TLDR: Sucks solo, fun with friends. I like Far Cry.
This review was written in frustration. I've played almost the entirety of the game solo, with only a few missions replayed with buddies after I've already beat them. I want to like this game, but too many issues keep popping up in my playthrough, pushing me to consistently quit in favor of playing something less frustrating. There are moments where the vision shines through and I really feel like a covert Ghosts operative pulling off clandestine raids in Bolivia, but other times I feel like the game is intentionally going out of it's way to screw with me. Be it wonky hit registration, unfair detection mechanics, or outright betrayal of player expectation, there have been countless times where I've found myself saying, "Are you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ serious, game?" Below are a list of gripes I have:
-This is very much a 'Far Cry' kind of game. Huge open world with tons of random objectives and collectibles that will take you forever to finish if you are a completionist. Due to the size of the map you will find yourself often gravitating towards flying to travel quickly (see my below point about SAM sites). Driving is certainly one of the options of all time, but the vehicles control like slick ♥♥♥♥, and the many mountains you will encounter often prevent you from driving directly up to your objective. Have fun ditching your ride and hoofing the rest on foot.
-The gameplay loop, as is expected in a 'Far Cry' game, is mind-numbingly repetitive. Enter an area, listen to a briefing about the local big bad, then hunt down intel. Find a guy driving a car and interrogate him to find out where the perk points or weapon cases are. Talk to a rebel and get info on some medal that boosts your hip fire accuracy by 15%. Defend a radio to cut down the cooldown on your Rebel Spotting skill by 5 seconds. Then find some papers and take photos to point you towards the big bad's favorite henchman. Raid his home, AI fails the stealth for you, accidentally kill him in the chaos and restart, then interrogate him for info on the next mission. Go to the mission, kill all the bad guys, then either shoot or extract your target to cut that head off from the operation to weaken the Santa Blanca. Rinse and repeat. There are slight variations depending on if the big bad's favorite henchman is some Lieutenant, his girlfriend, or a random doctor, but they all follow the same path of "Get the target then return to random shack for cutscene with your handler."
-SAM sites lock onto you if you are flying anywhere in UNIDAD territory. In order to break lock you need to fly low to the ground, or land outright. Unfortunately, the many mountains of Bolivia count the ground as the base of the mountain, so even if you do land on the mountain, the SAM sites will continue to lock and fire on you. God help you if you go northwest, as the number of these sites quintuples. It's honestly not worth flying in certain parts of the map.
-Bullet resistance is a silly stat. You will be gunned down faster than a Call of Duty lobby by a random gang-banger no matter what level you have. Even returning to the starting areas will surprise you with how accurate and lethal any enemy AI is. They are cracked and will crack your ♥♥♥♥, leaving you lying on the ground waiting for your AI squad to finally run over and revive you. And dear God, your AI squad is inept. I can dismiss the constant banter and repeated lines (enter a helicopter and someone always mentions "unit cohesion", guaranteed), but man do they suck.
-Your AI squad cannot do stealth and will blow your cover every time you try to sneak into a compound. Because of this, you have basically only two options of approach:
A: Order them to hold position far outside wherever you are breaching, that way the only person who can get detected is you. This will not help much due to the games bipolar detection system, but at least it's somewhat in your control and not your brain-dead squad. The squad target-fire system works even if they are miles away without LOS, so there is no penalty for landing your chopper outside the base and telling them to park their asses while you sneak in to do all the work.
B: Park somewhere, call in a Rebel Diversion and Rebel Backup, then order your squad to open fire. Chaos will erupt and you can sit back and have a drink. This can take some time, though. Your squad have laser accuracy, but they do not move intelligently and will kind of meander around looking for targets to pop up from cover. On top of this, and I don't really have anything to back this up, I feel the enemy AI turns slightly retarded when targeting your squad versus you. They never seem to go down as often or as fast as you will. This option obviously doesn't work with mandatory stealth missions, so good luck clearing the compound solo, Ghost.
-Hit detection and penetration stats make no sense. A specific example: There is a sniper in a tower and I want to drop him. I fire and miss so he takes cover behind a small amount of sheet metal. I take another shot with a sniper that has some of the best penetration in the game and it pings off the metal. Get exposed for missing the shot and get immediately spotted on my sniper ridge hundreds of yards away from the compound, so I order the squad to go loud and push forward. Move up about a dozen yards then return fire at the sniper behind sheet metal again, this time instantly penetrating and one-shoting him. I guess bullet velocity and penetration drops with distance? I'm not even sure that's how that works in this game, but what other explanation is there for why it doesn't penetrate at 200 yards but does at 188. Another one: sandbag barricades tend to block assault rifle fire. Except for those times where it doesn't, in which case you get the kill. Same rifle, same penetration, different results.
-The forced stealth sections are awful. Like REALLY bad. There is a mission where you help Sam Fisher break into a heavily guarded UNIDAD base, and even a momentary detection will force a restart. The guy saw you but you killed him before he could report and no one else witnessed it? Too bad, detected, retry from last checkpoint. Order your squad to shoot some guys but target 3 isn't shot at the same time as the others for no apparent reason? He detects the body and gunshots right before he dies, causing you to fail. I distinctly remember quitting that mission and coming back later because it was frustrating, only to find that once you reach your target building at the center of the base, the game then instructs you to go maximum terror and start murdering everyone in the compound. Why penalize me so heavily for failing to reach the building without detection if once I reach said building you ask me to detonate a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bomb and fight 4 helicopters and waves of soldiers.
-Plenty of things to purchase for real world money in this game. Tons of skins, weapons and resource/XP bundles, all for premium price on the market place. Don't worry though, there is a version of the store that utilizes in-game currency. Too bad you can only purchase resources and XP boosts with em. Want any of the cool customization options in this single player game? Just go to the specific area of the map its in, hunt down all the intel that points you to it, then raid the area and collect it. But oh, I forgot to mention the world map only has some of the customization options available for collection, and not the majority of them. The rest are premium currency only, so get to buyin bud.
When I played with my friends I had a lot of fun. Less trying to wrangle my mentally deficient AI squad, and more time feeling like a badass. Still, though, you are forced to navigate the game's bipolar logic. If you have a couple of buddies I would definitely recommend, as it can be a fun little time running through Bolivia shooting narcos with them. But solo is a real test of patience, man.
