Far Cry 6 Review

The pitch is irresistible: play as a guerrilla fighter on a Caribbean island ruled by Giancarlo Esposito's Antón Castillo, a charismatic tyrant grooming his son to inherit his cruelty. Castillo is extraordinary. The opening hour, which is essentially an Esposito showcase, is genuinely gripping. Then you're handed a machete and told to liberate the first outpost of many, and the game becomes Far Cry. That's not necessarily a condemnation. The Far Cry loop, scout, pick your approach, execute, repeat, is durable and satisfying in small doses. Yara is beautiful, the gunplay is smooth, and the Resolver weapons (improvised gear like a CD-launching backpack and a flamethrower made of car parts) add some personality to a combat system that otherwise plays it straight. We genuinely enjoyed a lot of the individual missions. But Castillo nearly disappears after that opening. You see him in cutscenes. He gives speeches. He barely intersects with your guerrilla campaign in a way that feels like you're actually fighting him. Your actual enemies are middle management. The tension of the premise, the most compelling villain in the franchise going head to head with a player character, never fully materialises. The other structural issue is the gear system, which replaced the skill tree from previous games. Gear sets grant passive bonuses and define your playstyle, which is a reasonable idea, but it means you're constantly juggling inventory management instead of making interesting ability decisions. It doesn't feel like progression. It feels like outfit planning. Dani Rojas is one of the better Far Cry protagonists if you pick the female voice, genuinely funny in a few moments, and emotionally grounded in the game's better scenes. The supporting guerrilla cast is charming. Far Cry 6 is a competent open world shooter in a fantastic setting with a wasted villain. It's a great game to play while watching something on a second screen. That's a smaller compliment than it sounds.