Thus far I really feel as though Far Cry 5 is a pretty fantastic game.
I like almost everything about it especially the roaming open world aspect of it where for the most part, you can really go anywhere you want and outside of rare and strange situations, you don't really even have to fight your way there. It only becomes evident that you don't really have what it takes to complete certain things until after you have already arrived and then you can always fast-travel back.
For the most part the game is very fair as far as the difficulty is concerned although I will say that i have a bit of a problem with rogue near insta-deaths where you cant even figure out what the hell is firing on you. I suppose this is kind of realistic because it's not like a sniper is going to announce their presence before blowing your head off. When this happens you realize that you are going to have to approach that area the next time with a bit more tact, and scope out the area from afar with your binoculars. That's fair enough.
So far there is one major beef I have with the game and that is the absolutely crazy difficulty spike that you will encounter during the first "boss fight" when you are taking over what for most people, is the first area in the game that is controlled by John Seed which is named "The Quality of Mercy."
After about 20 tries at this quest I thought that perhaps there was something I was doing terribly wrong and just missed a prompt when it came on screen so I went online to check. Turns out I am not doing anything wrong and that this level is just much more difficult than perhaps anything else in the game and the internet is awash with people complaining about it.
The major issue that I have with it is that it takes place entirely in a bunker and up to this point, almost everything that you do in the game involves having some hired guns come with you to help you out with taking over any objective. For reasons that do not make sense and are not explained, you have to go into this bunker by yourself with no assistance from your helpful pals. Not only does this make eliminating foes far more difficult, it also means that you will not be revived by anyone should you get caught in a crossfire.
As one would expect from a bunker, the hallways are very tight and enemies are hiding all over the place. On the surface you can kind of have a bit of a distance advantage by scoping out a place with your binoculars before going forward, but this is not an option here.
In the very first segment of this mission you are assaulted by a large group of gun-wielding baddies and what makes it more frustrating is that some of them are the "armored" units that you haven't really seen much of up to this point in the entire game.
These guys take about 2 seconds of continuous fire from an M-60 in order to down and they don't seem to be terribly affected by the impact because they will be firing back at you the entire time you are gunning them down. Plus, while you are focusing on them, which you better, their pals are flanking you and next thing you know a guy is bashing you in the back of the head with a baseball bat. There is nowhere to run and you will die many times.
This wouldn't be so much of an issue because like anything in any game, there is a technique to it to make it simpler such as using Molotov cocktails on the armored units, if you can even spot them before they are on top of you.
This isn't the real problem though: the real problem is that the checkpoints in this mission are VERY FAR APART so when you do die, and you will, a lot, you have to go back a frustratingly long distance.
When you do finally get past the 3rd armored unit room you are now able to proceed forward to one of the only platforming sections I have experienced anywhere in the game thus far. This, in my mind, is senselessly tedious and to make matters worse, just when you think you are finally done with the platforming silo, there are a couple of gunners, that you can't even see until you are getting shot / dead, that are waiting on a platform above. For me and I would imagine most of the people that have played this, they are likely too focused on the tedious platforming to even bother scouting what is above them.
The first time I made it to the top of the silo I was exceptionally relieved only to take a few shots from behind and then die. No worries right? Surely the game has a checkpoint at the bottom of that senseless platforming silo, right? NOPE! The game send you back in time to an area that is filled with armored enemies and you have to clear them all out again just to have a chance at the silo another time. It was already frustrating that a retry involves 30 seconds of load time but now to be sent back so far by the checkpoints was enough to make me turn the game off.
When I re-entered the game the following day I determined that I was just going to abandon the mission rather than sit in my living room shouting "what is shooting at me?" at the walls.
Thankfully you are able to abandon the mission at any time and fast travel out of there. I will level up and get some perks that will hopefully help make this easier in the future and I think that for anyone else out there that gets to this for the first time will likely end up having a similar opinion about all of this that I did.
I don't like to say this about games that are not Souls-like, but this particular section of the game is too difficult. According to other more grizzled players that have gone through the entire game, it is actually the most difficult part of the entire game. Good thing I can leave and go wander around outside I guess!
To anyone else out there that gets stuck on "The Quality of Mercy" don't rip your hair out. Just leave and save it for later as it isn't an essential part of the game until much later on.