3 out of 5 stars

Ubisoft has taken the Far Cry series best-known for exploring the modern-day setting while hunting drug lords and mercenaries and went 12,000 years back in time with Far Cry Primal. It’s hard to believe that a modern-day, action-adventure series is able to go back in time and stays true to its identity, but Far Cry Primal made it work.

Players will take on the role of Takkar, a hunter who was separated from his tribe after being viciously attacked by a sabretooth tiger. Takkar finds himself arriving at Oros, a new land enriched with plenty of opportunities for him to establish the Wenja as the dominant tribe in the game’s large world.

Far Cry Primal does retain Far Cry’s traditional gameplay of learning new skills, liberating outposts, scavenge for supplies, and upgrading weapons, however, the structure of the games seems to be confusing because Ubisoft decided to go for a non-linear approach.

Players will find themselves recruiting important characters into the Wenja tribe to earn special abilities in order to take out the two enemy tribes (the Udam and the Izila). Then there are missions where players will fight against the Udam and the Izila tribe, but there’s no sequential order to finish the story. So players can defeat the two tribes in any order and the game still ends with the same outcome.

Not only is the story quite confusing, but the characters seem to be absent. Aside from the cutscenes, it seems rare for characters to be associated with any of the missions. Even the leaders of the Udam and the Izila tribes are glimpsed in cutscenes for the most part. The lack of character leads to monotonous gameplay since players are by themselves a lot when doing missions.

However, Far Cry Primal also has some bright spots too. The length of the story is definitely not an issue as it takes roughly around 14-18 hours to finish every story mission, some of the side missions, and to capture all of the bonfires and outposts.

Also, Ubisoft did an excellent job of encouraging players to take notice of the world by rewarding players for searching for collectibles and cave paintings throughout the world. Daysha hand is a collectible that can be found throughout the world. As the daysha hands are being collected, players are rewarded with experience and skill points.

As for cave paintings, players have to go completely explore complex caves to find cave paintings which can take quite some time. After viewing the cave paintings, players get rewarded with experience and skill points.

Far Cry Primal isn’t the best in the franchise, but it’s nice to see developers trying new ideas. Primal is more of the same game from previous titles. The setting change was effective, but the game isn’t going outside the series boundaries as much as Ubisoft wanted to. If you like the Far Cry series, then there’s a chance you might like Far Cry Primal as well, however, you may find the game to be stale after awhile.