Far Cry Primal is an interesting game. Partly, because it does feel fresh at times and the setting is unique for an FPS game. While since it takes place right after the Ice Age ended, there are no automatic weapons, but trading spears and a bow and arrow for guns it works very well. The weapons seem to have just the right balance between them and it does make it fun, especially with headshots and how you can’t just buy ammo, you have to scavenge for supplies. While supplies are not exactly hard to come by, it does give a certain degree of authenticity to it.
The combat is satisfying but it did get repetitive about halfway through. The game isn’t that hard but I found it did become a grind. The main reason for this is because of how the game’s pacing is. It starts off strong. The story starts off interesting if a bit generic but interesting, then it devolves into a ‘go anywhere but finish everything’ while at first, it seems like the campaign should be over when the villains are defeated, you have to do all the main missions. Some of the missions really felt like nothing more than fetch quests. At first, I thought that they were just side missions and that the game didn’t really have an ending. That’s not the case. All missions in yellow have to be completed and there was one that wouldn’t even show up because I didn’t have a perk acquired. Once I figured that out I managed to beat it.
It is an odd way, while it is nice to be able to sort of do the game your own way, tackle what missions you want first, it just didn’t really work with the campaign. It is especially weird is if you do it a bit out of order and save the fetch quests for the end, your last mission could be something simple like retrieve some objects and then the credits will roll.
While not exactly a huge issue, it does screw up the pacing, especially if you don’t really know what order to tackle the campaign, especially if you’re like me and want to beat a game’s story mode fully before putting it down.
The story can be beaten in about 13 hours but there is more content. The problem was it doesn’t give much variety but everyone is different, perhaps if you can tolerate the same feeling missions and the normal Far Cry fare such as clearing out encampments it can provide easily up to 20 or 30 hours of gameplay, more if you want to do everything.
On my playthrough, I did encounter a bug when I was fighting one of the main villains. It was irritating but closing and reopening the game solved it.
One thing the game does exceptionally well is the graphics and sound. The visuals are beautiful. I played on a PS4 slim. The load times were great and so was the visual style. The sound is terrific with a great voice cast. The game isn’t spoken in English but what appears to be a dead language. It gives it life and makes the game more immersive. I love it for it. The issue that can arise with this is if you look away, you will miss what they’re saying because, for obvious reasons, it’s subtitled.
All and all, Far Cry fatigue is a real thing for a lot of people, myself included. This game doesn’t do enough to rectify that. It’s no Blood Dragon but it isn’t bad. The game might get boring and the design of the campaign is so odd that it may turn some off. Despite that, if you want to play a unique Far Cry game, this is worth a buy. It’s affordable and worth a play through. I don’t feel it has any replayability though.