Hey guys, cub here, and I’ve never played a Far Cry game before – so here’s my quick review for Far Cry 6 from a complete newcomer’s perspective. And I say review, but Ubisoft sent out review copies like four days ago so it’s more of a review in progress.
Anyways, while I have not played a Far Cry game before, I am familiar with Ubisoft bloat – where you have a decent base game with all the fundamentals on lock and then just an explosion of extra, oftentimes unnecessary stuff on top of it. That perfectly describes my experience with Far Cry 6.
Take the weapon system for example. There are dozens upon dozens of different weapons to choose from and this entire crafting and weapon modification system on top of it. On paper, that sounds great – but in practice, it was basically a waste because I hardly ever needed to use it. Even 20 hours into the game, the weapons I started with were just as strong, if not stronger than the new weapons I was receiving and I never needed to add new modifications – it just felt like I was picking up crafting material for nothing.
Part of this is due to the difficulty – of which there is “Action Mode” and “Story Mode”. Action Mode is supposed to be the more difficult of the two, but I found it to be far too easy. I would just land in an enemy base, one tap all of the enemies with headshots and be done with it – having hardly taken any damage. In fact, in my 20-something hours, I maybe died five or six times total.
So while it may be a bit too easy, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is not fun. If anything, I enjoyed the base combat. The different guns felt great to use, I loved trying out the different vehicles, and combat abilities added a nice flare to it all. It’s just a shame that it never felt challenging – perhaps a harder difficulty mode is something Ubisoft can add later on.
Story-wise, the game is just okay. It’s your traditional “long live the revolution”-type story with these small guerrilla groups working to take down the island government. There are a couple twists and turns, but nothing too spectacular here – it honestly reminded me a lot of Just Cause 2. And I don’t know what it is with this game and copy-pasting the same type of character – but Far Cry 6 REALLY likes it’s “slightly insane and never takes anything seriously” characters – the kind that laugh when riding into battle. It gives the story a much more comedic spin in spite of its serious plot, which I guess can be interesting, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get tired of these characters early on.
My favorite thing about the game is actually with its map. This is one of those open-world games where there is a TON of stuff to discover. Sometimes I’ll be on my way to a mission and end up taking down this massive military base or uncovering a hidden cache of uranium to build my next cool weapon. It is very easy to get sidetracked and I really liked the mix of urban and tropical environments. You get your cities with their tanks and anti-air and all that, but your jungles with crocodiles and ziplines too. Some very nice variety there and I can easily see myself spending dozens of hours simply exploring it all.
And as I played on PC – I should note the port. It’s a pretty difficult game to run and I had to play at 1080p medium settings on my 1070 Ti just to maintain 60 fps. It usually hovered between 60-80, but it did occasionally dip below (and story cutscenes seemed to be locked to 30 fps regardless). I expected this given the system requirements, but be sure to give them a look yourself before giving it a shot. Otherwise, it ran without issue – no crashes, no freezing, and even no major bugs. Yeah, I had the occasional floating object or funky ragdoll, but I was surprised at how polished it was otherwise.
And that’s pretty much my experience with Far Cry 6 thus far. It’s your typical Ubisoft bloat with tons of unnecessary mechanics and all, but at least the core experience is fun (albeit a little too easy). Combat’s good, vehicles are cool, map design is excellent – I had a good time even as a newcomer to the series. The story is self-contained anyways, so that’s not a problem if you are in the same boat.
I’d say it’s worth a light recommendation. Definitely not something you should buy on launch (or even with a slight discount), but if you can get a pretty good deal on it – it is a fun enough time to warrant giving it a shot. I’m planning on finishing it up over the next week and – while I don’t expect my review to really change – I might do another video if something needs to be said.
Quote: Far Cry 6 has your typical Ubisoft bloat, but the core experience is solid. Combat’s fun, vehicles are cool, and the open-world map is some good stuff too. Worth a shot if you can get it on sale.
Far Cry 6 retails for $60 USD on the Ubisoft Store. It is also available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Stadia.
I was provided a review copy of the game in order to write this review. Read more about how I do my game reviews here.
cublikefoot 