.story
Far Cry 6 is set in the Republic of Yara. Fictional island that resemble Cuba. Our character is Dani, male or female is your personal choice and his background story is as thin as easily forgotten right after the exciting opening game's sequences. Dani is basically the tool, the Pistol of this Revolution against the new tyrant. Since Far Cry 3's Vaas, this series has been known for having great charismatic villains. This year's Far Cry has the honour of featuring Anton Castillo. His role is played by the famous Giancarlo Esposito. The Castillo family has been holding Yara in his hands for generations and thanks to Doctor Reyes invention, a drug called Viviro, the world avoid to put a word on the inner conflict between the Castillo and the rebels. Viviro is basically described as a drug that can cure cancer. Through the whole storyline we can see different characters taking over, most of them with a huge reverence on themes such as racism and LGBT+. Sometimes this all appears all over the place and out of context but we know, it's 2022, and this game wants to be inclusive even at the cost of being ridicolous. This said the game features great cut-scenes and all are pretty well acted despite the plot never really thickens and most of the villains just randomly die and Anton Castillo, like Pagan in Far Cry 4, has not much screenplay. Overall plot and characters are forgettable and just an excuse to go there and do this/that. Side-note: I have never seen so much swearing in a single game. Every single dialogue ends or begins with F words. Also it was a waste to not see Giancarlo Esposito more and with an extended role and dialogues.
.gameplay
Far Cry is always being known for having giant maps and a shooting gameplay that doesn't take itself too seriously. FC6 unfortunately is a huge hole in the water because of bad game-design choices and a map that is too big and too empty and when you combine these two with a lot of backtracking between missions you can clearly see the fun is out of the game. Let's start by the fact that to accept a mission we need to go to the campbase each time and soonafter accepting we have to take a 5-10 minute walk in a map that is hard to navigate with a lot of verticality and a main character with no exploring skills. I said this because Dani can jump, yes, but most of the climbing is scripted and he/she cannot climb when it's not programmed to. Same goes for the grappling hook, whicht is a nice feature but hardly implemented in the course of the game. With such a huge map you expect a good placement of checkpoints and fast travels: that's not happening. More than in a handful of occasions I died and had to walk all the way back to the mission..and FC6 is probably the first time I see an open world game where I cannot change the time of the day. Let's talk about the main missions. Most of them require the player to complete basic tasks like killing a target or collecting intel. Some of them required me to find some sort of collectibles or find specific prompts that were not marked on the map, so, although I like the exploration it ended up being quite frustrating. Missions features always a similar pattern with Dani looking for something, getting ambushed, killing the horde and having to deal with a chopper or a tank that we kill with a single shot of Supremo. This is basically a special move, an Ultimate, to destroy huge threats at once. Far Cry 6 quits the good old skill tree and the outcome is a widely classic gunplay that results very stale and basic, without crazy twists that are left to just a few mods for our beloved guns. I wish they took the risk to create some more creative ones. Sure we get special weapons that fires CDs and fireworks but I liked some crazy skills as well to give some more variety and style to the game. Enemies AI is on of the worst I have ever seen with soldiers charging you with all themselves or completely forgetting you are even there. Most of the challenge lies in the fact that the game is divided using the (in)famous rank level and this might left you out some areas for some time unless you are happy to take lot of damage from dumb enemies. There are lots of checkpoints to conquest and missile bases to destroy to open flyzones but they are so boring to reach, having to walk a lot between them, that it is just not fun. Most of the mini-games are pretty common, copy pasted, unfun stuff. I am talking about race games, hunting and fishing. I really enjoyed Cockfighting though, a very easy copy of Tekken but I am sure there was a lot of controversy about it..
.sound
Voice acting is okaish. Most of the dialogues have a bad, bad writing and are full of swearings and hardly fun or enjoyable. Anton Castillo and his Son, Diego, have probably the best depth scripts but even this doesn't shine with so many games out there focusing on great storylines.
.graphics
Yara is gorgeous and Ubisoft did a lot of work to create a map with lots of vertical options. Far Cry 6 is one of the best optimized game for PC and it features PS controller layout and tons of accessibility options. Most of the character models are well detailed and animated and Giancarlo Esposito is simply a 1:1 game model of himself.
Ubisoft tried to revive Far Cry once again but it is probably time to put it to sleep for some time. Hiring Giancarlo Esposito might have lured some people to buy in this new episode of the franchise but I am sure they have been disappointed and will think about it twice next time.
