Far Cry 5 Review

Ubisoft­’s Far Cry 5 is the lat­est addi­tion to be added to the series and it brings changes with it. It’s very dif­fer­ent when com­pared to the last few Far Cry titles, not all adjust­ments being pos­i­tive. Although there are dif­fer­ences which set Far Cry 5 apart, it still has that very famil­iar feel. 

Story

As is well known, Hope Coun­ty, Mon­tana has been tak­en over by fanat­ic cultists who’s sole pur­pose is to con­vert every­one to their reli­gious beliefs. They use mil­i­tary tac­tics to take over the area, which caus­es an uproar among the, still civ­il, peo­ple of Hope Coun­ty. You are obvi­ous­ly among the few who can take down the sti­fling Eden’s Gate fol­low­ers and their four leaders. 

While it seems the sto­ry is coher­ent, it does have this mud­died feel­ing when doing the actu­al mis­sions them­selves. There is no flow to the sto­ry mis­sions. It’s not like you know what part you will come across next, because the mis­sions are cen­tered around the three lead­ers (Faith, John, and Jacob), each in charge of a sep­a­rate sec­tion of the map. My exam­ple being, I was work­ing on Jacob mis­sions, but since the in-game mis­sions reg­istry does­n’t spec­i­fy, I end­ed up on my way to a Faith mis­sion because I was­n’t informed that’s what it was. 

Graphics

While most of the game is extreme­ly beau­ti­ful, there’s a slight annoy­ance with the light­ing. On a PS4 Pro and 4K tele­vi­sion, whites are extreme­ly white. It takes some adjust­ing with­in the options menu to get it right, as you don’t get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to adjust it when you first start the game.

The set­ting of Mon­tana is not exact­ly the most excit­ing, espe­cial­ly if you are an Amer­i­can. It’s a lot of pine trees, streams, small lakes, and “log look­ing” cab­ins. Oth­er than that, in gen­er­al, the graph­ics are pret­ty good. There is a com­par­i­son below from a PS4 Pro vs a reg­u­lar PS4.

Gameplay/Mechanics

Far Cry 5 has every mechan­ic that its pre­de­ces­sors did like dri­ving and com­bat, with some being slight­ly dif­fer­ent. You used to lev­el up by killing ene­mies, lib­er­at­ing out­posts, and doing just gen­er­al niceties. How­ev­er, now you must com­plete chal­lenges to acquire Perk points, you no longer get skill points for fin­ish­ing mis­sions and out­posts. So be sure to keep an eye out in the chal­lenge sec­tion of your UI. 

There are plen­ty more Perks you can pick an choose from and most are even applied to the Arcade Mode of the game upon unlock. A few on the new Perks include:

• Air­drop — Gives the option to arrive by air drop (wing­suit) when you fast trav­el to a location
• Sabo­teur — Approach a vehi­cle’s hood and hold Square to set it on fire and make it explode 10 sec­onds later
• Lock­smith — Stealth­ily lock­pick safes and doors that do not require a key card

Also, you no longer have to kill ani­mals to increase the amount of ammo you can car­ry for weapons. Those are now Perks. Same goes for a lot of oth­er skills that were much eas­i­er to get before. 

Unlock­ing weapons requires you to build your Resis­tance in each region. Killing Cult VIP’s, destroy­ing cult prop­er­ty, cap­tur­ing trucks, and free­ing hostages, boosts your Resis­tance. These activ­i­ties are sim­i­lar to the oth­er titles, but it actu­al­ly helps you fur­ther your progress. 

Far Cry 5 also intro­duced the abil­i­ty to pur­chase boat, cars, planes, and heli­copters. You can cus­tomize them as well, but only slight­ly. How­ev­er, you can’t just spawn any vehi­cle any­where. There are cer­tain loca­tions that you need to trav­el to in order to spawn what you are look­ing for. 

You can co-op the entire game, with up to six play­ers at a time. Although, it dis­ables the abil­i­ty to acquire tro­phies. It also halts any world pro­gres­sion and resis­tance gained when you’re not the host. This is rather dis­ap­point­ing, con­sid­er­ing this title boast­ed the abil­i­ty to play the entire game with your friends. You can still have per­son­al pro­gres­sion while not host­ing, allow­ing you to com­plete chal­lenges and unlock perks. Also, any shop items bought will be saved.

There are many dif­fer­ent types of NPC’s you can hire and they actu­al­ly fol­low you around and take orders. There are aver­age NPC’s which you will find every­where, but the Spe­cial­ists are going to be your best bet. Each one has a perk in your Perk menu, which can be upgrad­ed after you unlock a specialist. 

As in the oth­er Far Cry’s, you can craft home­o­pathics which can assist you in com­bat and hunt­ing. It is rather lim­it­ed how­ev­er, because most of the old craft-able abil­i­ties have been tak­en out. You can now craft all sort of explo­sives and find­ing parts to do so is extreme­ly easy. 

Other

There’s a bit to do besides just sto­ry mis­sions. The game offers a vari­ety of side mis­sions, stash­es to find, and even fish­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s unlike the oth­ers because it does­n’t have a abun­dance of activ­i­ties for you to do. There are not real­ly a whole lot of hunt­ing mis­sions, as you no longer need to upgrade ammo hol­sters with skins, and side mis­sions can be annoy­ing to find. 

Problems

I’ve played every Far Cry and it seems this spe­cif­ic title has seri­ous prob­lems with the NPC’s. I got stuck in a room for 3 min­utes because my fol­low­er decid­ed to stand in the door­way and not move (even after I hit him in an attempt to move him). This same NPC also trapped me on a lad­der, when he decid­ed to climb up it while I was climb­ing down. 

It’s not just ran­dom occur­ances either. A mis­sion glitched on me twice, where and ene­my NPC ran away from the mis­sion zone. I had to secure the area, but he ran so far away from it that he forced me to leave the mis­sion zone, caus­ing me fail said mis­sion. This also hap­pened to my co-work­er (TheLe­gend­of­Ta­co). 

He expe­ri­enced a prob­lem where he need­ed to speak to an NPC, but she was lying on a bed flail­ing around and would­n’t get up. So in an attempt to fix the issue he hit her off the bed. This result­ed in her head and neck going into a spasm and also kept her from talk­ing for a short while. 

NPC’s also have some extreme­ly irri­tat­ing ten­dan­cies, which have been passed on from the titles before. Like walk­ing in front of you while you dri­ve, hit­ting you while your on the road, and just gen­er­al­ly being in the way. There are some new irri­ta­tions with them as well. I stopped a van which was car­ry­ing pris­on­ers, so I set them free from the back. Anoth­er ene­my NPC drove up on the three of us and opened fire. I killed him and turn to get back into my car and I see the two pris­on­er NPC’s in my car…driving away. Yes, they stole my damn car! I also noticed that when see­ing a side mis­sion or some oth­er infor­ma­tion, some­times NPC will just walk away, get in the near­est vehilce, and take off. This, of course, stops them from fin­ish­ing what they have to say. 

Bottom Line

While this is a typ­i­cal Far Cry game, it has the pos­si­bil­i­ty to be extreme­ly frus­trat­ing. It also feels like they took a few steps back in regards to a few mechan­ics. How­ev­er, this does­n’t take away from the joy of the game. It’s still very enter­tain­ing to play, and look­ing past all of the issues we’ve expere­inced, it’s still worth the time and mon­ey you will most like­ly invest.