I passed Far Edge 5 and even wanted to share my impressions.
To put it briefly and immediately, my rating is 6/10. It's not garbage, but this game didn't bring much joy either.
In more detail, the game left a mixed impression. As I said, the game is not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but when I start to think about it and somehow analyze what I was playing, it doesn’t turn out very well.
In general, the series of edge headlights, for the most part, somehow passed me by, I knew very well about its existence, but neither the first one appealed to me, nor the second one and I abandoned them at an early stage, the 3rd and I didn’t play the 4th at all and only Far Cry Blood Dragon I completed completely and with pleasure, but more on that a little later.
I had my eye on the 5th for a long time, even from the trailers, somehow I was hooked by the setting of the American outback, all these sectarians, it all seemed like something unconventional and unusual, and it still seems so - little in games. And at a huge discount, I still bought the game and started playing.
Oooh where to start? Well, probably from first impressions. At first I liked everything. The first hours of the game and even the first area that I liberated gave me a very pleasant experience. As I said, the atmosphere of the American outback is its color... An interesting premise, the first escape from sectarians. And the missions, at first, seemed varied and interesting to me. I was also pleased that the game had very beautiful, rich graphics, and on my fairly budget computer at very high settings there was a very stable frame rate (55-60). The cutscenes look very beautiful in which there is high-quality facial animation and every hair on Joseph Seed’s face is visible. And everything was fine, but...
This is probably still my personal problem, but such games, I would even specifically say games from Ubisoft, do not know how to finish on time. Those. Some people may like to spend 100 hours clearing locations, but not me. And the longer I played the game, the more its flaws caught my eye.
Firstly, the terrain. As always, the people responsible at Yubi are great for creating the locations, everything is very beautiful and, as I already said, the networking itself is cool, although unlike RDR2 it is more mundane. But I spent 65 hours in the game going through the company, and I became bored with the terrain. In the same RDR2, we were in snowy locations and in swampy areas and deserts, but here everything is the same. I don’t compare games and I understand that in FC5 all the action takes place in one particular district, it’s just that in a game for 50+ hours there should be more diverse locations or the game should not be 50+ hours long.
Secondly, there are about 150 tasks in the game, including story ones ("plot" - hah, but more on that later), side tasks and hiding places. That's a lot... A lot. And the problem is not their quantity, the problem, as always with Ubisoft, is quality. There are choreographed tasks and they are fun and bring a lot of fun, but they are drowning in routine tasks and while I was writing, I realized that the point is not even in their routine, but in the absence of that very staging, because those tasks that were staged did not shine originality, but interesting situations saved the day, I really liked taking a married couple to the maternity hospital, although in essence it is a path from point A to point B. But most of the tasks are “come, clear/rescue/take and bring/explode” and this is not so It would be bad, openworld, but... ~150 tasks.
Thirdly, again, maybe it’s just my opinion, but the game positions itself somehow strangely. I mean that in the game there are a lot of things that seem to be on a serious level, the plot of the game, the plot cut scenes, the deaths of NPCs are presented just like tragedies, but the rest of the time trash happens, it is everywhere and in everything, in dialogues, in quests, events. No, I’m not against jokes, again, “FC Bloody Dragon” is one big joke and I liked it, but this is neither here nor there. As a result, you don’t believe what’s happening. Dissonance is also caused by huge hordes of sectarians, who, in theory, keep everyone in fear, but are, according to the plot, a small group, and the game gives the impression that it is everyone else who has invaded the territory of the sectarians.
And fourthly - the plot, or rather the lack of it. It literally doesn't exist at all. Those. look, everyone knows the plot, this is an unsuccessful attempt to arrest Joseph Seed (the head of the sect), after which our hero escapes from his hands and begins to save Hope County, and then... saves. It's all over, sorry for the spoilers. If anyone has read this far, remember I grinned at the quests that are called story quests in the game? So, usually story quests in games reveal the plot (unexpectedly), but here “story” quests are no different from side quests and some can even be skipped. For example, we are asked to drive a truck that the father of one heroine made or free prisoners. Need I say that completing these quests does not reveal the plot? All that connects them with the plot are the cultists who stole that same truck or took hostages. All quests serve is to fill the resistance scale, as well as any actions against sectarians. The scale in each of the 3 main locations has 4, as it were, checkpoints, upon reaching each of which, whether we like it or not, we will meet with the boss of the location, 3 times he will rub in us some kind of pretentious nonsense, which, again, is not no matter how the plot develops, we just get to know the antagonist, and for the 4th time there’s a boss fight. So we kill 3 villains and go fight the main one and that’s it. NPCs are dying before our eyes, “tragedy, tragedy,” but we saw them in the 1st cutscene, they’re just dummies, I don’t even remember their names, let alone feelings. We don’t learn anything other than the biography of the villains throughout the entire game. And the script nonsense is that all of the seeds had an easy opportunity to kill the hero, 3 times each, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
In short, I liked the game in some places, and I can’t call it bad, but it’s a game of the sort to entertain yourself, and I quickly get bored with such games. If only there was a good plot that would be interesting to follow and I don’t care about 150 quests, or vice versa, 20-30 selected quests and a duration of 20 hours, and then I could tolerate no plot, otherwise... I regret SO much time wasted, It would be 30 hours less.