And while there's a lot to love, and a lot to hate, the game itself is a far cry from what made the series interesting in the first place.
I loved the hell out of far cry 3. It made interesting use of all three dimensions in a game, had a lush, well sculpted world full of a variety of terrain which you could use to your advantage, and the old school styled "walking armory" gun play (which you actually had to earn.) to throw into it. Compounded with a quasi open world, item gathering and crafting, and the fact that your actions actually left a mark on the world. Taking over outposts actually pushed the bad guys out of the area.
Now; The world in far cry five is beautiful. But... I find it beautiful because the textures and lighting are good, and it reflects a similar natural environment to that in which I grew up. There is no good utilization of all three dimensions in the world, most of the areas are functionally flat, with houses being just about all you can climb up onto. The game offers you the same shopping experience as far cry 3 and 4, but also directly monetized the game, offering you the "option" to purchase silver ingots for real money right in the in-game store menu. Way to break immersion ubisoft. The weapons in the game (that I've been able to acquire so far.) feel loose and seem to have ridiculous drop and scatter. Some of the enemies are armored to the point where 10 .44 mag rounds to the head only result in ME dying. Those same enemies are also no longer carrying the more random load outs for you to play with. My revolver has been, so far, the most exotic weapon fielded and I had to purchase it as this games rendition of the baretta m1911 is... bad. Hard to aim, poor accuracy, and what feels like a baby sized clip. Body armor is freely available at all the shops, and largely seems to do nothing, making no difference in how you long you can last outside of cover. The enemy AI is a ridiculous combination of incredibly clever, and incredibly stupid. They make great use of cover, throw smoke grenades, and often times rally together to force multiply weapon power. They make distinct efforts to revive fallen comrades, and seem quicker than in FC3 to hit the alarm button and call reinforcements. They also seem entirely and completely ignorant of WHAT they happen to be shooting, because they've managed to blow themselves up on more than one occasion hitting stuff like barrels and gas pumps because I happened to be standing somewhere on the other side of them. And the enemies: there's about three distinct faces for males and three more for females and after the second outpost: you kind feel bad for killing this many inbred folk. Mullets and mountain men beards hugging everywhere.
The game also offers random targets of opportunity, giving you the chance to free hostages in transit, destroy moving fuel trucks, and hijacking enemies supply trucks for looting. It puts these things on the country roads in frequencies which wouldn't be out of place in a major city. In fact, I camped a corner which had a machine gun turret, and was able to hit all three of these random events in about 5 minutes time. As well as kill some wolves and a bear. And create a small scrap yard's worth of abandoned enemy cars from shooting out the drivers head as they passed. There is a perk system, in which completing in game challenges and missions rewards you points to spend to allow you to upgrade your characters health, skills and loadout. Again, these perks seem to do nothing, as doubling my health made no measurable effect on survival. Crafting has also lost some of it's interest: as in the previous two titles, you could hunt down wild animals to build bigger storage bags to increase ammo caps and allow for more thrown weapons and even carry more guns. As well as the manufacturing of narcotic substances which gave short term boosts to stuff like how long you could swim under water, or hunters vision, night vision or even all natural medkits. These things are gone as well. Ammo cap is increased through a perk which: again, didn't seem to work when I purchased it. You can make a bunch of stuff under the utility menu: but none of it's use is readily apparent, and why would I even need to MAKE more liquor? All I need to do is shake down a cultist and he fills up my inventory on it and you can't sell it. You just cart it around for some reason.
This meandering review has pushed me towards finally stating this point: This COULD have been a fun game if ubisoft had kept the elements which made the previous entries in the series fun. The randomness of animal attacks, enemies with decent AI and a sense of survival (this last point could be technically written off as they are a religious cult, but still: poor form there.), A better constructed world to both explore and use, and a FAR better sense of population density and variety. It's got stuff to like, but it's not a very good game so far. I think ubisoft has been pulling a bethesda since they made far cry primal, and it's just going to negatively affect the company and their product. I'm happy they felt they could experiment with the game mechanics and implementation: but I also hope they learn from those experiments and understand what does and doesn't work for an open world styled game.
If you're a fan of the series: wait for an uber sale. If you're not but were on the fence about trying it: I suggest you pass. It brings nothing new except story to the table, and it's just more cliched crap. The point was to give the user a sandbox in which to kill and explode, and they didn't do a very good job of it.
