I just finished Far Cry 6 after 34 hours. I should have stopped after about four.

As someone who has completed all the prior Far Cry games aside from Primal (got about halfway), there were some interesting twists to the formula in FC6. The game really leaned into the guerilla fighter schtick, wherein you could walk near soldiers without attracting too much attention before unleashing attacks. The wingsuit is unlocked from the start and being airdropped from any fast-travel location – provided you destroyed the anti-aircraft cannon in the area – made navigating the huge island of Yara a bit easier. After a bunch of silent protagonists, we’re back with a chatty psychopath. Also, you can choose to be a male or female Dani, which was also nice.

That said, there are a number of awful twists to the formula that I hope they never repeat.

First, there is really no tangible sense of character progression. Instead of Perks/Skills, all special abilities are wardrobe-based. As in, you open special chests located across the map, and unlock helmets, vests, pants, shoes, and wrists in a predetermined order. Later on, you can purchase specific items out of order to complete your “build,” such as it is. The problem is that 90% of the options are functionally useless, and once you unlock the good ones, there is zero incentive to do anything else or explore.

Plus, it’s hard to tell how gamey the designers actually want you to be. For example, equip all the stealth-based clothes to infiltrate the base, but the moment the alarm is raised, pause the game and instantly Sailor Moon transform into your anti-bullet clothes until you jump into a vehicle, where you swap it out again for pants that enable auto-repair. Is that really what they were going for?

There is similar banality in the weapon department. An early mission makes a big deal about the character visually tagging enemies using their cell phone, as it displays the enemy’s weakpoints. Normal soldiers are weak to soft-point bullets, the armored guys to armor-piercing rounds, the poison gas dudes to explosions, and so on. Which is cute, but I’m pretty sure armor-piercing bullets to the face are everyone’s weakness. As it turns out… it’s actually arrows and throwing knives. Yes, some enemies may actually take more than one round to the face with an armor-piercing bullet fired from a .50 caliber sniper rifle, but an arrow from a compound bow or thrown knife will take them down 100% of the time. Which gets real fun when you equip the wrist item that makes throwing knives auto-track targets – curving mid-flight even – allowing you to basically obliterate the army with a flick of your wrist.

I mean, whatever, #GameLogic amirite? It’s just sad when there are 50+ other weapons in the game and none of them are fun or useful despite firing explosive bullets or flaming shotgun shells because the enemy soldiers are resistant to all the damage. Again, did the developers intend you to pause the game mid-firefight and swap your entire arsenal of weapons to counter the one specific soldier you were shooting? It’s dumb. And don’t get me started on the wasted potential of the poison mechanic, where soldiers are supposed to go berserk and shoot each other and be extra weak to explosive damage. Or, you know, just kill them with fewer actual bullets or one arrow/knife.

Finally, the overall storyline and antagonists were weak as shit. This is perhaps the most damning bit to a Far Cry game. The story follows Dani as they go from attempted refugee to guerilla mastermind, but there’s a level of Far Cry shenanigans that just never develops. There are three major regions you unite by taking down the Castillo lieutenants stationed there, but only one of them has any personality whatsoever. Castillo himself is played by Giancarlo Esposito, but he must have been charging per line of dialog because he has more screentime on the box art and about as many dimensions.

Oh, and I guess the game is also attempting be Live Service? There’s a mini-game element where you can send out squads to roll dice on completing objectives – complete with XCOM-level success rates in terms of losing 95% rolls – but weirdly the squads take real-time hours to get to the target. There are also weekly Insurgent modes once you clear the campaign and Lola special missions to complete with co-op strangers for some reason. I’m all for designers throwing spaghetti at the wall and being inventive, but the spaghetti has to be, you know, at least partially cooked and hypothetically edible.

Overall, I regret stubbornly sticking to the end. But now it’s over, this post is done, and I won’t be thinking about Far Cry 6 any more.