Also reporting back, I can now recommend this game, for sure. It's a lot of fun, with many ways to play.
I've built my guy into a stealth master. It's quite satisfying to take out a base without raising any alarms, picking off guys with a sniper rifle and then going in for the cleanup.
That's not to say that sometimes I don't just grab a helicopter and some rockets and go total destruction mode. That works too
I like the NPC companions. They do stupid stuff sometimes, but they are useful and not too annoying (other than saying the same thing over and over -- how hard would it be to limit how often they repeat the same damn phrase? lol).
The dog, Boomer, is pretty much the best dog companion I've had in a game. He's very, very close to D-Dog from Phantom Pain, with similar abilities (D-Dog was my favorite dog companion in any game, up til now -- Boomer is right up there). And he never talks. I only dismiss him in certain situations, when I know he'll just get himself killed (big base assaults in particular -- I let him help me sniff out everyone before the attack, then he gets to rest).
The game suffers a bit from what I call 'console-itis' -- the need for stupidly hard boss sequences that take you completely out of your normal strategies, and force you to run and gun and learn the entire sequence. I find those parts boring and annoying, but they are only a small part of the gameplay.
It's the open-world stuff that's fun. Just stalking through the woods and looking for stuff to do, without even consulting the map, is a great time. Fishing is even fun for a bit. And the landscape is excellent.
The story is ok-ish. Very cliche, but the enemies are reasonably fleshed out, and easy enough to hate. The game does succeed in making me want these bad guys dead
Flying is decent, too. I really like helicopters. Flying the planes is hard with just keyboard and mouse, though. I had to plug in a gamepad in order to actually win any plane battles.
Some of the big trucks are hilarious to drive -- just run stuff over!
And there are lots of explosions, very satisfying explosions.
I've just finished killing all of the siblings -- just the Father to go I guess. Not sure what that entails. But it's been quite a ride so far.
Anyway, of the Far Cry's I've played, this has been the most fun, and it appears I'm actually going to complete the main story for once. In the previous games I got bored before then.
