“Far Cry: Primal” follows Takkar, a member of a hunter-gatherer tribe from an unspecified part of prehistoric Europe. After being separated from his tribe during a hunt, Takkar ends up stranded in the fictional land of Oros, a dangerous place filled with both deadly animals and enemy tribes. Alone and outnumbered, Takkar has to set out to create his own tribe in order to fight back and survive. The story of “Far Cry: Primal” is original and interesting, but its presentation and pacing are jumbled. Instead of a series of story missions that acts as the main story, the game gives the player the opportunity to do all the side quests in the game before even starting the third main quest. From a story perspective, giving the player all the quests at once stops the flow of the story dead in its tracks, and from a gameplay perspective, letting the player become overpowered and complete almost everything the game has to offer before they are even properly introduced to most of the gameplay mechanics makes the main missions unenjoyable, as many of the main missions are introductions and tutorials for gameplay mechanics the player will likely have already mastered. Despite these problems, the story is still enjoyable and features a large cast of interesting and varied characters and a fully fleshed-out world, to the point that the writers even created an entire fictional language for the characters to speak.

Much like the setting of the story, the gameplay of “Far Cry: Primal” is a major departure from the previous entries in the “Far Cry” series. The three biggest changes are the absence of firearms as weapons, with primitive bows, clubs, and spears in their place instead, and the addition of resource gathering and “Beast Taming.” Instead of having overwhelming firepower, the player is equipped with handmade weapons that break and need to be replaced on a regular basis, instead of purchasing new equipment from an in-game store, the player has to hunt and forage for materials and create all their equipment, and instead of animals being another enemy to fight, they’re now potential allies that can be tamed and used to fight for you. These changes make combat much more tactical, as weapons break when used heavily, a group of enemies can easily overwhelm the player, and dangerous animals can and will jump ambush both you and your enemies in the middle of combat, which encourages the player to plan out their attacks and use the environment to gain an advantage in combat. Ubisoft took a major risk in making a game in the “Far Cry” series (which prior to this have all been fast-paced shooters) a survival game with tactical combat, and they deserve praise for taking this risk, but they didn’t manage to succeed in pulling off this switch.

At the beginning of the game, the fact that the player not being at the top of the food chain, both literally and metaphorically, made “Far Cry Primal” an interesting and challenging experience, but this challenge doesn’t last all the way through. The biggest issue that plagues “Far Cry: Primal” is that the game loses its challenge, and as a result the new mechanics lose their mystique. The game sets up resource-dependent survival gameplay, with limited weapons and supplies, and then quickly gives the player various abilities that basically gives them unlimited weapons and supplies and overpowered animal companions to fight for them. This sudden shift in gameplay makes the rest of “Far Cry; Primal” incredibly disappointing, as the game morphs into just another first person shooter. It’s baffling that Ubisoft crafted a survival game that had the potential to be incredible, and then just tossed in game-breaking abilities that make the entire survival aspect pointless.
Ubisoft had the right idea to shake up the “Far Cry” series by going in a new direction, but they ended up sabotaging their own efforts by making all of their changes pointless. “Far Cry: Primal” has an identity crisis; it wants to be a challenging survival game with breakable weapons, tough enemies, and limited resources, but it also wants to be a straight action game, as it gives the player huge amounts of weapons, abilities that practically give them unlimited resources, and AI companions that make every potential challenge easy to surmount. The end result of this identity crisis is an average action game that is hamstrung by useless survival mechanics. As evidenced by the attempted step in another direction for the “Far Cry” series, the cast of well-written characters, and extensive world-building the writers did by creating an entire fictional language and backstory for the land of Oros, there was obviously a large amount of heart and effort put into making “Far Cry: Primal,” which makes the game’s mediocre quality even more disappointing. Ubisoft should keep trying to take things in a new direction with the “Far Cry” series, “Far Cry: Primal” had the potential to be great, but they need to decide on a direction and stick to it rather than take a step in one direction while refusing to move their other foot from the original spot.