Granted, it's been over 10 years since I achieved the Far Cry 3 Platinum trophy, but I honestly don't remember a single thing about it. That could say more about me than it does the game, but after now also adding Far Cry 4 to the collection, and being completely underwhelmed by what is ultimately a very generic and average FPS game, I'm a bit more confident that it wasn't just me.
Far Cry 4 is set in the fictional country of Kyrat, located within the Himalayan mountains, where you control Ajay Khale, who returns to the country after the death of his mother to honour her last wish of having her ashes scattered there. A completely different location, main protagonist and plot to Far Cry 3.
The visit is abruptly interrupted by a group of soldiers who ambush the bus Ajay is travelling in, which turns out to be the soldiers of Pagan Min's army - the King of Kyrat. Spoiler alert, but it turns out that he isn't a very pleasant individual, which is something you come to the realisation of fairly quickly when you're kidnapped and taken away. Thankfully, you're assisted in your escape by Sabal, the leader of a local faction called the Golden Path, who are attempting to fight back against Pagan Min's Royal Army, for the freedom of Kyrat.
You're roped into fighting the Golden Path's cause against Pagan Min, on behalf of Sabal and his people, which leads you through a string of missions to take down the influential leaders of Kyrat, before eventually reaching Pagan Min himself.
I just want to make the key point clear early - I don't necessarily dislike Far Cry 4. I just think there is little that excels about it, and as a consequence of this, it provides a very average experience that does little to make it stand out from any other FPS that sits out there. This is probably the exact same reason I don't remember anything about Far Cry 3.
Many of the games ideas are just things you've more than likely seen replicated if you've played other FPS games before. It uses a Skill Tree system for character development, the combat is very run of the mill, but feels clunky and slow and the open world environment is crammed with a ton of copy and paste side activities that do nothing more other than to artificially pad the game with content.
As a prime example, if you want to reveal more of the map, and discover further locations, you'll need to sabotage the most local communications tower. Each time you want to reveal another portion of the map, you'll need to do the exact same thing again, then again, then again. It's just uninspiring, dull and lazy, and I know this isn't exactly a modern game anymore, but it's a sin that many are still guilty of, and Far Cry 4 is one of them. The rinse and repeat vibe to the various side activities is rife throughout the game, and I hate it when open world games do this. If you're going to be brave enough to be a sandbox game, then make sure the content is strong enough to compliment it in the proper way.
I also don't feel the environment is maximised to it's full potential either. Buildings and structures all just look the same. Internal cave systems, Radio towers, Outposts and Fortresses all suffer the same copy and paste feel that plagues the side activities. There are a couple of unique places here and there, but the game definitely cuts corners on it's attention to detail in a way that doesn't meet acceptable standards of open world games, which are meant to be vast and diverse, with different things everywhere you look. The beauty of open world games is never quite knowing what you might see when you explore, and this just becomes far too predictable and devoid of surprise.
Even the Story is fairly predictable and doesn't pull out too many shocks. In fact, one of the best things the game does is ensure that the trophy list doesn't demand too much from the player. There is alot of content, and this would have been an horrific grind if they insisted you finished the lot, so I'll give a little bit of credit under the assumption this was deliberate and they didn't want you to suffer for the Platinum Trophy.
The trophy list itself contains 51 trophies, mostly weighted towards the Single Player Story, with a very small scattering accommodating the game's Multiplayer.
The "The King Is Dead" trophy, awarded for Deciding Pagan Min's fate, requires the player to reach the end of the Story, which concludes after 34 main missions.
There are no difficulty-sensitive trophies, nor is there a necessity to play through this game multiple times in order to achieve the Platinum trophy. I opted to play on Hard difficulty, which is the highest difficulty setting in the game, and still did not feel like this game presented a reasonable challenge at any point. You can lose health fairly quickly in some situations, particularly those that are more combat-centric, but the penalty for death is limited, and becomes somewhat inconsequential, due to the fact you'll always restart from the last checkpoint, which are generous and plentiful. You can also consistently heal without the requirement for healing items - These will heal you quicker and more extensively if you have them in your inventory, but you can always recover health to a minimum capacity via self-healing methods, which are unlimited in any situation.
The Story is very linear, and the missions aren't exactly wildly different to one another. There are a handful of forks in the Story arc where you're asked to make a choice that sides with either Sabal or Amita, who are both vying to become leader of the Golden Path, but the only purpose the decisions from these choices serve is the specific mission you subsequently play out, and you end up at the same ending regardless, which merely gives the illusion of choice, rather than any of the decisions you make at critical points having a genuine influence on the outcome of the Story.
You can beat all 34 Story missions within around 15-20 hours, which is a fairly standard length for a Single Player Story, and there are 5 progression-based trophies to unlock at specific intervals along the way, mostly for defeating certain key figures you'll also be required to eliminate on the path towards Pagan Min. Some people will have had to beat this game on more than one occasion, which I'll explain more on shortly, but thankfully, that wasn't me.
The "Fully Loaded" trophy, awarded for Learning all skills, requires the player to max out the Character Skill tree, which will extend into the post-game content beyond the main Story.
Each time you level up, you'll be awarded a point to use in order to acquire a range of different skills for Ajay. The Skill tree is split into the Tiger and Elephant path - The Tiger path is more focused on combat, and the Elephant path moreso on healing, strength and motor abilities. Both paths are to be fully upgraded to fulfil the obligation of this trophy, and this will require a total of 74 points, which is alot.
The majority of the 48 different skills only require 1 point to unlock, but for some reason, there are 4 skills on the Elephant path that have 10 cumulative levels to them, and therefore, cost a total of 40 of these points alone. Thankfully, there is a nice, quick grinding method you can use on one of the fortresses that will net you high amounts of experience points at a fast rate, in order to obtain these skill points relatively quickly. This would otherwise be a colossal grind to stomach, bouncing around the different side activities, which would have dragged the game to new levels of monotony and tedium.
This trophy is also widely reported as glitched, with a number of people claiming that you can obtain all the Skills to their highest level, and still not unlock the trophy. The only remedy is to restart the game from scratch and play through it all over again. This was what I was referring to earlier when I said that some people may have had to play through this game more than once, but this luckily never happened to me. It would have easily been worth an extra point (at least) onto the overall difficulty rating had I been to required to go through such a dull experience all over again.
Outside of this, there isn't really much worth noting in terms of individual trophies. The majority of the rest of the list is very numbers-rich. Collectibles make up a small handful of trophies, but you won't be required to grab them all and there are loads of cumulative trophies based around kills in a specific manner, crafting a certain number of items and completing the different array of side quests scattered around the map.
If the developers had made the decision to go in hard on this trophy list, it would have had some serious grind potential behind it. There are alot of things to do in this game, and they're all tracked extremely thoroughly within the progress menu, which you can access at any time. However, the only activity that requires you to progress all the way through to obtain a trophy is liberating all outposts, of which there are 24 in total. Even that alone was enough for me to decide that I'd sampled enough of the extra-curricular this game has to offer, and everything else will only make you go half-way maximum for a trophy. If this was a conscious decision through deliberate choice, it's a sensible one. The appetite for this sort of grind would be non-existent, from my point of view.
I did also mention that the game dedicates part of the list to the Multiplayer, though this only extends to 2 trophies, and they're both achievable within less than an hour's worth of play. Dabbling in the map editor and sampling each of the Multiplayer game modes are simple activities that can be completed without too much hassle. They're so quick, I can't even give any substantial thoughts on the Multiplayer portion of the game.
If you like low-hanging fruit, Far Cry 4 is a very favourable option. This is a short Platinum trophy, clocking in at just over 26 hours, according to my save file. There is no necessity to play this game up to a specified difficulty level, you can leave large chunks of the game's side activities on the table if you're only looking to earn trophies and there's nothing grindy or strenuous to contend with. It checks a lot of boxes for a game that qualifies on the comfortably below average range of the difficulty scale.
When I looked at the options for picking out the hardest trophy, I genuinely found it hard to call. Not because it's a difficult choice, but because I'm sitting here wondering how I justify either of them. I think that's an apt summarisation.
Notable Trophies -
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| The King Is Dead - Decide Pagan Min's fate. Fully Loaded - Learn all skills. |
Hardest Trophy -
Fully Loaded
Learn all skills
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