Welcome to my first review! These aren't going to be formal reviews where I go through a set of criteria, and will more be what I took away from a game/movie/tv show/whatever. I will always welcome criticism of any kind, since that is what I'm about to do here. So, let's get started talking about Farcry 5!
Now, I came into this game blind. I haven't played any other farcry games, though I have heard them describedas Skyrim, but with guns. I'm not a huge gun nut, but I have played quite a bit of Skyrim, and I can confirm the similarity. The game gives you a lot of freedom after the initial tutorial, but it hits a couple major snags that really hurt the overall experience for me.
There is a common occurrence as you progress where the game will make you stop what you are doing, force you to play a story mission, and when that is finished leave you in another part of the map. This was less annoying when I found out fast travel was in the game, but it breaks any attempts at successful immersion. The context varies, but in the first one I encountered my character was being "kidnapped." First time it happened, I was chatting with an npc, and I thought I was killed by a bear that snuck up on me. But no, while the guy was midsentence talking about how he was so happy I got his truck back, I got tranquilized and hauled off without so much as an acknowledgement from him. I came back later, no mention of the event.
I didn't expect there to be dialog about the event, given that solution opens a huge can of worms in terms of recording many additional dialog lines which likely would never be heard by most players. But I would normally expect there to be safe areas where such events can't trigger, especially when accepting or turning in quests as I was doing. A similar scenario happened where the screen just went black while I was skydiving with a wingsuit. I thought the game crashed or I hit an invisible wall that killed me, but nope; scripted story quest. Somehow, I was kidnapped mid-skydive. So that happened.
That's one of my problems with story driven + open world games; open world is inherently opposed to any form of story. Open world is all about freedom, go where you want, do what you want; there are no impassable boundaries stopping you. But a story requires you to do things in a certain order, and observe event A so you can understand and act in events B, C, D... etc. Farcry 5 tries to get around that by dragging you into the proper position when it's scheduled story time, but that feels so unnatural and forced. I would have preferred to have story missions I can activate and complete at my leisure, like most other open world rpgs. The unquenchable growing quest log can get obnoxious, but at least I have agency.
That's really my main gripe, though. It's passable as a shooter, and the perk system is simple enough that you can get the ones you want without much planning ahead. It's not as deep as Skyrim, and so far (I'm near the end, haven't beaten it yet) the story has been nothing special. Basic characterization of cultists as crazy, which isn't a point you need to spend much time driving home. After they started killing people while spouting nonsense, it was pretty obvious. I think part of the shallowness is the fact you can kill the area bosses in any order, so all of them need to be completely separate and isolated. Which is too bad, because having them interwoven could have allowed a much more interesting story.
I might update this review if I finish the game this weekend, but I currently see it as just a mediocre exploration shoot-em-up. It really doesn't grab me like Fallout or Skyrim did, so I'm not motivated as much to actually finish it. The vehicles can be fun to go crazy in, and there are even some special side missions revolving around specific types, but that's the only feature I can think of that truly sets it apart from Fallout in terms of gameplay. Everything else is a lesser form of what is possible in Fallout.
Overall, I would say it's a fun game; run around killing nameless cultists guilt free while not thinking too hard about the story. If you like Skyrim and Fallout 4, you would probably like Farcry. But if you liked older games such as Oblivion or Fallout 3/New Vegas more than the newer simplified installments, than I think you would be disappointed with Farcry 5.