Far Cry 6 is fine. I don't love it, I don't hate it. The best word I can use to describe it is solid, which is damning praise for a big, established series lik🏅e this. The first Far Cry was technically groundbreaking, and its divisive sequel was boldly experimental. But with Far Cry 3, Ubisoft played things much safer. It made an approachable, polished, and entertaining 🔯blockbuster that thrust the series firmly into the mainstream, going on to sell a tidy ten million copies. The formula it established in Far Cry 3 proved so successful, in fact, that the publisher has been iterating on it for almost a decade now—and its DNA is still strongly felt in Far Cry 6.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Sure, this play-it-safe approach might please investors and guarantee comfortable sales from people who just want more of the same. But it's bad news for Far Cry's evolution as a series. It's stuck in a creative holding pattern, and every game since Far Cry 3 has been a slight variation of the same game—just wrapped differently. The visuals improve, the settings get bigger, and the number of icons sprinkled across the map increases, but moment to moment, it's hard to shake the feeling that you're just playing Far Cry 3 again, but prettier. That was fine for a while, but after three sequels and two spin-offs, it's getting old.
The familiarity of Far Cry 6's setting doesn't help. Yara feels almost like an homage to the third game's Rook Islands, which only emphasises how little the series has changed since 2012. There are more towns and built-up areas, but in the jungles and mountains it's like you're quite literally retreading old ground. Far Cry 4/5, and prehistoric spin-off Primal, at least had wildly different settings going for them. Buzzing around the Himalayas in a gyrocopter, or taming animals in a primordial forest, was an effective distraction from the lack of innovation. But back in the jungle, it's like the series has made no meaningful progress since Far Cry 3.
Sure, Far Cry 6 is loaded with new features, including animal companions, supremo weapons, and rideable horses, to name just a few. Some of it's fun too, but it's all ultimately quite superficial. At its core, there's very little to set this apart from the last few Far Cry games. The mission structure, how you navigate the world, the feel and flow of the combat, the tone of the writing, the mix of linear story missions and freeform outpost assaults—all classic post-2012 Far Cry. I actually enjoyed this stuff once upon a time, when it all still felt fresh. But now, nine years later, I really have no desire to go through it all again. Give me something new.
This criticism comes from a place of love. I want Far Cry to succeed, because I love these kinds of massive, sprawling, systems-driven open worlds. I just wish Ubisoft was willing to take this series into uncharted territory again. It's been a long time since Far Cry was exciting, and that's a real shame. Especially when you consider Far Cry 2, a brilliantly confident, surprising, and subversive take on the series that proved blockbuster action games could experiment with interesting systems and provocative ideas. Granted, a lot of people didn't like Far Cry 2—but it was a bold step forward for the series, the likes of which it desperately needs today.
