Far Cry 4 Review

I played Far Cry 4 around 10 years ago and didn't think that much of it. I didn't find it as good as Far Cry 3 and found it about as forgettable as Blood Dragon. What I didn't realize upon replaying FC4 is that it follows the same game design philosophy of the latter which is what ultimately lead me to being so lukewarm on FC4 itself. I never played any Far Cry game after this and ignored the series for a while but after replaying 3, I thought, surely maybe I'd be kinder on 4? No. I still found it as dull as I did all those years ago.

The story is a weird one well not exactly, it's more that the most interesting parts happens at the start and at the end of the game. Pagan Min starts off as a pretty good villain, Troy Baker does a good job at giving him a charismatic yet psychotic demeanur. This was around the time where he appeared in almost every mainstream game and he did does turn in a good performance even if the start and the end were the high points. The begginning of the game is a great example, Min almost enters into the realm of anti villain where he wants to be friendly but he does a terrible job at doing due to his outbursts.

It's contextualized in an interesting way where the player is so horrified by his welcoming yet crazy behavior and that Ajay and the player by proxy wants to run away from him and join the fight with Golden Path. There's also an alternate ending if you stay. The ending if you run away is also interesting in that it makes Ajoy and the player wonder why he went on such a crazy warpath even though the whole point was to scatter his mom's ashes.

That's where the problems with the story lies. Everything inbetween the start and finish is filler. What does Pagan do when you don't meet him in person? Just taunt you on the radio. Compare that to FC3's Vaas where he often striked at Jason Brody when he least expected it and often did his monologues when the latter was tied up or was unable to move physically. Pagan Min never has this since it's all just radio chatter during the middle half.

Ajay is also impartial towards everything and everyone he is around despite characters getting the drop on him and getting drugged up at multiple points in the story. Amita and Sabal's conflict with Golden Path and Ajay wanting to scatter his mom's ashes are so fundamentally disconnected that it makes the actual part of the story where FC4's gameplay take place feel superficial. Much of the character motivations and you actions on the world is often told to the player rather than fully shown too. When you do a mission for either Sabal and Amita there's rarely if ever an example of how either of their ways of doing things could be right or wrong. All your actions are told to you after the mission is over with no major ramifications on the story or the game world. For example, if you side with Amita to allow Kyrat to become a state where drugs are accepted to make money, how does that effect the plot long term? It's ignored as soon as the mission is done. The story also ends never even showing the actions of the player either. 

FC3 was more of a personal story and FC4 feels like it wants to be more ambitous but the latter never really amounts to much outside of the start and end.

The gameplay is the same as FC3, everything is the same with some changes like auto syringe crafting, a cleaner UI, being able to carry bodies, a different skill tree and the player must always have a one handed weapon taking up a slot on the weapon wheel.

The last two I argue hinder the gameplay more so than enchance. Remember that early game hell that made FC3 so memorable? Ajay in the first 2-3 hours of FC4 is about as powerful as mid game FC3 Jason Brody. All the holsters you need to craft have animals on the beaten path in those said 2-3 hours. You also get lots of money and get lots of high level weapons and attachments in that early game too so now much of the enemies are barely a threat. The only hard parts is dealing with enemies shooting from all angles and constantly going down to critical health especially with snipers(being able to carry 6 syringes without doing a side quest to fully complete the holster doesn't help). Ajay gets knocked down upon a soldier's melee attack and having to wait for him to get up while getting shot at on top of green leaves not spawning nearly as often just makes combat more grating than fun. I lowered the difficulty to easy since it would lower the amount of green leaf finding I would have to do.

When it's not that, it's just ADS, shoot, get hit, use healing syringe rinse repeat. Stealth isn't mechanically improved over FC3 and having one weapon be a pistol means I can't carry a shotgun and sniper at the same time which limits options and makes me want to use the various LMGs that much more. Ajay is also so much powerful gear with LMGs for infantry and rocket launcher for helicoptors that even disabling alarms becomes something you don't need to do that often either.

There's fortresses, a grapple hook and a gryocoptor. The fortresses you don't need to do to beat the game, the grapple hook is too contextual to be anything of note, and the gyrocoptor makes taking over outposts pointless since even when you take them over, it's still a lengthy run to the mission start.

The skill tree is much worse than FC3 since many of them are locked behind side quests instead of just buying them outright.

Overall, playing FC4 again does remind me why I didn't like it that much. Time didn't make me kinder on it