Plus they make a nice change of pace - hunting demons with a bow and knife alongside a magic tiger in levels straight out of Alice: Madness Returns? Enjoyable for sure, if a bit linear and brief. I must admit my heart sank after they revealed that “pieces of the map to Shangri-La had been scattered over Kyrat”, but as they’re hidden in Indiana Jones-like temple locations clearly marked on your map (if you buy the appropriate maps, which I’d bought all of after only two hours of play) it’s not so bad. The most interesting by far are the Shangri-La missions, which you get after meeting two drug addicts/spiritually enlightened gurus squatting in your family home. Young Bhadra is Kyrat's equivalent of the Dalai Lama
There’s all the same stuff that was in the previous game but now there’s a lot more side missions, Outposts can get attacked, a murderer to be tracked, trippy Shangri-La quests to go on, Convoys and Couriers to chase, random Royal Army skirmishes or animal attacks to intervene in… Far Cry 4 is a smorgasbord of amazing distractions.Īmita is the realist of the Golden Path but is a little ruthless. I tried to be laser-focused on campaign missions and failed utterly. One of my problems with Far Cry 3 was that after a certain point, after you’d done the Radio Towers, liberated the Outposts, hunted a few animals and done a couple of side missions the island started to get boring to traverse. Of course just in terms of single-play value it’s jaw-dropping how much stuff is here. Choosing one or the other, which you have to do, will put them higher up in command and give you different missions to play, so there’s definitely replay value here. Amita is a realist who looks tactically and to the future but can be quite ruthless and dismissive of the lives under her command. Sabal is the more moral of the two, valuing people and goodness as the best way to save Kyrat. Sadly there’s no option to side with Pagan Min (as I suspect everyone would take it) but the two leaders of the Golden Path are frequently in opposition and give you conflicting objectives that you have to choose between. While it’s nice that Ajay Ghale isn’t as annoying as Jason Brody, the next big delight is actually how the story regularly offers a choice between different courses of action. After the opening you won’t see him again for hours, which is a shame. He’s pretty damn great and frankly isn’t in the game enough. He’s a bonkers dictator who likes getting his way at the expense of everyone else, then will pretend to be your best friend and will call you every now and again to offer his bizarre advice. He’s not quite as fun as Vaas (who was lightning in a bottle to be fair) but the best way to describe Pagan is The Joker from Batman: Arkham Asylum combined with Lord Farquaad from Shrek. After Vaas stole Far Cry 3 to the point where no one can actually remember who the main villain in that game actually was Ubisoft had to pull out all the stops to make the lead bad guy in Far Cry 4 more interesting. There are two big delights when it comes to the story. Oh, and your mother will need a good scattering at some point.
As Ajay is the son of the former King he’s something of a celebrity, and after they break him out of Pagan’s compound he (meaning you) join the Golden Path and fight to free Kyrat from Pagan Min’s tyranny. Ajay returns to find Kyrat split by civil war between the despotic “King” Pagan Min and the rebels of the Golden Path. After Ajay Ghale’s mother’s death her last request was to have her ashes returned to their home, the (fictional) Himalayan country of Kyrat. There’s some texture pop-in and a few dropped connections but otherwise I had no technical problems with the game at all. No one’s more relieved than I that this isn’t the case. They did the same with Assassin’s Creed Unity and that turned up a glitchy, buggy mess, so I’m sure everyone was worried it would be the same case with Far Cry 4. I am going to say right now at the beginning of the review that despite Ubisoft’s reluctance to send out the game to reviewers early Far Cry 4 is rarely buggy and is in fact a very polished experience.