Far Cry 6 Review

Far Cry 6

Release: January 1, 1970
Publisher: Ubisoft - Ubisoft Toronto - M
Developer:
Genre: PlayStation 5 Reviews, PS5 Reviews, Reviews, XBox One ReviewsXbox Series X Reviews
PEGI:
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Far Cry 6 is finally upon us, after some delays and a huge marketing campaign that you basically can’t escape, it is time to step into the land of Yara and go toe to toe with Anton Castillo (Giancarlo Esposito). As a fan of the Far Cry series for quite some time, I was eager to dive into a full game again after Far Cry 5. New Hope was ok at best but wasn’t the full experience I was craving or looking for. Far Cry 6, however, is BIGGER, BOLDER, and BADDER than it has ever been.

Welcome to Yara, a tropical paradise frozen in time. As the dictator of Yara, Antón Castillo is intent on restoring his nation to its former glory by any means, with his son, Diego, following in his bloody footsteps. Their ruthless oppression has ignited a revolution. Play as Dani Rojas, a local Yaran, and become a guerrilla fighter to liberate the nation.

Fight against Anton’s troops in the largest Far Cry playground to date across jungles, beaches, and Esperanza, the capital city of Yara. Employ makeshift weapons, vehicles, and Amigos, the new Fangs for Hire to burn the tyrannical regime to the ground.

For those unfamiliar with the Far Cry Series, it’s known for a few major things. It’s a FPS action game that focuses on liberating areas, allies, and lots of guns and explosions. One of the best features is the freedom of the game to do things the way you want to. If you want to go a stealth route and try not to set off alarms or alert enemies of your presence you can do that. If you want to go guns blazing with grenades, rockets, and a bloodthirsty alligator at your side? Well, you can do that too.

In your role as Dani, you are the hope of Yara to unite the people, and various resistance forces, to come together as a united front if you have any sort of hope in taking down The Fuerzas Nacionales de Defensa (English translation from Spanish: National Defense Forces), also known as Castillo’s Army or simply called the FND. Because of their massive numbers (the game mentions over 300,000 soldiers), you will need an army of your own to succeed. However in this land, many joined the forces out of the law, not because of loyalty to Castillo or his beliefs, and sometimes you can use that to your advantage to recruit folks to your cause or bribe them for intel. Nothing seems off-limits here.

The land of Yara is the biggest map we have seen, and it feels like BY FAR. It is almost overwhelming the number of things there are to do here. For some, that has been a turn-off  (Watchdogs Legion, Assasins Creed Valhalla) where the game can overstay its welcome or just confuse folks on what to do. Far Cry 6 isn’t different here either, but I was having so much fun in my chaos I didn’t mind at all, and I still have a lot left to do and go back to.

Far Cry 6 also features a bigger variety of types of missions than in past iterations as well. You have your standard story missions, used to push the narrative forward. But you also have Treasure Hunts (which will snag you some valuable goods and items), Checkpoints (used to set up mini areas you can fast travel to by reclaiming the roads of Yara), Anti Aircraft (as the name implies, taking out Anti Aircraft weapons so that you can travel the skies safely), Cache missions (where you have to race to a designated area to beat the enemies to supplies to claim them for your cause), and many more.

The game brings back the allies system from Far Cry 5 where you can recruit folks to help you in combat with special perks and abilities, but now they are known as Amigos and they are all animals. From Crocodiles to Pumas and a few dogs (including a surprise return character), there is a variety of skills they can bring to the table as well. Not going to lie, it has its moments of complete absurdity, but I love it. Vehicles are of course back including cars, tanks, helicopters, boats, and now even horses to help you traverse the land (and sea) quicker than before.

The weapons and gear have also been upgraded with much more features than ever before. You have a large variety of weapons to accumulate throughout this game, from basic weapons (which you have the capability of upgrading in MANY, MANY different ways) to special custom weapons which have unique perks (that you cannot change or upgrade) to homemade weapons (some of the craziest stuff I’ve seen since the Dubstep gun from Saints Row). To be completely honest at times I was overwhelmed by this system and once I found a set of weapons I liked best, I just stuck with them mostly. So this is one of the few areas in the game I think Ubisoft might have gone a little too far with. Your gear is customizable again from hats to pants and shoes, all different types of gear can be found and equipped to give you special perks and benefits that you can pick to best suit your gameplay style. Lastly is the addition of Supremas (aka read as Ultimate abilities) which once charged up can unleash some insane moves, like a rocket launcher on your back, to being able to blast flames or poison all around you, to even healing which helps in multiplayer greatly as well. These are a fun and sometimes needed perk throughout Yara.

I will avoid story-related spoilers so no worries there, but I will say Anton is a different breed of Far Cry enemy, while not as insane as some of the others (Vaas, The Seed Family) he is just as brutal but in a more calculated manner. He does not lose his cool and every move, word, and action he does is cold and calculated. The performance overall from this cast of characters is pretty stellar and celebrates the ups and downs of the journey that Dani is on. Anton is a brutal dictator but he got in power for a reason, and he is determined to not let go. In his eyes it’s not tradition and culture that built Yara, it was him who saved and rebirthed Yara.

This also might be one of the more difficult entries in the series as well, there were many times I was overwhelmed by enemies because I didn’t plan my attacks before heading into battle. You have to stop and use vantage points and your cell phone to tag enemies and even can see their weakness so you are using the right options in your weapons, or even the right weapons for the job in the first place. This is a much more militaristic vision for Far Cry, and the enemies and terrain are set up that way.

As stated before the voice acting in this game is top-notch as is the overall sound design, from animal sounds to the guns, vehicle engines, it’s all there and sounds quite good. Graphically, this is the first next-gen Far Cry option and all the bells and whistles are there, the particle effects, lighting, color, water all look VERY good and adds to the depth of the landscape. I did have a few minor glitches in my playthrough but from the time I started to play this last week for review to launch there have already been two patches released. But overall the game is playing very smoothly and is truly a blast to play. I’m very confident that I will continue exploring Yara for the months to come. Ubisoft has a great plan of additional content to be released for Far Cry 6 as well, which I am looking very forward to being able to play as Vaas, Pagan Min, and Joseph Seed. Look for my thoughts on that content as well when it drops. But in a time where many games got pushed into next year, Far Cry 6 is an attractive distraction for the time being that will keep you busy.

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