Far Cry 6 - Review

The Horse is out of the barn, and the cocaine is all over the kids, Maria. So, Bebé Tigre, are you ready to be the Guerrilla that Yara needs you to be?

Far Cry 6 takes us to the war-torn, slave filled, and cultural heavy Yara. Antón Castillo is El Presidente, and visionary leader of Yara. To bring Yara back to paradise, through their cancer treating tobacco, Viviro. Which is grown by spraying the tobacco with a cancer causing, mind poisoning and body destroying fertiliser. Castillo forces people into slave camps, and any who resist are Fake Yarans. True Yarans believe in his Paradise and are encouraged to out the rebels of Yara.

That’s the basis of the world you find yourself in; you are Dani Rojas, ex-military cadet, fleeing draftee and orphan. You can choose to be male or female here, the default being the female Dani. And just quietly, I think the female Dani is the better choice here. She feels more connected with the story, and I overall connected better with her as the main character.

Alejo, your brother, dies within literal moments of the game starting. Lita, your best friend and member of Libertad - the resistance group of Yara, also dies within the opening section of the game. An opening section which sets the tone and pace of the game very well. Chaos, explosions, violent soldiers, innocent deaths and lots of running. Castillo is an incredibly intricate and interesting antagonist from the word go. His vision for Yara is very sound, and his desire to see them reach “Paradise” is definitely one lofty ambition.

However, our first encounter with him, has him shoot an old lady straight in the forehead as he takes back his son, before telling his soldiers “release the fish”, which is translated as, fill the boat and people on it, full of holes. We’re often reminded of the two sides of Antón Castillo, the dictator and the human father. Diego is being moulded in his dictator image, but he never chastises. He gives him the opportunity to learn but doesn’t force him. Slight spoiler here.

When Diego’s mother dies, we are reminded that Castillo is still a human being. He hangs up the phone in silence, puts on a jazz record, pours himself a glass of scotch, and when Diego appears, he pours one for him as well. There is only five words from Castillo in the entire scene. Yet, the pain is expressed upon his face. His struggling with the idea that Diego’s mother has died. The five words, are the hello as he answers the phone, and “Your mother is dead.” In a heavily strained and pained voice to Diego.

Alongside Castillo being a fantastically developed antagonist, complete with great personality, the main cast of the revolution and Libertad are just as good. Clara, despite being the leader of Libertad is probably the weakest of the lot, but also gets the least amount of expose. Espada, El Tigre, Talia, Paulo, Bicho and Juan, all of them are super unique, all of them interesting. Far Cry 6 touches on some real-world themes, especially with Paulo being a trans-man, but none of the characters treat him any different. He is give a promise of inclusion though, in the new Yara once Castillo is removed.

Alongside the great ensemble of characters is a really good laid out story. Whilst it isn’t the most gripping of narratives you’ll ever see, it is actually incredibly well put together. Each area has a unique story to it and builds towards a greater climax in Libertad bringing the fight to Castillo. Each storyline will probably take you anywhere between 4 - 5 hours; if you focused on just the story, but this is Far Cry, and story is not the only focus point. However, for those of you that will be story motivated, it’s nice, it’s developed and perhaps most importantly, it’s enjoyable. As someone who hasn’t played any other Far Cry but 4, and wasn’t fully pulled into it, I had a surprisingly good time with Far Cry 6.

The ultimate fun for me, was when I was driving to a mission or a military base to attack. In-game radio on, my Amigo Boom Boom sitting in the seat next to me and just living the world. The world that is Far Cry 6 is absolute chaos, every time I played, the world fell apart; Rebels fighting military whenever possible, horses somehow kicking cars across the road, military getting really confused with pathing when you move in front of them, so they smash through 15 trees before driving off. Sweet, sweet, chaos. The world is beautiful in its simplicity. The chaos is constant and just really funny to see. The music on the radio is upbeat, fun, and makes you want to dance and keep driving.

Most locations have radios turned on, so that the world is always full of music, the world feels alive. There is always something happening, no matter where you go, like rebels walking secret paths, the military holding captives at gunpoint, supply drops falling from the sky, the sight helicopters and planes flying overhead, or the ever-interesting Libertad ambushes. There is never a moment where there isn’t something to do, and there is always something to look at.

It was also really amusing when my Amigo Guapo, who is a crocodile, decided to become a lizard. I tabbed back into game, and there he was, on the wall of a hallway and walking toward me. On the wall. The game is a little bit buggy.

Problematically, the bugs I experienced went two ways at times. Sometimes, I’d finish a mission, and then if it was warping me to a different location when it completed, it seemed to forget my mission progress. So, I had to complete it again, and again; This was frustrating. The missions are fun, but they aren’t THAT fun. I couldn’t play the co-op missions for a while either, because the game itself was making Ubisoft Connect crash at the main menu each time that I booted it. Even now, if I click Ubisoft Connect in the main menu, the game half freezes. It still runs, but everything stops being interactable. No buttons work, but the world appears to keep running.

On top of this, there was issues with textures not loading properly, which I thought was VRAM issues at first, but after some testing didn’t appear to be the case. There is some collectable map icons, that for some reason don’t disappear, despite being collected. Seemingly if you grabbed the collectable in an instanced mission, it confused the game map. The bugs aren’t huge, and I’m sure most will be fixed, but they do frustrate pretty quick and pretty often.

One last major point I want to touch on, is the Amigos. Animal companions with different skills and growth, that assist you. Or rather, they get in the way, get knocked unconscious and you spend most of the game with them dismissed. Which is sad, because Guapo and Chorizo in particular are really cool. Guapo is a crocodile with a gold tooth and wearing a racing jacket. Chorizo is a cute little sausage dog with a doggy wheelchair, that obviously took 90% of the budget to design because he is perfect and I would probably kill every Yaran soldier if they ever hurt him. Most of the abilities range from “distract” to “attack” and that’s about it, there isn’t much else. Boom Boom became my secret favourite amigo, purely because he would jump into the passenger seat or side car when I was in a vehicle and it made me happy.

Far Cry 6 is a huge game. One that’s really hard to talk about all the good parts of, without rambling on for hours. The game is fun, really, really fun. I am not a huge fan of games of this genre, but I had absolute ball with Far Cry 6. So much so, I may even look at the future speedrun for it, because I had such a good time with it. Far Cry 6 is a must play for any fans of the series, and for anyone looking for a fun, action packed, story driven and gorgeously designed open world game.

The Score

9.0

Review code provided by Ubisoft

The Pros

+Castillo is a fantastic Antagonist

+40-50hours of content

+Appropriate stance on real world issues

+The Radio

The Cons

-Buggy

-Flying vehicles suck to control

-Amigos don’t feel very useful