The time that I've spent in the game has been enjoyable but it stopped being fun far before I completed every main quest or side activity available to me. The last part of this review will focus on the negatives while the first part will describe what the game is about and what I liked about it. This game was very gripping at first and I was highly immersed in it until the blatant gameplay flaws became too noticeable to deal with anymore.

The game is based around gathering materials to upgrade your weapons and build up your little village. You gather fellow tribesmen to join you and also find specialists to join you to get better weapons, gathering skills etc. After that you can build them huts in your village and upgrade those huts for further skills and weapons.

An ability that you gain early on includes the ability to tame many different animals. Wolves, jaguars and eventually even sabertooths. There are more animals than what I just mentioned along with rare variants of them. You get to have that animal follow you around and act as your companion throughout your scavenging adventures. This is optional and you can dismiss and call any tamed beast at any time you like. You can give them basic commands like go here, attack this or call them back to you.

Gathering materials is not at all tedious and is quickly done, especially if you disable looting animations in the options menu (which I highly recommend doing). Different areas of the map contain different materials and you need different animal pelts to upgrade your gear.

There are human enemies alongside all the dangerous animals. These are Udam and Izila tribesmen. They're always hostile and basically just this game's version of bad guys to kill. You capture their outposts to grow your own tribe's influence over the area.

This last part of the review is focused on what I found negative about the game and why I stopped playing it early.

- Weapon wheel is annoying. You have a weapon wheel that comes up when holding down Q. It's fine at the beginning of the game but as you get more weapons and tools it gets very cluttered. You get two different clubs, three different bows and several different throwable items. If you want to change your bow you need to open the weapon wheel and highlight the bow, then use your scrollwheel to select different variants. Same with throwables, highlight the item and scroll through with scrollwheel. This weapon wheel constantly resets the items to their defaults so I ended up constantly scrolling to use traps because it defaulted to bait all of the time.

- Losing in cutscenes. This is common in many games but this game especially annoyed me with it. Your character is a great hunter who can tame apex predators but still gets knocked out or captured in cutscenes because we need to see the big baddies of the enemy tribes. I'd have my sabertooth tiger by my side during gameplay but then a cutscene would trigger and the tiger is nowhere to be seen while I go through my mandatory enemy tribe leader introduction cutscene where my character is completely incompetent and helpless.

- One particular escort mission. One of your specialists goes off on a quest for revenge once he finds out the location of a particular enemy. Your task is to find him. You find him in a cave and heal him up. After that the enemy reinforcements arrive and you have to escape while escorting this person. This person in question rushes forward like a maniac and takes 25-33% of his total health in damage with each spear thrown at him. If you do nothing he dies in less than 30 seconds. So you're forced to rush even harder past him and clear all the enemies as quickly as possible so that he doesn't get himself killed. This is very frustrating since you also get killed easily by rushing so hard but there's no way to tell this person to stay back. Easily the most frustrating escort mission I have ever done in a game.

- Tank enemies don't make any sense to exist. There are big brute enemies. Pretty basic stuff. Except these guys eat absolutely absurd amounts of damage. In other Far Cry games this could be justified by them having heavy armor but they're just half naked dudes in this game. I could literally shoot ten arrows into their head and they would not fall. Don't even think about trying to melee these guys. I was able to stunlock one but got bored after like 15 swings. They eat far more damage than cave bears, mammoths or sabertooth tigers. It does not make any sense why these human enemies can take so much damage. They will literally solo a cave bear (a massive bear, bigger than a normal bear) and not even break a sweat. The only reliable method for clearing them that I found were traps. Gets pretty boring but it's the only thing that doesn't involve me shooting at their head for 60 seconds straight.

- Trap placement is very frustrating. You have the ability to place down traps. Except half the time you get giant red text that says you can't place traps here. So I ended up spamming the lay down trap button while moving around until the game let me place one. But you could go through the entire animation of placing down the trap and it will not be on the ground because you didn't stay in the one pixel that the game considers valid for placing down a trap. In enemy outposts I'd sometimes go through the animation of placing one trap 2-4 times before it finally appeared on the ground where I wanted it to.

- As soon as you're spotted for even one millisecond, every single enemy in proximity knows your exact location. This is what finally made me drop the game. I was lining up a shot with my bow and the guy turned around. I shot the arrow but the detection meter filled up completely right before the arrow landed in his head. At that point the entire fort was on full alert and enemies started to rush towards my location from all directions. The guy I killed did not have time to shout for help or make any kind of noise. No alarms were raised but because of the detection meter the game told every enemy my location. And even when an alarm does get raised, the game literally spawns extra enemies around the fort instead of just alerting the ones already in it.

Overall personal score: 6.5/10

[h1] A solid recommendation with a few caveats. [/h1] The time that I've spent in the game has been enjoyable but it stopped being fun far before I completed every main quest or side activity available to me. The last part of this review will focus on the negatives while the first part will describe what the game is about and what I liked about it. This game was very gripping at first and I was highly immersed in it until the blatant gameplay flaws became too noticeable to deal with anymore. The game is based around gathering materials to upgrade your weapons and build up your little village. You gather fellow tribesmen to join you and also find specialists to join you to get better weapons, gathering skills etc. After that you can build them huts in your village and upgrade those huts for further skills and weapons. An ability that you gain early on includes the ability to tame many different animals. Wolves, jaguars and eventually even sabertooths. There are more animals than what I just mentioned along with rare variants of them. You get to have that animal follow you around and act as your companion throughout your scavenging adventures. This is optional and you can dismiss and call any tamed beast at any time you like. You can give them basic commands like go here, attack this or call them back to you. Gathering materials is not at all tedious and is quickly done, especially if you disable looting animations in the options menu (which I highly recommend doing). Different areas of the map contain different materials and you need different animal pelts to upgrade your gear. There are human enemies alongside all the dangerous animals. These are Udam and Izila tribesmen. They're always hostile and basically just this game's version of bad guys to kill. You capture their outposts to grow your own tribe's influence over the area. This last part of the review is focused on what I found negative about the game and why I stopped playing it early. - [b]Weapon wheel is annoying.[/b] You have a weapon wheel that comes up when holding down Q. It's fine at the beginning of the game but as you get more weapons and tools it gets very cluttered. You get two different clubs, three different bows and several different throwable items. If you want to change your bow you need to open the weapon wheel and highlight the bow, then use your scrollwheel to select different variants. Same with throwables, highlight the item and scroll through with scrollwheel. This weapon wheel constantly resets the items to their defaults so I ended up constantly scrolling to use traps because it defaulted to bait all of the time. - [b]Losing in cutscenes.[/b] This is common in many games but this game especially annoyed me with it. Your character is a great hunter who can tame apex predators but still gets knocked out or captured in cutscenes because we need to see the big baddies of the enemy tribes. I'd have my sabertooth tiger by my side during gameplay but then a cutscene would trigger and the tiger is nowhere to be seen while I go through my mandatory enemy tribe leader introduction cutscene where my character is completely incompetent and helpless. - [b]One particular escort mission.[/b] One of your specialists goes off on a quest for revenge once he finds out the location of a particular enemy. Your task is to find him. You find him in a cave and heal him up. After that the enemy reinforcements arrive and you have to escape while escorting this person. This person in question rushes forward like a maniac and takes 25-33% of his total health in damage with each spear thrown at him. If you do nothing he dies in less than 30 seconds. So you're forced to rush even harder past him and clear all the enemies as quickly as possible so that he doesn't get himself killed. This is very frustrating since you also get killed easily by rushing so hard but there's no way to tell this person to stay back. Easily the most frustrating escort mission I have ever done in a game. - [b]Tank enemies don't make any sense to exist.[/b] There are big brute enemies. Pretty basic stuff. Except these guys eat absolutely absurd amounts of damage. In other Far Cry games this could be justified by them having heavy armor but they're just half naked dudes in this game. I could literally shoot ten arrows into their head and they would not fall. Don't even think about trying to melee these guys. I was able to stunlock one but got bored after like 15 swings. They eat far more damage than cave bears, mammoths or sabertooth tigers. It does not make any sense why these human enemies can take so much damage. They will literally solo a cave bear (a massive bear, bigger than a normal bear) and not even break a sweat. The only reliable method for clearing them that I found were traps. Gets pretty boring but it's the only thing that doesn't involve me shooting at their head for 60 seconds straight. - [b]Trap placement is very frustrating.[/b] You have the ability to place down traps. Except half the time you get giant red text that says you can't place traps here. So I ended up spamming the lay down trap button while moving around until the game let me place one. But you could go through the entire animation of placing down the trap and it will not be on the ground because you didn't stay in the one pixel that the game considers valid for placing down a trap. In enemy outposts I'd sometimes go through the animation of placing one trap 2-4 times before it finally appeared on the ground where I wanted it to. - [b]As soon as you're spotted for even one millisecond, every single enemy in proximity knows your exact location.[/b] This is what finally made me drop the game. I was lining up a shot with my bow and the guy turned around. I shot the arrow but the detection meter filled up completely right before the arrow landed in his head. At that point the entire fort was on full alert and enemies started to rush towards my location from all directions. The guy I killed did not have time to shout for help or make any kind of noise. No alarms were raised but because of the detection meter the game told every enemy my location. And even when an alarm does get raised, the game literally spawns extra enemies around the fort instead of just alerting the ones already in it. Overall personal score: 6.5/10