I have only ever played Far Cry 3 before Primal (I skipped 4). Primal seems like a reskin of 3 for the most part. It's one that I really like, but it's not very different from a game from several years ago.
The good-
Thank you for simply making the player alive in 10,000BCE without time travel or any of the crap that weighed down Assassin's Creed.
Other than some pop in and clipping issues on the PC version, it looks and sounds great.
Details like how the big cat beasts look when sneaking look amazing.
Ability to turn off much of the modern conveniences for a more real experience. Downside- some level of reliance on them just to play however.
Random Wenja encounter missions can be ignored (they come every 20 feet it seems)
Spears are great. Thrown or melee. This is the spear that Skyrim forgot wrote history.
The Bad-
Beasts are completely OP. Way too easy to tame, never need anything to maintain loyalty, and it's literally better to let them die than try to revive them. Reviving them is essentially free (easily obtained items that are everywhere) and does it beside you rather than risking whatever killed your beast in the first place. Beasts don't care if you let them die, nor do you ever have to replace them. Maybe if you had to re-tame a new one when they died...but you don't.
Choosing a beast barely matters. Despite having stats, they seem to have little effect. Just take the biggest one you have tamed. The 'rare' versions aren't rare at all, and being a straight upgrade to the normal version of an animal- they render the other animals obsolete the moment you get the new one. Beasts are as disposable in Primal as conjured pets in Skyrim.
Beast secondary bonuses aren't terribly useful, and often replaced with skills from the skill tree. Once again making that large selection of beasts to tame rather moot. Get to Sabretooth, pwn everything in the game.
Beasts are so OP, it's possible to play using only them to kill. Eventually they will get mobbed and die, but you can just respawn them and send them in again and again till the enemies are all dead. At Normal and Hard, taking Outposts is trivial. Owl gives a 100% kill every minute and a half or so as well, which skills can reduce the cooldown.
Skill tree isn't all that. I forgot about it (hard difficulty) and didnt check until I had 14 unused skill points to spend. Never noticed in the game. Once I did spend them...meh. Pretty much the only skills that matter are Beast Master and ones that give you more life bars. The rest can be fairly well ignored.
Weapons are cool but....first....no Atlatl? Only one of the most important tools invented by man. Long before there was a bow, there was an atlatl. But I digress. .
Bow + Beast = easy mode. I am rarely even spotted before an enemy group is dead. Yeah there is difficulty higher than Hard...but Hard is what I would call at best Normal in any other game, and probably Easy.
Crafting is way too easy. Other than rare pelts, you never have much worry about resources. The map is swimming in resources so that crafting becomes a pointless mechanic. Why even have an ammo count if I can just pause the game to craft a pile of new weapons instantly? Why even bother recovering them once shot? There is never a feeling of desperation, down to your last spear- kind of moment.
Inventory works backwards. Instead of a village to store loot in until you can use it, the village creates loot you can stuff into a pack. This boils down to opening the village menu, clicking on everything really fast to fill your inventory, don't even have to look at what it is......You just collect everything, even after your pack is full. No decisions to make about what to carry, how much to carry so you can bring back stuff, etc. Just cram everything in your pack and keep trying to loot anything flashy. It becomes a brainless reaction to just hit SEARCH on everything that flashes.
There is an entire 'potions' menu that my kid played for a week (Normal difficulty) before knowing even existed. If it's that useless (at least at 'normal') then why bother with it at all? I never use anything but healing at Hard and it makes no difference.
A game about surviving the end of an Ice Age, and there is no eating or drinking mechanic? There is even a cold mechanic, you can drown, and even rest till dawn/dusk. But there is no actual need to just eat, drink, or sleep. In a game where survival is pretty much what you are doing....no food or drink or sleep required???
Like many people, I like the game quite a bit. But it seems like a mod or DLC rather than a full release. None of it's issues are game breaking, but it's a much thinner experience than it might seem. With less than 20% of the story done, I already had my cave fully upgraded and most of the villagers in their max upgrade as well. Not much to look forward to for the rest of the game. I have all but the special quest beasts, and frankly have no need for anything more powerful. The only thing left is just cranking the difficulty up to max- which just seems to reduce your damage and increase damage taken, which is a cheap way of increasing difficulty.
I also got that far in a day. So the entire game can probably completed in a very short time- and there is pretty much zero replay value. Dialog and missions will be the same, even 'random' encounter missions get repetitious.
I'd rent it first if you have a console. If you haven't finished it in a week, it's worth buying.