Review | Far Cry 6

LifeisXbox’s Far Cry 6 review | Another game with the typical Ubisoft sauce, that pretty much sums up Far Cry 6. While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing I’m beginning to wonder if players who played all previous Xbox Series X|S games from Ubisoft aren’t starting to feel tired of the concept yet. I’m not afraid to write that I am! For me Far Cry 6 has bigger issues though, the avoiding dance around heavy politics and culture, extreme inconsistencies with emotions in the story and some of the dumbest AI in a large budget game makes this my least favorite Far Cry game. Ubisoft is undoubtedly king in open-world sandbox games, even if the concept is ageing but Far Cry 6 doesn’t meet the high standards that I have come to expect from the French publisher.

Here’s the story, You play as a female or male Dani Rojas and you fight against the dictatorship from Castillo. You don’t do this alone as you are part of Libertad, a group of fighters who want to free the island Yara. It sets up a perfect situation for Dani as she or he explores the islands, tries to gather more followers and fights back against a memorable Castillo. Or in other words do a handful of missions and a million side-quests, in a Far Cry fashion.

What we liked!

• Amigos | Yes, you can pet the crocodile, rooster, panther and so much more! I think that is the most important question, right? Far Cry 6 has amigos companions, in other words, pets so you are never alone fighting Antón Castillo’s forces. Each pet has different kinds of abilities too, for example, Guapo the crocodile and your first pet can self-revive and deals heavy melee damage. By now everyone knows about Chorizo too, this insanely cute dachshund in a small wheelchair can distract enemies or digs up useful resources. Other pets have fetch abilities, long-ranged stealth attacks or an increase of earned money. Depending on the situation it is recommended to use different kinds of pets, bringing a huge crocodile to a stealth mission doesn’t make much sense. Here’s how a panther comes into play or you can just pick out your favorite and always bring him along for the ride. That’s actually smart as the more you use a pet the stronger she/he becomes!
• Other animals | You would start to think that this game revolves around animals, that’s far from true but they play a crucial role in making the tropical world where we shoot and explore believably. A memorable awww-moment for me was feeding a self-caught fish to a pelican. After feeding it the large water bird flew off into the distance… a beautiful piece of interaction! There’s a lot of the traditional stuff like pigs and chickens but it was really heart-warming to see more unique life like hutia’s, barracuda’s, sharks or mongoose. Perfect stuff for Far Cry 6’s photo mode! I do want to give a small note about the cockfighting minigame, this made me a bit uncomfortable and I didn’t really see value in including it in the game. Legal in some regions but yeah… not a fan. Horses, however, is a completely other thing, for the first time, we can saddle up and use horses as a way of travel.
• A mix from all previous Far Cry games | I think the main idea for Far Cry 6 was making it the best of hit mix from previous games in the series. Crafting makes a return known from Far Cry New Dawn. Or Amigos are straight from Far Cry Primal. It is never a bad idea to see what worked before and by doing so they made the largest Far Cry game to date when it comes to core features.
• Splendid soundtrack and voiced performances | Damn, I still get goosebumps when I think about some songs that play while doing key missions! I love it when gameplay and music come together. Far Cry 6 has a very diverse and strong soundtrack on multiple radio stations. One neat thing is that Dani often sings along, giving the playable character more personality. There’s a good mix between known songs from Ricky Martin or the Jackal and songs from the region, giving a jamming Cuba vibe. Another highlight from the audio is the strong-voiced dialogue, everyone does an excellent job but there is one name that stands out. That’s Nisa Gunduz, she voices the female version of protagonist Dani Rojas.
• Yara is gorgeous | Powered by the Dunia-engine Far Cry 6 is a beautiful and impressive large-scaled game. Besides the somewhat blurry skies, the game is an absolute stunner with some neat fire and water effects. It is enormous and I honestly can’t name a single game with more impressive vistas! Yara is a diverse place with beaches, small towns, a big main city Esperanza, dense forests, mountains with insane looking waterfalls and much more! All of that in a mostly smooth 60 FPS experience (with the exception of 30 FPS cutscenes). While flying a helicopter, place or your wingsuit the islands get even more impressive as the views are beyond impressive. It reminds me a little of Flight simulators views but is even more detailed. I could spend hours in the jungles, exploring every bit of the beautiful islands of Yara.
• Dani is a Niffler from Harry Potter | What does the cute Niffler have in common with Dani? An unlimited amount of space to store items or in Far Cry’s case weapons. An overwhelming amount of different weapons are available and you can change them on the fly. At any given moment you can switch your weapon to a minigun, rocket launcher, sniper rifle and customise it with mods or visual changes. It surely comes in handy if you need to make a tactical change when discovered or when you want to go from long-ranged to close-combat.
• Wait what?! Is this the first time Far Cry has third person? | When you walk around the main base camps or other safe spaces your view changes from first to third person. This is introduced for the very first time in the franchise and I thought it was a lovely addition. Here you can actually see how your character looks like with all the gear changes, a nice touch from the developers. I kinda wished that you could play the entirety in this new camera angle but I guess that would hurt the overall feel of the typical Far Cry experience.

Somewhere between

• Wasted potential with Giancarlo Esposito | Giancarlo’s performance as dictator Anton Castillo is fantastic, this actor is known from The Mandalorian, Breaking Bad and Once Upon a Time delivers some astonishing cutscenes and truly makes Far Cry 6 memorable. Unfortunately, he has to work with what Ubisoft envisioned. Predictable story and failed representation of culture and especially the dancing around dictatorship makes it a bit disappointing.
• An almost endless checklist of things to do | Here comes the Ubisoft sauce again! Yara is bursting with side-quests, mini-games and secrets. And don’t we just love to repeat those things hundred times? I admire it when a game gives a lot of value but not if it is just for the sake of more and more content. Ubisoft is balancing on a thin line, especially for those who invested a lot of time in previous Far Cry or Ubisoft games. But it is what it is, Far Cry 6 offers high-quality gunplay and a fun playground of killing enemies in different ways, it hardly ever gets boring silently clearing an enemy camp or going all-in with loud explosives and a man-eating crocodile. Besides all the violence there is time to chill and enjoy the views too with treasure-seeking puzzles, honestly my favorite thing to do in Far Cry 6. One treasure hunt even has influence from Disney’s Haunted Mansion! Besides screaming for a revolution you can participate in races, play some peaceful tile-based dominoes or go fishing or hunt some legendary animals. For some reason, there’s even a text-based mini-game (Bandido Operations) with time restrictions that literally adds nothing of value. So much content but not everything is worth your time, I think the correct term is Ubisoft fatigue.
• Realism takes a deep dive with unnecessary overpowered weapons | There’s a silent gun that sees through walls and shoots through them and Dani carries a supremo, a timed ultimate ability powered by depleted uranium that can shoot a salvo of rockets or poison grenades that destroy squads of enemies in mere seconds. Sometimes I felt a bit stupid trying to complete everything in stealth with my bow and handgun with a silencer. I could clear the same camp twenty times faster going in Rambo-style and simply killing everything with my oversized minigun with 10.000 bullets and an auto-aimed salvo of rockets. Goodbye realism!

What we disliked

• Micromanaging your loadout and abilities | The developer made the odd choice to completely dish out unlocking abilities with skill points. Now everything is locked behind gear loadouts. A confusing and time-consuming way of being stuck in way too many menu’s. I can’t stress out enough how silly it works… you open the menu, switch to loadouts, open a sub-menu for the gear slot and move your cursor to the item to read what benefits it has. Matching gear allows for more benefits so you’ll have to take that into consideration as well. We’re not Brainy from Supergirl so remembering all the combinations and specific abilities from the 100+ pieces of gear are impossible. Ubisoft seems to have forgotten that being stuck in menu’s isn’t fun. Another option is simply ignoring this entire bullshit mechanic, something I quickly did after the first few hours. I just went with something that helped to be more sneaky and called it a day. Realising that I missed out on other abilities and ways to play Far Cry 6. It’s just bad design and I’m sure that 80% of the players won’t even use this bothersome gear mechanic.
• Bugs, even forcing a checkpoint restart | Regularly missions fail to continue as triggered events fail to start. There’s luckily always the checkpoint reload option but that doesn’t make up for the lost time and the annoyance. Amigos regularly glitch too, being stuck or fail to show up when you call them. A laughable glitch is when enemies instantly respawn at the same location, preventing clearance of a control point…
• Restrictions with co-op play | The premise is great, you can play the complete game with a friend but the set-up is completely ruined by a super annoying proximity limit. If you and your partner have too much distance one is randomly killed and respawned to the other. You simply can’t think of tactics or fly around with your wingsuit without having warning pop-ups that you are far away from your friend. It is wonderful that you have extra co-op missions but since Far Cry 3 always had competitive PVP and even an impressive level builder.. all of that is absent.

How long to beat the story | 20 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 70 hours
Similar with | Just Cause, Openworld games from Ubisoft

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