the necessity to skip ahead in the grind by spending cash, simply because there is no grind. The only thing that matters in the game is the tier of your equipped weapons: if it's the same level as the enemy you are shooting it will deal good damage, if it's lower it will not.
The bulk of your upgrade materials comes from a risk-reward system: instead of featuring the useless option to reset all outposts, the game allows to reset them one by one. Once an outpost is liberated, it can be immediately surrendered back to the enemy and thus liberated again, only with enemies in higher numbers and of higher level. Being too greedy will mean making an outpost temporarily unbeatable if your equipment is inadequate, but successfully doing this will shower you with more upgrade materials you will know what to do with, and it can be done any number of times.
The downside of this is that all outposts will be pathetically easy the first time around, only becoming even remotely challenging on a second or even third pass, a problem further compounded by the fact that if you milk the early (and easier) ones early on, you will have no real need to do so with the later ones, leaving no real incentive to play them twice, or at all, unless seeking to compulsively unlock every gun and max out your upgrade trees. If that describes you then be ready to replay the same outposts and raids over and over again, but if you don't care about completionism you will experience no grind whatsoever.
Tackling outposts two or three levels over yours is a tense affair: you will have to be clever and absolutely avoid detection, or you will be toast. Stalking that last elite enemy, knowing he can quickly throw all your efforts to the wind is nai-biting stuff, and the kind of player involvement you hardly expect from a modern FarCry game.
By the time the story had progressed enough to unlock the third tier of weapons out of four, I was swimming in so many resources that only the top tier components were in need of finding, and ever so briefly at that, since all you have to do is go in an optional raid or two in order to receive everything you need. There are side activities like convoy hijacking, prisoner rescues and treasure hunts that present you with slightly above Bethesda-level puzzles to unlock caches, perk points and materials. It's all fun enough to do that it doesn't feel like a chore. Unfortunately weapon customization is gone entirely, meaning you are stuck with whatever attachments each weapon comes with, in an inexplicable step back. You can customize the looks of your character you can never see though, betraying the coop oriented nature of the game.
The game wastes no time in handing out all of the typical upgrades: wingsuit, grappling hook and the like, which are available immediately in the perks menu. It does however dole out some of the most fun upgrades (double jump, limited invisibility, super armor) when you are one hour from the ending, meaning you will have precious little time to play around with them unless you decide to go do the outposts again.
So the looter element and monetization are really a non-factor, and the gameplay retains the core elements that make the formula work, so then what is the problem? The problem lies in the fact that this is yet another cookie cutter FarCry game made almost entirely of recycled assets, and the story and characters simply cannot cut the mustard when it comes to upholding series standards. Which brings us to the Twins.
As per tradidion of the FarCry franchise ever since the second game gave us the Jackal, the seminal prototype for the charismatic in-your-face villain with a catchphrase, a trend continued with Vaas Montenegro, Pagan Min, Joseph Seed and more recently Giancarlo Esposito as Antón Castillo, New Dawn makes its own attempt by introducing the leaders of a bland gang of bandits (blandits?) whose main distinguishing feature is that they constantly listen to the worst music in the world. They are bossed around by two black girls going on and on about "solving problems like daddy taught us" (read: committing wanton murder), which is their store brand version of "the definition of insanity". They are the worst villains in the FarCry franchise, having nothing more up their pink sleeves than the most stereotypical loudmouth ghetto characterization this side of a minstrel show, no redeeming qualities, no character arc and no worthwhile sendoff.
The game tries its best to throw flashbacks at you to establish these two as victims of a domineering father, with their mother begging the children to not follow in the father's footsteps, but whatever good will that puts on the table is squandered by the rest of their character development, or lack thereof. They never show any kind of moral conflict or have any kind of disagreement with one another (to the point Ubisoft might have saved on voice actors and merged them into one character): all they do is mouth off and kill everything they see, and they still come off as completely unthreatening. As they lay dying after one of the worst boss fights imaginable, the game gives you what it thinks is a big emotional moment which hilariously boils down to "Shiet, I guess we dying huh? Dayum, we fucked up: momma told us no to become like our dad, but we did. We been bad" to which the sister replies "Shiet, but we had so much fun huh?" They laugh it off reminiscing of their murdering and pillaging and they die. That's very nearly a direct quote by the way.
Almost as an apology for presenting you with such useless villains, New Dawn brings back supervillain Joseph Seed and his religious ramblings from the previous game. He also gets what the game thinks is a redemption arc, involving his ambitious son who only comes off as a spoiled brat who wants to eat this apple of eden macguffin but his dad won't let him. The last thing Joseph Seed tells you before you unceremoniously shoot him in the chest is that he has been a bad bad man, and that only after seeing his son die following the worst final boss fight in the world. The game pats itself on the back, even though this only makes the character even more vile, as he only starts caring about what he's done after his son dies.
Hysterically, due to sloppy game design, the game lets you beat the everlasting crap out of Joseph Seed in front of his entire gathering of faithful and sworn bodyguards, who do not react in the slightest: at one specific point he is treated like any friendly NPC and you can punch, kick, shoot, stab him, set him on fire with no repercussion as he runs shrieking for his life in the most comically out of character way possible. He can't be killed, at most going down for you to revive, so you can just go to town to your heart's content, kicking him while he's down. The supervillain from FarCry 5, everyone, reduced to a complete mockery.
The rest of the cast are what you've come to expect from an Ubisoft game at this point: they look like the sort of people you expect to find at a TED-X talk, sporting ridiculous pompadour haircuts and yammering on and on with interminable monologues that the writers thought would be hilarious but can only make you groan. The one time I did laugh was during a completely unscripted moment in which a wolf interrupted an NPC's ramblings to start mauling them on the spot, evidently sick and tired of their unfunny verbal diarrhea. You'll even meet an assortment of characters from FarCry 5, though I dare you to even remember a single one of them, forgettable as they are.
Presentation-wise, the game looks marginally better than the previous one, with less static vegetation giving a bit more life to the world. The soundtrack is a real sticking point, however: as mentioned, the game uses music as a vehicle to characterize the various factions, with the good guys listening to a good selection of hits from the 60s and the bad guys listening to the most obnoxious dubstep and rap music known to man. This music will be blaring nonstop from speakers in their bases, and muting it is very tempting. The first thing I did whenever I approached an enemy location was finding their radio to destroy it with extreme prejudice. What's funny is that this was absolutely deliberate: the audio director evidently went out of their want to pick the most irritatingly noise that can disgrace the human ear to use it as environmental storytelling. Valid, but it's still horrendous music you're subjected to.
All in all, New Dawn is a pointless spinoff, a far cry (heh) from the glory days of Blood Dragon. No real need to play this, but at least it's better than 6.