I've been inching my way through Far Cry 4 and....Im not impressed. Its very fun, for largely the same reason Far Cry 3 was, but its parts feel very disparate, especially in comparison to Far Cry 3. These are my impressions after about 16 hours of play, so take them with a grain of salt. I feel like theres enough time for this game to turn itself around.
Taking over outposts is as fun as ever, but it never feels like theres a reason to do it this time around. Not that Far Cry 3 gated any real progress behind them, but the way Far Cry 4 structures its missions it really feels like your switching gears from super well-structured (if boring, Ill get back to this later) story missions to free form outposts/radio towers, but they really dont effect eachother, besides a weird mechanic that weakens "Fortresses" when you take out a story important character. It just doesnt feel coherent. (There may in fact be a gate, but 10 hours in and most of the story missions yet, Ive encountered none)
The side characters are another place of weird disjunction. The story takes itself very seriously (As it should, I kind of hate when people say "Lol games shouldent take their stories seriously" as if giving up on attempting serious writing is a good out) but the side characters are all written in a way that attempts to be "whacky", almost in a GTA-like fashion, but it comes off cartoonish. It really clashes with the otherwise serious narrative of the game. One minute youre reading the journal of your dead father, a revolutionary who was betrayed by Pagan Min and had his victory stolen away, reading about how his movement is going to socialize medicine and nationalize industry when they win their civil war, and the next you're hearing the DJ talking about smearing shit on the face of his victims if he was a serial killer.
Now, onto the story. Fucking snore. The opening sequence is so fucking good, but past that it grinds to a halt. Its really boring stock missions of take over this area, or burn this field of drugs. Occasionally, theres a choice to be made, the Golden Path is lead by two people who often quibble about where they want to go as an organization, and you have to decide between one of the two's options. However, these often end up being very boring choices, that effect mostly boring, stock missions. Sabal and Amita, the leaders, aren't too interesting either. Amita is fighting to bring Kyrat into the future, Sabal is tied to tradition and the past. Thats the gist of it.
Occasionally there are more interesting missions, that usually take the form of meeting/killing a story important character (The ones that occupy fortresses, basically super-outposts, around Kyrat) . Unfortunately, the characters themselves suffer from being underdeveloped and outright boring, at least the first two. So, some of the most diverse missions in the game end up serving a purpose that feels like there's no real narrative payoff, and because outposts dont really gate any progress, weakening a fortress feels like a cheap reward. (Given the games easy-ish difficulty, I often feel disappointed that fortresses wont be more of a challenge than any other outpost)
This is a huge disappointment to me, because the main antagonist, Pagan Min actually feels incredibly well developed, and his "Whackiness" feels totally in character for a brutal dictator. (Unfortunately, like Vaas, you see him very sparsely throughout the game. occasionally he'll call you up on the radio to make a snide remark, but that only goes on for a few seconds at a time.) So far, however, any build up has had the wind taken out of its sails by the boring story missions.
Now we're getting into nitpicks, but nitpicks that have fucked with my enjoyment of the game nonetheless. A weird thing is the fact that youre fighting a state entity in this one, not just a marauding band of pirates and mercenaries. One minute you can see a patrol of red dudes leading a civilian they've taken hostage, and a split second later you'll see two civilians just chilling taking a hike, talking about their day. This makes sense to me if the enemy were just scattered raiders or pirates like in Far Cry 3. They wouldn't necessarily be in control of the entire area, so not everyone would necessarily know about their presence, but in Far Cry 4 it feels like mixed messages to me. Do you want me to believe that Pagan Min's army is oppressing all of the civilians or just some of them? (I feel like an easy way to have avoided this problem would have been to have civilian random encounters only happen in areas you've already liberated)
You get Skill points wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too fast. I often felt overwhelmed, I was leveling up incredibly quickly. I had more than half of the perks 10 hours into the game.
There are also no cities (so far). Where the fuck is the royal army pulling recruits from? The scattered towns of like, 8-10 shacks? It seems like 10 hours into the game I would have exhausted their manpower. Once again, a problem that Far Cry 3 avoided by having no state actors. (Like I said, nitpicks)
However, despite all of these criticisms, I'm having a ton of fun. Turns out, being stealthy and taking out an entire outpost without being detected still feels great. Checking off side tasks to earn a super powerful version of a gun is still an awesome gameplay loop. The variety of enemies is also improved over Far Cry 3, with not only regular enemies, heavies, snipers, chargers, and molotov throwers, but Bow-armed hunters that can charm animals and evade being marked, and in combat, these enemies work incredibly well to keep you occupied, Heaves will often charge down the center while normal enemies will attempt to flank you, with Hunters lobbing flaming arrows from a distance. The worldbuilding also deserves a special mention. The work they put into making Kyrat feel like it has a real history is astounding, and I gobble up every single journal entry and lost letter I find (Which, however, just ends up making me feel bad that the story hasn't been up to snuff)
I'm of two very different minds about this game, which is incredibly fitting, since this game also seems to be in two different minds about itself. It has a bad story, bad progression, and disjointed narrative/characters, but its also super fun.