Introduction
At the core, Fry Cry 5 is a generic open-world FPS that fails to delivery anything fresh to the table, at the same time taking away core elements from past Far Cry games that made them good in the first place.
Pros and Cons
Pros
-The graphics are really beautiful
-Gameplay is decent when playing with friends
-The glitches make the game actually fun
Cons
-Having a silent protagonist does not work well in a Far Cry game
-The story missed the mark, lacking interesting characters and the connection to the antagonist
-Gameplay starts to become stale and repetitive
-RPG elements lack depth felling shallow
-Microtransactions in a game that already costs $79.99 CDN
-Plagued by bugs and an A.I that is missing the intelligence part
Story
Hope Country, Montana has been taken over by a religious cult known as Eden’s Gate. This cult is led by Joseph Seed and his three siblings.
You play as a silent, nameless protagonist who is sent with an arrest warrant to capture Joseph. Upon retrieving him and getting into a helicopter, his followers attack, causing the helicopter to crash knocking most of the crew including the protagonists unconscious. Joseph is freed and captures the crew. During the chaos, you are rescued by a man named Dutch who later asks to you to fight against the cult and stop Eden’s Gate.
The narrative simply gives a reason for the player to start shooting things. With no compelling plot designs, twists, or sense of urgency, it just became a story that felt empty overall.
Characters
One of the main things that made Vaas and Pagan Min from the previous titles interesting was their interaction between each other and the main character. This time however, we have been given a silent protagonist. For me, this does not fit well for a Far Cry game. The interactions between the protagonists and the villains which helped to make the previous games interesting is completely missing and is much needed to carry the story along.
The characters outside the protagonist have issues as well. None of them are likable, nor do they have any type of development to them. This left me feeling emotionally disconnected when bad things did happen to them throughout the game. Even Joseph and his siblings lacked any type of synergy between each other. Mixed with their religious ideologies, I ended up hating them for all the wrong reasons, they were just not interesting enough to make me want to interact with them.
Gameplay
Far Cry 5 is a generic open-world FPS game. There are a total of three major areas in the game and each one is occupied by one of the three siblings. You are free to choose which one to go after first, but it does not affect the story in any way and the game never really hints on what person to really go after.
You start out in John’s territory and will eventually work your way through Jacob's and Faiths. Before you can take out the corresponding sibling in the area, you will need to fill up the resistance meter. You increase this gauge by doing missions throughout the game. There are also outposts that you can acquire to get some points. When you take out all the enemies in the base you can get a shop to stock up on items and ammo.
The combat sits right the middle of "average". It hits all the expected points for aim, shoot, boom mechanics. Nothing new or special has been added into this title giving the player a very redundant feel as they work their way through the territories.
One thing I should note is that you can recruit an NPC that will help you take out enemies and can revive you if you fall down in combat. There are also Guns for Hire who are NPC’s which have special abilities in combat. One of the rare times I smiled in the game was when I saw that one of them is a bear named Cheeseburger. They must have brought in an intern for decisions that day.
There are RPG elements built into the game, but they lack depth, as they don’t feel special when they are utilized, taking away any excitement for getting upgrades. In previous games, you had the option to hunt animal skins to get the ability to carry more weapons or ammo. In this game, however, they are perk upgrades and I honestly don’t feel rewarded this way.
Character customization
The character that you play as is very bland, especially since he is not voiced. In order to address this, there are some ways to customize the look, but the options are limited.
You can purchase items through an in-game shop using the money you have collected in-game, or you can purchase sliver bars (the game's currency system) with real world money through microtransactions. I found this to be a slap in the face to anyone willing to pay $79.99 CDN on a game, just to lock out simple customizations that should absolutely be available within the core game. Nothing is needed here, and all items are purely cosmetic.
Bugs and Glitches
Far Cry 5 also has a few bugs that don’t break the game, but are still annoying nonetheless. I came across several during my playtime. Some affected my ability to properly gauge my strategy where the UI would not display how far I was away from an object. Others were more silly such as a helicopter flying around while being half submerged in a lake. And then, there were a few that just didn't make a ton of sense, such being able to drive a larger truck into a smaller compact trailer. The vehicle would explode after a few minutes causing the trailer to bounce around. I can only assume this last one is a glitch lol.
The A.I is also bad and fails to do anything helpful, most of the time seemingly working to go against the player's intent. Nick is a prime example of this as he flies a plane and will sometimes crash into other flying enemies. Here’s the thing though, these glitches are actually the most fun that I have ever had in this game. If playing co-op, this gives you something interesting to mess around with as the main story/gameplay might not keep everyone's interest.
Graphics, Performance, and Soundtrack
Far Cry 5 is really really gorgeous. I especially love how the world looks and it does have that Southern American Country feel. It runs smoothly at 60 FPS and I came across no issues while I was playing. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM. The soundtrack is mostly country, rock, and there is some religious music, so if you enjoy that then there you go, it’s ok for the most part.
Final Verdict -
I will admit that I did have some fun with Far Cry 5, mainly in multiplayer, however, I just can’t recommend purchasing this game. There is so much wrong here, that even the parts that I liked had problems that further reduced my enjoyment. The only thing I did not have any issues with was the graphics, but that’s not exactly a selling point for something like this. The story and gameplay lack interesting ideas in several departments making the purchase of a previous title in this series a better value for your money.