Far Cry is one of the many Ubisoft franchises that has been infected with sequelitis and the "Ubisoftitis" specifically. For the last few years, their open world games have suffered from the same stale structure and layout and they had a hard time finding their own personality. Far Cry 5 is one of the first Ubisoft games in a while that has evolved a little and hasn't quite carved it's own nook in their portfolio but knocked out quite a few chunks to get started. It feels more RPG like and the activities and missions unfold more organically with the total freedom from the player to go about doing what they want while some activities and missions are constantly revolving and moving a bit.
You play as Sheriff Deputy Rook who gets a call to head to a small county in Montana that is overrun but a religious cult. Things go south when your helicopter is shot down and your taken prisoner along with your State Marshall partner. Joseph Seed is your main villain, and like all Far Cry games, he's the main focus of the game and he's a great character. While not quite as good as Far Cry 3, Ubisoft unloaded their full-blown crazy bag here and made some insanely sick characters.
The main goal of Far Cry 5 is to take out Joseph's three siblings that have taken over a third of map each. These story missions unfold by obtaining notoriety with each sibling as you finish missions and activities. There are three story segments per sibling that are unlocked and you are warped to a story area. These are some of the best parts of the games as each sibling has their own unique way of controlling the people and have their own sick and twisted techniques. The final mission for each sibling requires you to destroy their bunker, and while this gets tedious, it's only three times in the whole game.
All mission require gunning Peggies down, but some side missions include freeing prisoners from roaming vans, solve Prepper Stash puzzles where you have to figure out how to get into a building or cave, stunt devil activities, and not to mention the all new Far Cry Arcade which has various levels scattered around the world displayed as arcade machines or posters. The level is a short variation that includes objectives that are fast-paced and insane.
While there are a lot of fun activities and missions such as fishing and small item hunting ones, it just isn't quite enough to completely clear the stale air that Far Cry has created over the last few years. I loved the villains and characters, and the shooting is solid with a massive open world, but there are other issues such as each weapon feeling the same, grinding for cash is a chore, and perk unlocks come at a snail's pace. You can buy gold bars with real-world cash to quicken the weapon and outfit purchasing, so this is probably why it's a grind.
For the most part, I stuck with the same 4 guns throughout the entire game as I never really found a huge difference between them, and around 10 hours in I started skipping the side activities and gunning for the end of the story. While the world is fun to explore and there is a lot to do and complete, it all starts feeling the same after so long. The game is nowhere near bad, but just repetitive and requires a lot of patience and dedication to complete, but outside the main story, there's really no drive to.
Far Cry is at it's best here and the formula has been perfected and I honestly can't see where else this series can go. Open world first-person shooters are notorious for getting stale quick and unless they have an amazing story and characters, there's no reason to stick around for too long. The Arcade mode may keep you coming back if you really love the shooting in this game, but the main story has so much to offer I rarely dabbled in Arcade mode. Overall, the game is well worth a purchase, but if you haven't liked Far Cry in the past, then this game won't really change your mind.