Put in a decent amount of time (for me) in this weekend, played about 4 hours of co-op, and up to about 16 hours total for the game. I think my gear score is around 72 or so, XP level 18. Found my first 3rd rank weapon ("
high grade" I think) & gear. 11% main mission completion, 4.95% of the world explored.
• First thought: I am enjoying the game the longer I play it.
• Second thought: They did a really shitty job with the opening 1-5 hours of this game.
To the 1st point, upon starting the game, I think I agreed with about 85% of the negative review points. It was just not clicking with me. I was hoping/expecting Wildlands+ and instead got something mostly different. However, after sticking with it, I am coming around to enjoy (most of) the changes, and appreciate some of the game-play diversity it's created. There is real joy in taking down outposts without being able to sync-shot the whole base into oblivion. The drones are frustrating, but also fun once you've figured out the best way to take them out.
To the 2nd point, Jesus Ubisoft! The opening hours of this game are a MESS. The narrative is all over the place.. it starts confusingly, and then you're on your own.. except all these other Nomads and Ghosts and people and everything in
Erewhon .. but outside of that.. you're on your own! The menus.. oh the menus. SO MANY MENUS. Once you've put in some time with the game, it's fine to navigate.. but man, it's clunky. The Wildlands system worked fine, I don't understand why they felt the need to change it to something so cumbersome. Exploration.. objectives.. pinning objectives.. it DOES all work, once you figure it out, but man they do not make it intuitive. I've played co-op with 3 other friends who were all pretty into Wildlands, and we've all have the same complaints. The "gear" is pointless, and seems to only be an artificial way to keep people out of late game content. It slowly feeds you all the upgraded pieces as needed to get your "gear score" higher. There is no rhyme or reason really. You CAN purposefully go hunt for "better gloves" if you're missing them.. but realistically you'll get a "RNG" glove drop soon if that piece is the lowest you have. I will say, there is no real DOWNSIDE to the "gear score", it just seems pointless. I suppose maybe you waste some time, but you do get some weapon/gear perks from the higher end stuff.. but really this didn't need to be a thing.
Once things get going, and you master the menu mission, things get decidedly better. The world is really varied, and has some gorgeous views. Graphics are good, not amazing, but do not get in the way of anything for the most part. Bugs are definitely here. I got stuck in a conversation with an NPC trying to get intel, while at the end of clearing a base.. had to reload and re-take the base a 2nd time (oh no!). Ground vehicles do ALL kinds of weird stuff (bounce like they've got hydraulics installed). Though, in the end, it's actually a lot of fun. Co-op is fun, of course, but almost any game can be fun with friends. That being said, I am equally enjoying the solo stuff, just exploring around, there is a cool Pirate treasure quest I've been working on.
• Things I still don't like:
Tonally the game still seems like it doesn't know what it wants to be. Half the stuff is still about survival and what not, but most of the NPCs treat me like a RPG hero. "Oh help us Nomad! There is a noise coming from that waterfall! We all die when we try to check it out, won't you do it for us?" (actual quest) I do it, come back, "turn in my quest" like a normal RPG and they're thanking me (Thank you Nomad!) and it just feels.. weird. I had to get parts for some random dude to make a fishing lure.. a fishing.. lure. It's fine.. and I guess it pads the content.. but the story (so far) hasn't made the leap from being a shot-down-commando on a revenge mission to.. One-man Island Savior? Thankfully (I guess) the story content is pretty light compared to the overall action.. so you can make your own head canon (I do) about what you're doing there. I thought Wildlands had a pretty straightforward narrative about taking down the Cartel piece by piece.. but I am not seeing any of that here.
Graphical weirdness. MOST of the time things look great, but sometimes they look really bad. Mountains/Hills in the semi-distant look pretty bad most times. It's like it's rendering them as low poly closer than they should. The NPC facial animation is routinely rough. Like original Mass Effect Andromeda rough. Night vision looks.. really bad. I am not sure what is wrong with it, but it just seems way off compared to other games.
Military weapon/gear camo being restricted to Paid/Raid/Etc. Wildlands had a TON of camo choices unlocked from the start, here, there is hardly anything. You need to pay real money, do the Raid, or a couple other tasks to unlock anything. The Breakpoint tag line is "BECOME AN ELITE SPEC OPS SOLDIER" but if you want to look like one, pony up some cash! This is really the only issue I have with the micro-transaction nonsense.. as most of it is stupid. If you want to pay real money for a SCOPE KIT that you can buy with Skell Credits or find on your own.. okay, I can't stop you from being an idiot. But keeping cool military gear/outfit camo behind a paywall in a military game.. that's skeezy.
Overall, I stand by this being a solid 7/10 game, with the potential to increase with patches/additional content. It's not an improvement on Wildlands (yet), but more of a equal lateral move.
• Questions:
How on early do you get "2 CQC kills in under 10 seconds"? This is for Rank 6 or 7 for Panther.. and I can't seem to do it. It seems pretty freaking straightforward. I see 2 guys walking along the road.. I sneak up and gank one of them, tussle a little and stabby stab stab takedown, by now the other guy is shooting at me, so I run up to him and repeat, another takedown. No dice. Is there something else I need to do? I don't feel like this process takes 10 seconds, but I can't see any way to do it quicker, as the stupid takedown animations take their own sweet time.
Can you save vehicles that you've.. uh.. liberated? I saw in the bivouac screen some of them say you can park a vehicle. Can you land a helicopter and have it saved there if you log off? I wouldn't think so, but would be nice if they had some sort of "Garage" mechanic outside of just buying the vehicle with Skell credits.
