Far Cry 6 Review

 Hello Everyone. I recently completed Far Cry 6 and want to talk about it. Spoiler warning

The premise of the game is that you play as Dani Rojas, an orphan turned guerilla fighter after a forced conscription attempt. The game is set in the fictional country of Yara that seems to be inspired by Cuba. Yara is ruled as a dictatorship by "El Presidente" Antón Castillo who is also raising his son Diego to follow in his footsteps.

In terms of gameplay, the game is very similar to prior Far Cry games. It's a very familiar loop of an open world FPS sandbox where you use all manner of guns, vehicles and equipment to conquer outposts in a freeform manner that the Far Cry games have been employing since 3. The main new differences is a sorta of "pseudo-RPG" system where enemies and equipment can have levels and that different gear affects your stats differently. 

I kinda like this approach. It's not so heavy handed that it turns the game into a full on RPG and risks slowing down the pace. But it does require the player put more thought into how they approach situations and how they build Dani. For example, you can have multiple loadouts for different situations. I made a stealth build where Dani has a headband that refunds Ammo if you get a headshot, a vest that slows enemy detection speed, gloves that allow him to booby trap alarms and shows that increase crouching speed. I also made a fire resistant loudout, a loadout that packs mostly explosive equipment and a general fighter loadout that lets me melee kill enemies even if I'm detected and can carry 2 manual heals.

In addition, ammo type is now a consideration as different enemy types are weak to different kinds of ammo. Regular enemies and animals die faster to soft round ammo. Armoured Enemies shrug off soft round ammo but can be damaged by armour piercing ammo. Certain vehicles can be best damaged by Blast Ammo. You also have poison ammo to confuse enemies into fighting each other and incendiary ammo to set things ablaze.

You can mod guns to be able to carry and swap between different ammo types (which does require crafting components that ask you to go engage in side content) so once you reach a certain point in the game, you can be decently equipped for firefights. The system does encourage the player to get a read on the enemies they are currently facing and be somewhat prepared beforehand. Like, if you see you're shooting at an armoured enemy, you might be better off switching to armour piercing rounds. And if you're facing mixed groups in the open, that rush of improvisational gameplay that is quite fun in Far Cry often occurs.

The enemy AI isn't very bright. Guards can be quite easily confused by distractions and guards getting sniped. It's a far cry from something like Metal Gear Solid V which had guards properly react to your stealth moves. But at least guards are challenging to fight. They had good aim, can take a few shots, and can overwhelm you easily. Dani doesn't have that much health even with good gear so gunfights are always intense and fun affairs. I died a lot in the game and it was fun to try again with a different approach.

I feel this is why Far Cry always had the most fun "outpost clearing" gameplay of Ubisoft's franchises. In something like recent Assassin's Creed, you can easily climb your way into a fort or outpost, climb out when something goes wrong, and can use eagle vision to easily tag most enemies beforehand. In addition to how skewed combat was in your favour, outposts didn't feel very intense. In Watch Dogs, you can use cameras and the 3rd person perspective to easily scope out what's ahead, making it much harder to get jumped.

I feel Far Cry always had a nice balance of systems here. Since you can't freely climb everything, it means you actually need to be somewhat creative in entering an outpost. Like finding a broken fence, or bushes you can climb or parachuting in. This also means that escape isn't easy. So if something went wrong and elite enemies started surrounding you, it really felt more intense in a very "I'm trapped in here with you" situation. Plus, you can use the smartphone to scan and tag some enemies beforehand but you can't tag every possible enemy. So you can't be too complacent as the risk of a surprise enemy is always there.

Of course, there are some cracks in this. The Perception Grenade can quickly reveal all enemies in an area, even through cover and has a fantastic range. I decided to only use this for firefights instead of stealth and it improved the experience. Another issue is that smaller outposts like checkpoints or small camps lack much of what I praised earlier about larger outposts. Since many of these are like, parts of the road and such, it can be easy to enter, escape and regroup, kinda deflating some of the stakes of the encounter.

But when these systems work, they work quite well. One of my favourite moments in the game was one mission relatively early on when I had to download some files from a large building. It was fun stealthing through it. I eventually got spotted and the gunfights ensued. But the game has a notoriety system where if you engage in a large enough firefight for long enough, Castillo's elite guards get sent after you. These guards pack full body armour, are supported by helicopters and endlessly respawn. These guards got triggered and it was a novel situation. I was constantly being hunted and hounded by these enemies as I had scurry between rooms, either by running through the hallways (which were crawling with elite guards) or climbing around the outside and dodging helicopter fire. My Ally, Chicharron, kept getting downed every time I revived him. And every time I started a download, the elite guards would come in to prevent it, and I'd have to flee and let them cancel the download.

I burned through nearly all of my ammo and supplies, but found a solution where I went near the other side of the building and spammed the ability where if you stealth kill an enemy, you can then throw a knife at a nearby enemy to instakill them to temporarily clear out some of the enemies to get some ammo, before running in to the computer and starting the download and having a rough stand as enemies kept entering the place. I managed to use what few grenades and mines I had as traps to hold out long enough to complete the download. I then jumped through a window and had to flee through the nearby forest, stealing a car along the way all while being pursued by the elite guards and their helicopter before finally escaping them.

While yes, I could have just died and restarted the checkpoint for an easier time, this whole ordeal was such an awesome blend of freeform stealth, gunplay, improvisation and tactics.

Another similar sequence happened when I accidentally started one of the co-op missions early and solo. These missions typically expect the player to be well geared and familiar with the systems. I was going into one with basically starting gear. And it was quite the experience needing to sneak through and past areas because of how easy it could be to get overwhelmed in firefights. Your minimap doesn't work in these missions. You have to navigate by following signs and compass indicators as you need to navigate through an occupied amusement park. Plus, halfway through the mission, you get this chemical called pg 240x and have to bring it all the way back to the start of the mission. However, if you are standing in sunlight, this overheats the chemical. If the chemical overheats enough, it explodes, killing you. Standing in the shade keeps the heating from going up and dunking the chemical in water cools it. So now you have to navigate the entire large area backwards and have to keep an eye out for shade. Many places where you can find water pumps are also guarded by enemies so you have to either stealth in and wash the chemical without getting spotted or engage in firefights with the added pressure of sunlight.

Once I made it back to the start of the area, I had to survive one final wave of enemies. This mission (along with the scenario mentioned above) really made me feel like a scrappy underdog guerrilla scavenging and using any resources I could find to stand a fighting chance. I died a lot in this mission and it took me around 2 hours to clear it but it was really fun. These scenarios do become more rare as the game goes on as you get enough high quality gear and weapons that, at worst, you feel on par with your enemies rather than the underdog.

Another cool thing about the game is the companions you can find. The game calls them "Amigos". From a crocodile named Guapo that can self revive himself, to a rooster named Chicharron that can go toe to claw against soldiers to a mythical panther named Oku that can stealth kill enemies and scare them. Even Boomer from Far Cry 5 makes a return (wait, didn't he die in New Dawn?) renamed to Boom Boom. You can also improve the companions abilities by having them perform x number of actions. For example, Boom Boom can improve his ability to take damage from enemies if you can get him to tag 50 enemies. And you can improve his range at which he targets all targets if you can get him to tag 25 animals.

Personally, I did find this rather tedious. Some of the requirements don't naturally occur in regular gameplay or are unclear so you have to grind them to really get them and/or the benefits weren't that useful.

 

For example, the Amigo Chorizo has an upgrade where he can dig stuff out of the ground. To get this upgrade, you need to use his ability where if you are damaged and you pet Chorizo, you get some health regen, 36 times. But during combat, Chorizo is focused on distracting enemies so you can't reliably take damage, then get Chorizo to heal you in a reasonable timeframe. Plus, you can use a manual heal in a pinch which means you then can't trigger Chorizo's buff. I found it was easier to just keep setting myself on fire on the side of the road which resulted in me taking a controlled amount of damage without spooking Chorizo so I could grind the ability. I feel just having 10 or 20 max times you need to do something to be enough.

Another is Boom Boom. One of his abilities is that he can obtain ammo from enemies you kill. I figured this would be great since, I could keep shooting enemies and not have to worry about exposing myself to restock. I journeyed with Boom Boom for an hour, shooting up every group I would come across and noticed Boom Boom wasn't picking up any ammo. I discovered that he only collects pistol ammo. Which really limits his usefulness. He also wasn't great at tagging enemies. I found I often had to wait for him to get quite close to an enemy before he'd tag them. By which, I could have already tagged and killed all the enemies in the area.

The side quests these Amigos have to unlock them are really cool though. But I feel aside from Guapo and his self revives/good damage/good health, and Oku and his good stealth takedowns and fear system, most of the other amigos weren't as useful as I would have liked.

 

-Traversal and Puzzles:

 

Another thing I really like in Far Cry 6 is movement, traversal and the puzzles associated with them. One of your main tools is a grappling hook that you can use to climb up, descend and swing across gaps with a sorta realistic physics and movement system.  The game has these optional missions called Treasure Hunts that have some creative premise, story and puzzles that require you to actually think about how to solve them. For example, one of them was about these explorers searching an ancient cave for a treasure and all dying mysteriously. Their electrical and wiring equipment is spread out all over the place so many bodies of water will electrocute you if you step into them. So you have to jump, swing and zipline and drop from wire to grapple to navigate the cave. Providing a nice set of timing and planning challenges. Another one has you investigating a secret abandoned underground nightclub. There's another electrocuted body of water. But here, it's in the form of a mini waterfall. So you have to position yourself in such a way with your grapple at an angle so when you start swinging, you go around the waterfall and can then jump to the next ledge.

I remember I was playing Horizon Forbidden West before Far Cry 6 and one of my biggest criticisms of that game was just how boring the puzzle/traversal rooms were. You just press a button and Aloy would automatically zip and jump to where she has to go. There's no thought or challenge required. Far Cry 6 feels like a breath of fresh air and what I wish Horizon Forbidden West had. Honestly, it's kinda a shame that Ubisoft have been removing radio towers from all their games now. Because Far Cry 6 and its traversal and puzzle missions have been so fun that I would have loved to see some interesting puzzle towers.

 

One feature I do wish that was expanded more is the social stealth/disguise system. In Far Cry 6, since you are in areas with civilians, you can holster your gun and pretend to be a civilian. And this will generally cause guards to become suspicious a lot slower. Some missions can have Dani disguise himself as a guard or drive/use cars and trucks pretending to be a guard. Some guards can be bribed to give you info on where some supplies are kept.

It would have been cool if you could do more of these things organically to complete missions and outposts. As an example, some missions in the game ask you assassinate a specific figure. What if you could disguise yourself as a guard and, as long as you don't blow your cover and know where to go, could use that to get to him and shank him and then leave without being seen? Or if you grabbed a guard (either by sneaking up behind them. Or if in a firefight, shooting them in the leg to incapacitate them) and then could interrogate them for info on where the target is or could coerce them to open doors and provide codes to you? What if you could take a few cues from the early Assassin's Creed games and use your Bandito recruits to help you out in the field? Like you could order a group of Banditos to act as snipers on a spot, or disguise themselves as guards and "arrest you" so you can be escorted into a place? I feel this might be unbalanced but have any death of a Bandito significantly affect your Bandito reserves and have all these abilities be on a cooldown so you have to be smart about using them.

Speaking of which, Far Cry 6 has a sort of "Assassin's Creed Brotherhood style recruit" minigame where you can send Bandito recruits you find in the field and in side missions off on a text based "choose your own adventure" style mission where they can return with resources. You select a mission which gives a rough idea of what it entails, what rewards are there and what skills a recruit leader should have to do well. Then, after however many real time hours pass, you can then issue orders for what the recruits should do next in that mission. For example, in a mission where you need to send recruits to steal some supplies, there could be an option to either hide for a while (with a 80% to succeed and only losing 1-3 recruits along the way), create a distraction (with a 90% chance to succeed and costing you 30 gasoline) or directly fighting (with a 90% chance to succeed and losing 3-5 recruits along the way). Repeat this however many times until the mission is completed or needs to be aborted.

I like the concept and some of the rewards. Some of the dialogue for the social media and "being hip with the youth" missions are hilarious. And there is some strategic elements to it. Some of which you can influence based on how you upgrade certain camps. But as a whole, I dislike the execution here. It gets tedious whenever I boot up the game and the first thing I need to do is fast travel to a camp so I can go through 3-5 sets of menus playing a basic text based "choose your own adventure" 8 times just so I can get 500 coins, a couple useful gunpowder items for crafting and some new recruits. 

Compare this to Assassin's Creed and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker/V. In those games, you just sent your recruits on missions. Different missions may have had different costs in terms of what additional resources you also had to send and you could customize what squads you sent. But overall, it was a really quick affair. You could probably send all of your recruits off on missions in under a minute. Far Cry 6 tries to make the process more involved but also makes it more tedious and repetitive as well as feeling disconnected. Your Banditos don't help you in the field that much.

 

 

There are also 2 minigames you can do in camps. The first is Dominoes. Which honestly, I have no idea how to play. Maybe I should have paid more attention when I was playing Clubhouse Games on DS since Dominoes was one of the games I always skipped there.

The second is cockfighting. This plays like a really basic fighting game where you have a light attack, a heavy attack and a charging attack. You also have a dodge. You also have a meter that fills as you take damage and when it's full you can do a super attack that does a lot of damage but can be dodged as well. Cockfighting is only available in one of the camps, has 3 tiers of difficulty that require you to pay to enter. You can also use roosters you collect from the open world as your fighters.

Cockfighting is weird. I did feel a little uncomfortable while playing it. It is animal abuse (which is weird given Dani engages in wanton murder). But at the same time, aside from these 3 fights at one camp, that seems to be all that cockfighting has to offer. I was expecting there to be some long questline where you travel the map and face harder and harder cockfighting masters and have to collect stronger roosters with their own pros and cons and unique traits. Like how Gwent worked in Witcher 3. But no. Even the roosters you collect seem to be interchangable. So this would be like if Gwent in Witcher 3 was relegated to just, 1 NPC you could do a few rounds with in Novigrad and that's it.

If I didn't know any better, I would offer the conspiracy theory that Ubisoft intentionally did the bare minimum for cockfighting, in part because it isn't an amazing minigame worth dedicating too many resources to, and in part to drum up attention for Far Cry 6 through the controversy. No such thing as bad publicity I guess?

I mentioned this earlier but there are 3 camps in the game. One for each of the 3 main areas and storylines of the game. Each camp has a minigame, a workshop, a place for you to go on co-op missions, and a choice of 2 specialized facilities you can choose to build. For the first camp, I chose to build a facility that gave me access to extra fast travel points and one that gave hunting resources. For the second camp, I chose the one that improved bandito operations and gave more weapon resources. For the last camp, I built the only faciluties that were left for the game to make me build. One to improve fishing resources and one to improve cooking.

I'll be honest. I'm not too impressed by this system. I get that it wants the player to explore and feel like they're progressing every time they reach a new camp and get access to new facilities. But I don't know, it feels kinda drawn out in some cases. Like, once I bought all the fast travel tips, the fast travel facility only then became useful in offering minor buffs like restocking ammo whenever fast travelling. I have no interest in fishing so I only invested in it because it was the last one left. I guess the upgrade to be able to fish by just shooting the fish instead of manually reeling for them is neat? I guess what I'm saying is that even when they are technically useful, they don't feel like you unlocked something important?

In camps you also have the option to play co-op missions. And like I said earlier, these co-op missions are great. They drop you into an isolated area that's still really open. Said area is crawling with enemies. Your map doesn't work in these areas so you have to navigate by your compass and looking at the in-universe signs and tourist maps. For example, one of the areas is this former amusement park and you need to navigate to the end of it. So there are signs for visitors that show the map of the area and you have to use those to navigate there and back. And there is tension on the way back because of the need to stay in shade and find water which puts you in conflict with enemies as they typically hang around areas with water. There are also difficulty levels that unlock as you level up which up the kinds of enemies you face and how quickly the chemical blows up in sunlight. These get really intense and can make you feel like that scrappy early game guerrilla. The main issue I found was the multiplayer portion. There is no browser or quick matchmaking so you can't quickly see if someone else is looking for a session and join them. The game does have a "search for match while you play" which says it will drop you into whatever session is available but I found no luck using it. I guess that is to be expected. Far Cry 6 is a 2021 game. It is funny that when I was playing Assassin's Creed Unity back in 2020 and needed to do some of its co-op missions for the platinum trophy, it was really quick and easy to find players to play with using the quick game feature despite Unity being nearly 6 years old at the time.

 

There is also a NG+ mode and a bonus hardcore difficulty that cranks everything up. There is DLC, some of which is paid and some of it was free. The Stranger Things mission in particular was great in how atmospheric and novel it was.

Beating the game also unlocks this "insurgency mode" where you re-capture certain points of interest to reveal a leader who you must then assassinate.

One aspect of the game I didn't expect to enjoy but was absolutely engrossed by was the story. Far Cry 6 actually has a really good story. I was surprised given how kinda lacklustre 5 was.

Spoiler Warning:

The protagonist Dani, is really well written. Unlike past protagonists, Dani is a native to Yara. This allows him to interact more with other characters in a more personal way. Like, he relates to Matias' struggle since both of them have been stuck in Yara under Anton's rule. He looks up to the Legends of '67 since those are heroes to him. He even sings along to the radio in Spanish. At the same time, the story doesn't shy away from the fact that Dani is kinda a mass murderer and not exactly someone who would be a good leader for Libertad once Anton is dead. And Dani has the self awareness to see that.

Yara itself is also an interesting and consistent character. A major plot point of the game is that Anton is pushing the manufacturing a Viviro, a medication that can treat cancer that is found in Yara's tobacco products. This process gives cancer to the poor people exposed to the manufacturing and growing process. The 3 different major areas of Yara are each responsible for a different part of that process from the tobacco that is grown, to the plants that refine and manufacture the Viviro and pg 240x. This makes the areas of Yara feel more connected to each other and the overall story. In addition, since Yara is analogous to Cuba with its economic blockades, there's a mix of technology and architecture. You have 1950 and 1960's cars mixed with present day smartphones and social media to Rambo and Star Wars pop culture. It's a unique setting for a video game.

The villains are also really well done. I mentioned Anton but Sean McKay also kills it. He's a Canadian businessman working with Anton. McKay is smug, sarcastic and sassy when he is in control. When Dani first meets him and calls him a "Yanqui", McKay responds with ""I'm a Canadian asshole, actually. We're like Americans, except we say sorry as we slide the knife in" before sending his goons after Dani. Later, when Dani destroys many of his facilities, he throws a tantrum. It's really satisfying seeing him like this. Then, later, when he regains his cool he tries pleading with Dani. He points out how his business is actually improving the quality of life in Yara. That if it weren't for him, Yara would be in a far worse state. He even brings up his own past and how he "gets what Dani is going through". How his family immigrated to Canada and how Canada has also pulled many acts of cruelty to "get ahead". McKay literally tells Dani to "look up what my country did to the Indigenous people". I was absolutely shocked a game, a Ubisoft game, no less, would ever mention that. I remember reading before Far Cry 6 came out that it would be a political game since that's the only way of doing the subject of a revolution justice. And it seems the game is doing that.

The cherry on top is that once you do finally confront McKay, Dani's ally and Libertad's Second in Command, Juan. Tells Dani not to kill McKey since they made a deal. Juan points out that after they kill Anton, Yara is going to be a mess. Working with McKay gives Libertad the funding to help people afterwords and you are given a choice whether or not kill McKay.

This is something I really like about Far Cry 6's narrative. It isn't afraid to start showing some shades of grey. Libertad's leader, Clara, points out to Dani that even once they kill Anton, then the "real revolution begins". Yara is going to face issues of stability and Civil War. The next president won't last 6 months. Many of Libertad's other generals show some of the failings of the group. Juan engages in illegal and black market trading, both for his own selfish gains but also to fund Libertad. He even tells Dani he does this away from Clara so Clara's reputation is sullied by his actions. La Moral, The Monteroes and Maximas engage in some brutal and over the top acts of violence that even Clara points out is hurting innocents.

Anton himself also leans into this. I like that he isn't some wacky dictator that's evil and power hungry for the sake of it, but someone who sees himself as making the hard decisions to try and have Yara survive even if that involves slave labour and a dictatorship. Anton even says "Yara is on fire. Free elections don't put fires out" to counter Clara when she brings up the lack of democracy. Even Clara acknowledges that.

Anton is a fantastic villain. Yeah, he doesn't interact much with Dani so his screentime is relatively limited. But he makes the most of his screentime. In one cutscene, his nephew who is one of his military commanders, comes and tells Anton how he killed the leader of the Monteros. Anton, through Diego, informs him that many of his soldiers and farmers come from the Monteroes area and greatly admire and support the Monteroes. This shows how Anton not only has sound military knowledge but also knowledge of Yara's culture and demographics. And how he's teaching that to Diego. In another cutscene, an American reporter is interviewing Anton about how Vivero is made with Slave Labour. Anton points out -1- how hypocritical it is to say that given the US started with slave labour to not only "get a head start" but keeps slavery going by calling it "prison labour" and pretending they abolished slavery and -2- How hypocritical it is to say that given how so many of the products they already use are produced with slave labour and that nobody cares when they receive it. People don't complain their T-shirts are made by children in sweatshops after all. To top it off, once the reporter reveals her father has stage 4 cancer, Anton has Diego give her a box Viviro which she accepts without a word despite earlier chastising Anton for producing Vivero with slave labour. This is great because again, it shows that Anton does have a consistent motive for his actions and that it is rather difficult to criticize him without being hypocritical in some way as many people benefit from his actions or similar ones everyday.

Anton even accepts that he is a monster and has done some messed up stuff rather than rationalize or excuse it. In the trailer, he explains that to Diego. And in the game during the dinner scene with Dani where he insists on the truth, he doesn't object when Dani calls him a monster.

I also really love Diego's character here. He was raised from birth by Anton, who didn't even want a kid, but felt it was necessary since Anton was dying from Leukemia and needed an heir who could continue to govern Yara like him. Anton's own father was ousted in the prior revolution and Anton was made to work in the tobacco farms that gave him his cancer. He has that knowledge and wants to protect Diego from that. Diego is a confused and conflicted kid. He loves his father but sees the atrocities he does. But at the same time, kinda sees why and how he needs to do them. Especially given their lives now depend on it. He's confused because he doesn't know what he wants and is unsure of himself since he never had a "normal life". His relationship with Dani only adds to this conflict as he doesn't want Dani to die given that Dani both spared and saved him. But knows that Dani and Libertad are technically his enemies since they want to kill both him and Anton.

The story does a great job in showcasing how Diego is pulled in all these different directions. You're really left guessing what will be the outcome of the boy where "the fate of Yara lies in his heart". Especially as it shows in a subtle way how Antón comes to see Diego’s confusion.

The ending does a great job tying all this together. Even though Libertad wins, because Anton killed Clara, it is bittersweet because now it is less likely things will turn out better for Yara. 

In Far Cry 6's story, a common motif was that Clara brings up that "taking down Castillo is just the first step. We gotta rebuild and heal Yara afterwards. That's the hard part". Clara is also the only other person that gets why Dani cares for Diego. She even brings that up as a reason for how they should coexist. That Diego isn't the enemy. Hell, even Anton technically isn't really their end goal. It's freeing and improving Yara.

Basically, Clara is the heart and soul of Libertad and the only person that sees the humanity in their mission. Even Juan brings this up. That Clara is "the opposite of Juan" and that there are "way too many Juans, Antons and even Danis in the world. But there will never be enough Claras". That's why Juan even does his illegal trading away from everyone, including Clara. Because he knows that would ruin Clara's reputation.

When Clara dies, the heart of Libertad died with her. Yeah, Libertad is still strong and skilled and smart. But they now lack the compassion and vision of Clara. In the ending, Dani sorta realizes this. When only he (and technically also Lucky) cared for the dying Diego, Dani saw that Libertad now lacks the heart and compassion to truly improve Yara like how Clara would have done. That's why he rejects the offer to be the leader despite the support of everyone. Because Dani has the self-awareness to see he isn't much better than the other leaders of Libertad, and he sure isn't close to being Clara.

The ending effectively is bittersweet in the sense that yeah, Libertad did win, but without Clara as the leader, things are less likely to really improve (I mean, they weren't guaranteed to improve even when Clara was alive. Clara herself admits to that. But the odds were still better at least).

The epilogue does sorta ruin this moment given that it has Dani and Juan being all buddy buddy and talking about how fun it would be kill the insurgents. Kinda ignoring that the whole prior scene was about Dani becoming somewhat disillusioned with Libertad without Clara.

 

Looking online, I saw many people feel this ending left a bit of a sour taste in their mouths since it felt odd for Libertad to suddenly be so callous towards Diego after being so friendly with Dani. 

I think that feeling is because Far Cry 6 has 2 difficult and kinda conflicting goals for its writing. The way it tries to resolve them depends on the audience (and the fact it kinda stumbles in places). The first is that it wants things to be more grey rather than black and white. I already wrote earlier on how the game shows the different sides of Libertad and Anton. 

But the writing's second goal is to make Libertad relatable, cool and likable. You kinda want to root for them to win. You have Maximas just wanting to do a concert and being denied free expression. You have Paolo expressing how even once this revolution is over, his revolution isn't since he's trans and Yara doesn't support that. You have La Moral being Uni students who have seen how their country was changed. The Monteroes are these independent farmers who just want to live their own lives etc.

But the conflict here is where Far Cry 6 draws the line? As different people will have a different idea to where it should be and feel the story feels inconsistent. Like, if you feel the story focused too much on making Libertad cool and likable, then the ending where they ignore Diego feels inconsistent since you wouldn't feel that greyness that the story wanted to do. I feel this is something the game's writing stumbles with. It sometimes forgets that it has to show Libertad's failings and instead tries to make them seem cool. The Epilogue in particular highlights this since it shows Dani and Juan being cool even though the whole scene before it was Dani becoming somewhat disillusioned with Libertad without Clara.

 

 

Still, In conclusion, I feel Far Cry 6 is a pretty good game. It doesn't do much new but is still a fun time as it continues the Far Cry formula. The story is really good and is a strong part of the experience. I recommend the game and enjoyed my time with it.

If you've played prior Far Cry games and want something new, 6 won't be for you. If you want more Far Cry (in a more refined and interesting form), then 6 is for you.

Here's hoping that in 4 years when Far Cry 7 comes out, it takes some cues from New Vegas and Borderlands. Give me a Far Cry game with the dynamic sandbox of Far Cry 6, the choice and dialogue system of New Vegas, and the enemy variety and RPG systems of Borderlands and I'll be set.

A long review of Pokemon Sword and its DLC

Hello Everyone. I recently finished all of Pokemon Sword and its expansions and would like to write about them. This is going to be a bit more of an unstructured review compared to my normal stuff as I find it's quite hard to write about Pokemon Games and quite a long read.

To Begin, the main thing I feel Sword does well, beyond that of its predecessors, is how many quality of life and convenience improvements it adds to the series that I often miss when I replay older titles. For example, in many past games, move reminders and deleaters were often located in random towns and required something like a Heart Scale or Shards to use. It would often be quite tedious to obtain the resources to use these services. But Sword has a Move Reminder and Deleter available for free in every Pokemon Centre. I love this feature because, in addition to reusable TMs, it makes it more fun to experiment and re-spec your Pokemon's moveset without worry you're permanently overwriting useful moves. As an example, I remember playing Platinum and wanting to make a Special Attacking Infernape with Calm Mind, Flame Thrower and Grass Knot but being unwilling to give up moves like Flare Blitz and Close Combat with how tedious it is to reacquire them. But in Sword, I had my Corviknight alternate between a bulky support pivot role with U-Turn and Fake Tears, an offensive threat to certain Steel, Ice and Rock Type Raid Pokemon with Revenge + Steel Wing and either Work Up or Bulk Up, or a more balanced Steel Wing + Hone Claws + Brave Bird + Life Orb set. As another example, I also used a Togekiss for this playthrough. Typically, stone evolutions like Togekiss stop learning new moves once they evolve and miss out on many moves if they haven't learned them when pre-evolved. Which can make it quite the hassle to kit out such Pokemon. But in Sword, it's quite easy to kit out a Togekiss with Air Slash, Aura Sphere, Draining Kiss and Ancient Power as soon as it evolves. It's great having the freedom to really bring the potential out of your Pokes. And comes in quite useful in some of the game's endgame challenges like the Battle Tower.

And the game is full of these streamlining efforts that reduce the tedium. There is now an Autosave. You can access your PC anywhere in the world. HMs are still completely gone with a dedicated menu for fast travelling. An endgame Battle Tower houses resources like Hyper Training and competitive items in a single location as well as the ability download and share rented teams (the DLC expands on this with even more ways to lower the barrier for competitive play). EXP candies allow you to quickly level up team members making it much more convenient to swap out Pokemon from your current 6. Most wild Pokemon show up in the overworld with Random Encounter Patches on grass being flagged making it easier to avoid battles you don't want or find the Pokemon you do want. There is also a great variety of Pokemon available upfront through the Wild Area, including Trade Evolutions. I also really like many of the new smaller additions to the combat system such as the new items and abilities. Such as Heavy Duty Boots finally give Stealth Rock Weak Pokes a way to not be crippled by their weakness upon merely switching in and was long overdue.  Or moves like Aurora Veil being level up moves for many Ice Types.

 

With all my praise here, there's still some work to be done though in other areas of convenience. The game is missing an easy and accurate way to see your IVs and EVs and reallocate them. The DexNav from Gen 6 that made it much easier to find the exact Pokemon you want is sadly missing. The EXP Share cannot be turned off which can make it more annoying for nuzelockes and EV training certain Pokemon. 

The game splits TMs into TMs which are reusable and TRs which are single time use. I'm mixed on these. On the one hand, I kinda see the point. Some moves are kinda useless once you get a better TM. Like, you're not going to teach your Electric Type Shock Wave when you have Thunderbolt. Or use Bulldoze or Dig over Earthquake (unless your mon can't learn Earthquake). So some of the better moves being TRs means Shock Wave is always useful as a way to save your more precious Thunderbolts. In addition, it always means there's something to earn or progress. Every Watt you earn is more precious since it doesn't hurt to get duplicates of good TRs. Oh, and it makes Fling more useful. But I feel the game is more fun with just reusable TMs. I'd rather have more redundant moves and currencies if it means I can always kit my Mons out the way I want. Having TRs kinda goes against the whole streamlining Sword has been doing so far.

 

The multiplayer menus are really annoying and inconsistent to navigate. This is especially tragic because Gen 6 already had the perfect system when it came to interacting with other players with the Player Search System. There, it was super easy to ask a nearby player to a casual trade or battle. In Sword, when I wanted to play against my cousin's team in a battle or do a Raid Battle via local play, it was quite the hassle setting up a Link Request, hoping the other's system would pick up on it and not display a "connection error". One particular issue we ran into was that the game wouldn't let us do Raid Battles if the Pokemon was from the DLC which I had but he didn't. It wouldn't even show up for the other. We often had to double check if the Raid Pokemon I encountered here was from the DLC or not to see what the issue was. And this is something even the Gen 3 games at least told you was the issue. 

The main gimmick of Gen 8 is Dynamax (and by extension, Raid Battles and the like).  In a multiplayer context, I can see why it's quite contentious. This is a mechanic designed for a Doubles format (where from what I gather, it works well there. I won't comment much on this since I prefer singles to doubles). So it's no wonder that on Smogon Singles, Dynamax was banned from the OU format. A quick refresher, Dynamax operates a bit like Mega Evolution and Z Movies combined from Gen 6 and 7 where you can choose any one of the Pokemon during a battle to Dynamax into a larger form for 3 turns where they receive double the health and have their moves replaced with "Max versions". Moves that often combine multiple effects and benefits.

In Singles PVP, this can be quite difficult to take on. Imagine you are facing a Gyarados. If the Gyarados wanted to attack you with a decent move with 100% accuracy, it would have to give up a turn to use Waterfall. If it wanted to attack you with a more powerful move like Giga Impact or something with the downside of lower accuracy or worse accuracy or need to recharge, it would still need to use a turn. If it wanted to raise its attack or speed, it would have to use a turn to use Dragon Dance and thus not attack for that turn. If it wanted to set up rain, it would have to use a turn to use Rain Dance and give up a chance to attack or boost its stats. And all while this going on, that Gyrados' attacks can be blocked with Protect and still has that 4x weakness to electricity. But with Dynamax, Gyarados can turn Waterfall, a base 90 move, into Max Geyser, a Base 130 power move that sets up rain and can somewhat bypass protect. Essentially doing the job of 3-4 other moves into a single one with none of the downsides. Oh, and with double the Health, Gyrados can now even take an electric move that normally would have KO-ed it. And now consider other Pokemon with moves like Max Knuckle that do massive damage and boost your attack. Its regular counterpart, Power Up Punch, was just 60 Base Power. Even if you Dynamax soon afterwards, your Mon may not have the boosts accrued that your opponent just has and it's difficult to switch to a Mon to check it.

 But despite all that, I feel that in the context of a purely singleplayer perspective, Dynamax may be the best gimmick Pokemon has had thus far. It's significantly better than Megas and Z moves.

My main criticism with Megas from Gen 6 was that they didn't significantly change or add to the experience in singleplayer. For one, even though there were some creative strategies with them, such as Mega Evolving an Aggron to drop its rock type and get better defence to better tank fighting type attacks, for the most part, you'd just be Mega Evolving the Aggron anyway for the Free stat boost rather than because it would lead to a new strat. In addition, the player is generally much smarter and more capable than the AI. So them giving their Poke a power boost to make then on par with legendaries benefits them way more than the AI which aren't that much more threatening with Megas. Essentially, Megas created a situation where things aren't that much harder if you don't use them and only let the AI use them but significantly easier if you use them.

What's more is that even though the intention of Megas was also to make some less viable Pokes more viable, I feel it had the opposite effect where it increased the power creep gap to make "the rich richer" as it were. For one, many of the Pokes that got Megas were already good to begin with. Pokemon like Rayquaza, Salamence, Tyranitar, Scizor, Gengar, Garchomp, Latias, Latios, Blaziken, Mewtwo, Mewtwo again etc weren't exactly hurting without Megas. In addition, I'd argue even when Megas worked and did add viability to a weaker Pokemon, it pigeonholed it and made similar Pokemon worse. If Both Manectric and Luxray aren't viable without Megas and Manectric gets a Mega but Luxray doesn't, then Luxray is even more outclassed and less worth using. If a Pokemon like Steelix is only worth using if its Mega Evolved, but there are much better candidates for a Mega Slot, then Steelix will only get used less. Instead of using new forms to buff or nerf mons, it would be better to just adjust their stats, movepools and abilities directly.

 

As for Z-Moves, I'm personally kinda OK with them. They were essentially a modified and more balanced version of Gems from Gen 5.

I like Dynamax then because it kinda avoids these issues in Singleplayer. When I play Pokemon games, I like to play on Set Move, not use Battle Items and avoid using the generational gimmick outside of "competitive modes". Which means when my opponent is using a Dynamax Pokemon against me, it's actually kinda threatening as I have to find a way to stall out the 3 turns for it turn back (which risks the opponent accruing boosts) or find a way to KO it quickly (requiring some planning beforehand). Thereby changing up how certain Gym Battles go.  And when I did have to use it in places like the Battle Tower, it added more strategic options for when and whom to Dynamax.

In addition, every Pokemon can Dynamax and some get Gigantamax Forms, allowing the game to showcase new forms without excluding mons from the power up.

 

 With that said, I'm not too fond of the game's new feature of Dynamax Raid Battles. I get the purpose of it. It's a way to showcase Dynamax and provide a new co-op style mode for players to take on. It also provides a more interesting way of obtaining distribution Pokemon and getting involved in community events. And it's occasionally nice as a break or secondary mode (kinda like contests from prior games). But I don't know. One of the things I've always loved about Pokemon's combat was that both you and your opponents were playing by the same rules. Anything your opponent could do, you could as well. If you got a Dragonite, you could go around smacking people around like you were Lance. Pokemon avoids the trope of other JRPGs where the boss character is super tough when you fight them but becomes completely different when he joins your party. In addition, you generally always have a fair amount of control over your chances of success in Pokemon games. It's not like if when you're in a double battle with AI partners, if your partner faints, you lose on the spot. These made Pokemon's combat fun when you faced a tough opponent and won because it felt like you outsmarted them using your own skills and knowledge of the game.

 

But I feel Dynamax Raid Battles kinda betray these ideas. I first noticed something was up with Dynamax Raid Battles when I found my Choice Specs Imposter Ditto was doing less damage to a Drifblim even with a crit than he was doing to me with the same non-crit and boosted Thunderbolt move.

So it seems the actual Dynamax Raid Battle is against a permanently Dynamaxed Pokemon that can use multiple moves back to back, reset your buffs and is protected from taking certain amounts of damage as the game will limit the damage you can do and then enable shields for them. As a result, battles seem to play out the same way every time. In addition, your AI partners are often liabilities, especially on higher difficulty Raids. From a Solrock that only spams Cosmic Power instead of Attacking to a Wobuffet that uses the wrong kind of attack (even assuming it gets hit in the first place) to an Eevee that is using a Focus Sash (which is a terrible setup for a situation when you a need a single Mon to be able to tank multiple hits). I never in my life ever thought I'd be glad to be partnered with a Magikarp since at least that guy is actually being useful by spamming Hydro Pump and has 55 defence. It genuinely feels like the game intentionally gives you bad partners to encourage you to partner up with other real players. Many 5 Star Raids felt impossible because even when I did everything right, I would lose because my AI partner's dumb Mon would faint 3+ times. This made some of the postgame farming for items quite tedious. On top of that, even if you do successfully defeat the Pokemon in the raid, there's a chance they may escape the Ball you throw to capture them. And you only get 1 chance to capture them! Which can really make it frustrating if you're trying to go after one specific Pokemon.

I much rather prefer doing the Battle Tower to get items since you have more control and more varied battles. And the sad thing is that Sword removed the ability to do co-op Battle Tower runs. Making Dynamax Raids the only Co-op activity 😭. As a kid, I loved doing Random Battles in the Battle Frontier with my cousins in older Pokemon games and it's a shame because with the improvements Sword makes to the combat, it would have been a blast.

With that said, how would I improve the Dynamax Raids if I could? Well one Idea would be to let the player choose their AI partners and/or bring their own Pokemon. Hell, I'd even be cool if it was just 2 of my Mons vs 2 Enemy Mons at once in a 2v2 (throwback to Gen 7 and Totem Battles) as my Corviknight and Togekiss on their own are more useful than any 4 other AI trainers).

One of the most controversial aspects of Gen 8 both prior to and during its release was "Dexit". For the first time in the series, a mainline Pokemon game would not have he National Dex present. Meaning only the Pokemon present in Galar would be obtainable in in the game. You can't even transfer from Pokemon from places like Home into Sword if they aren't in the Galar Dex.

Technically, this isn't the first time Pokemon has had a "Dexit" in some form. Gen 3 had a case where Pokemon weren't transferable from Gens 1 and 2 due to the differences in data and hardware between the gens. And if you wanted to complete the Pokedex, you had to buy multiple games and accessories across both the GBA and GameCube. But at least there, all the Pokemon at least existed in the game's code. You could trade over an "unobtainable Pokemon" and have it work just fine.

While I am not fond of this decision in Gen 8, There are some positives I can see. There are 1000+ Pokemon (including alternate forms) which would be difficult to maintain never mind improve in every single game. The reason why a game like Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee can give so many unique traversal animations to all of the Pokemon present is because it only has to account for like 160-ish Pokemon (including forms and variants). And from a competitive perspective, a smaller Pokedex resets some of the Power Creep and allows some underused Mons to shine. Sejun Park's famous Pachurichu, for example, was used because it was used in a limited Dex format where there weren't other users of Follow Me and Nuzzle. And from what I hear, in Scarlet and Violet, Murkrow is once again in the spotlight for being one of the few good Prankster users.

But I still feel the benefits of a National Dex are worth it, especially from a casual perspective. A common defence used for the National Dex is "every Pokemon is someone's favourite". Which I guess is sentimental and true but I always found this one a rather weak argument because it can be applied to anything from any game. Like "Call of Duty should carry every gun from every prior game to every new game because every gun is someone's favourite". Yeah, but some guns may not fit in with the aesthetic of a certain game and/or only add to the confusion and tedium of the Meta (see Warzone when it combined with Vanguard).

A much better argument I feel, is that without a National Dex, a Pokemon game is isolated to only being able to directly communicate with its partner game and nothing else. As a kid, I remember having Diamond and being able to battle and trade with my cousins who had Heartgold and Soulsilver. I sent over cool Sinnoh Mons they couldn't get and really wanted like Luxray, Starraptor, Gastrodon and Abomasnow. While they sent me mons they really didn't have much use for like Articuno, Ampharos and Mewtwo. A Platinum player and Soulsilver player could work together and even play through the Battle Frontier together.

Gen 8 marks the first time such a thing isn't really possible anymore. Sword and Shield can only directly communicate with Sword and Shield. Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee can only directly communicate with Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl with BDSM. Pokemon Home can act as intermediary for trading at least but all of the other multiplayer features are limited to their respective games. I feel this robs Pokemon games of a cool aspect they once had, that sense of a generation being connected.

 

As for the world itself, I'm quite mixed on Galar as a region. Many of the towns are aesthetically pleasing if a little barren on content (I'll talk about this more later). 

The Wild Area is the game's new open world segment. And it's OK. I like that there are Pokemon physically wandering around in the overworld and you can just chill and do stuff like collect items and Watts and do Races and Raids. Gives the game a bit of a change of pace. It does get kinda bland after a while as it is really plain. A common criticism directed at the Wild Area I've heard is regards to how the weather changes erratically. Personally, I'm not that bothered by that. For one, when I was a kid living in Ireland, it was a common joke that the weather changes erratically. And Secondly, in the case of Sword, different weather houses different Pokemon. And many of the suggestions I've heard to "fix this" would cause other problems. Disconnecting weather from Pokemon Spawns makes weather no longer a useful metric for assessing the kind of Pokemon present. Making one consistent weather be present over the entire Wild Area pigeonholes the kinds of Pokemon that can spawn, reducing variety. Making a larger Wild Area so there are more "transitional areas" would only make a more diluted map. The way the Wild Area currently is, at least makes some attempt to address a criticism I've had of how some prior Pokemon games housed Pokemon. In many past Pokemon games, the kind of habitat influenced what kind of Pokemon would be present which often limited the variety of Pokemon available. For example, there aren't a lot of Ice types in Hoenn because the only place they spawn is in Shoal Cave, the designated Ice Type Area. Most of Hoenn's Fire Types are housed in Mt Pyre or Mt Chimney. Most of Hoenn's Ghost Types are isolated to Mt. Pyre. In contrast, since Hoenn is full of forests and water routes, grass, water, normal and flying types are extremely common and available all over the map rather than in specific locations. The Wild Area relying on wacky weather spread out over a somewhat large location means more rare types like Fire, Ice, Dragon and Ghost are more freely available sooner and in a more convenient area making repeat playthroughs using entirely new teams much more varied.

Also, it can be rather hilarious having a battle at night that somehow involves Psychic Terrain and "Harsh Sunlight". I love that.

A bit of a tangent but one of the things I always liked about Pokemon is how accessible its controls are. Like, you can play most older Pokemon games with just a D-Pad and 3 face buttons at minimum. I remember as a kid injuring my wrist and being unable to play any games on my DS aside from Pokemon Diamond, Spider-Man 3 and Shrek The Third. Sword is 3D now and has camera controls so I guess that minimal control scheme is no longer feasible. Sword does have "casual controls" that allow a single Joycon to control the game which works fine when in routes and towns but isn't really great for the Wild Area as it lacks camera controls. And seeing as both Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet introduce more action elements to the open world, I don't expect Casual Controls to get much of an improvement going forward.

 

The Routes and caves are much less interesting. Often being simple and straightforward paths with very little maze or varied design. This is sadly a trend Sword continues from Gen 7 as past games often did this aspect better. Compare something like Chargestone Cave in Unova or even Mt Moon in Kanto as these somewhat large and winding caves with multiple floors, to Galar Mine 1 and 2 being quite basic. Even the Victory Road in Galar is just a single straight path with some trainers.

I feel this is a shame for a few reasons. For one, it dilutes the value of exploration since instead of actually having lots of knooks and crannies where resources like TMs could be hidden, it's often a very "what you see is what you get" kinda situation. In addition, it doesn't make the Wild Area feel more unique as both it and the routes/caves are navigated the same. And it feels quite redundant since the Escape Rope and Fast Travel are now essentially permanent Key Items anyway.

 

Another feature you can do is interact with your Pokemon while camping with them (something you can even do indoors which is quite funny). This feature feels it intends to be a successor to Pokemon Amie from X and Y as a way the player can pet and feed 6 of their Pokemon while adventuring throughout the world with them. And there are some neat touches like how you can play Fetch with your Pokemon, different Pokemon having different walking speeds and interactions. Like my Cinderace Roaring and showing off while moving around quite fast. All while my Coalossel slowly shuffles like it's a literal pile of walking rocks. Some Pokemon even communicate and interact with each other. It is quite charming.

I do have some complaints. For one, there is a cooking minigame you can do to make some Curry that can provide free XP and HP to your team. But the minigame can get quite tedious with how much you have to quickly rotate the stick and mash buttons for the highest quality curries. And since my Joycons are already starting to get drift, it's probably not a wise inclusion. I often found it was faster to just fast travel to a Pokemon Center, heal up there and fly back than use the Minigame which is a shame because I would have really liked to use the Camping feature instead. Another issue was that there aren't that many interactions or things to do so I rarely used the the camping feature for more than like, 45 minutes tops over my entire playthrough. I suppose that's the consequence of having 400+ Pokemon present in a single game. Still, I am surprised Nintendo never released an "Nintendogs meets Pokemon" spinoff game that took this concept further with only a handful of Pokemon. Like, I imagine a game where you could pet, feed groom and play with an Eevee or Bulbasaur would probably be pretty popular but I digress.

 

Onto towns. And I feel Galar is generally OK in this area. As someone who lived in Dublin, Ireland for much of my childhood, I often felt a sense of nostalgia looking at some of the UK based architecture in towns. Many towns often look interesting but are somewhat limited in having things to do in them or lack any interesting lore or tidbits from the NPCs that live in them. As a result, the towns here often feel forgettable. As an example, compare Hulbury in Galar with Olivine in Johto. Both are portside towns with lighthouses. But I find Olivine more interesting because you have the whole additional quest with the Lighthouse and the Ampharous that powers the Lighthouse in addition to the Gym Fight. Whereas Hulbury just has the Gym and nothing else.

Not to say that Galar's towns are all bad. I like that some towns have small side quests that encourage you to explore. For example, in Circhester, there's a hotel with tourists you can fight, in Motostoke, you come across 2 kids who say they've lost their Mincino and want you to find him. They tell you "he likes water, makes a 'mwop' sound and will come when you whistle". My first guess was to head to the river surrounding Motostoke and look around there. But there was nothing so I decided to just head to Stadium to complete the Gym challenge instead. On the way, I noticed there were 2 fountains next to the stadium tucked to the side. I went to one and there was a "bwop" speech bubble next to one. I whistled and some policeman came out of the fountain. Said he wasn't a Mincino and gave me a potion for my troubles. I then when to the other fountain, there was a "mwop" speech bubble, I whistled and the Mincino did come out and head to his trainers.

I like stuff like this. It adds some variety and gameplay to the towns while keeping navigation brief. It's a shame they are the exception rather than the norm.

 

Bit of an aside. But a common criticism directed at Pokemon games by many people, especially 3D ones, is that their towns are too small physically. I don't believe that's fair.

For one, I feel this misses the point of such towns in JRPGs, of which Pokemon still is. Towns in JRPGs are made for 2 purposes, to act as a sanctuary to recover and restock after having resources drained after routes and dungeons, and to progress the story. Essentially, they are the "take a quick breather before setting out onto danger" parts of the game. Making Pokemon towns physically bigger wouldn't create more engaging gameplay, it would space out what's already there and risk making the experience more boring. That was my complaint with Dragon Quest 11. It had massive detailed towns for a JRPG, but still had the same skeleton of "use it to prepare, do some side quests and then set out". So I was quite bored during much of DQ11 as a result. Larger towns work better when the game has more complex gameplay to support it. Something like Skyrim would benefit from larger towns because the player can converse with NPCs with deep dialogue trees, break into homes, steal stuff, do stealth etc. Something like GTA would benefit since it creates more space and tools for the sandbox to play with. In Pokemon's case, historically, they are perfectly fine with smaller towns since they serve their purpose without drawing the experience. They provide a chill place to relax after dangerous routes, offer some side quests and characters to chill with before you repeat the cycle.

In Pokemon Sword, yes, the towns are small. But that's not a flaw. The Flaw is more that they don't have much in them compared to towns from something like Unova.

The Story.

Sword's base game has a similar premise to that of its predecessors. You start in a small town, you get your starter and your rival. You set out to get the Gym Badges to be able to challenge the Champion. There's an evil team and antagonist you have to stop along the way.

I have said this before, but I don't have a problem with Pokemon's basic story structure or premise. It works as a nice way to get the player out into the world and exploring. The player character doesn't need a strong personal motivation to do that. My issue with Gen 6 and onward is that they tend to "expand" the story by adding lots of cutscenes and interruptions to an otherwise brief story which I feel has the opposite effect of tanking the pacing since often no new information is revealed or progress is made. I remember this quite a bit in ORAS compared to Emerald. Emerald's "cutscenes" and dialogue boxes were quite brief. Generally getting to the point and letting you continue on. ORAS often added more dialogue such with the encounters with Steven Stone or Archie/Maxie that still gives the same information but pads it out.

Sword Sadly continues this trend with plenty of unskippable cutscenes (despite there being an option in the menu to skip cutscenes) that really didn't need to be this long. The story was at its best when it was being hands off and letting me go about the Gym Challenge and talking with people myself along the way.

Hop as a rival was decent with a surprisingly relatable story. He's a dude that spent his whole life preparing for a role. His family are already really proud of his older Brother Leon for being champion and Hop feels like he's hurting his brother's reputation with his losses so he's definitely under a lot of pressure. Hop's putting in all the effort to be the best despite not being the best. He does stuff like switching out and training up an entirely new team whenever he loses to you (I feel it would have sealed the deal if he also ditched his starter, showing his desperation). And here you are, essentially taking his life's work from him effortlessly because you are the main character. I'm reminded a little of the plot of Monsters University here with how Mike was doing his best to be a scarer but being unable to due to lacking the natural talent of other monsters. Hop is the first rival in Pokemon I really felt bad beating because I've been in his shoes before of being outclassed in something I'm passionate about and trying my best to be good at despite my flaws by someone with seemingly God given natural talent. If Sword had branching paths where if you lose to Hop he becomes Champion, I'd gladly take the L there.

That aside, one of my criticisms with Pokemon games is that despite their massive wealth of deep and intricate systems and options for combat, the games never teach you or even hint that exists. Often relying on simple "Wow, you used a Super effective move there. Good Job". Which makes the Post Game Battle Towers feel like a completely different game when the training wheels suddenly come off with no warning and make people complain the base game doesn't evolve or is too basic. When I first played Sword, I was expecting Hop to turn this "You use Super Effective Hits" around on me as a way to teach the player new things through Hop. As an example, what if in one battle, Hop goads you into using Ember on his Grookey. You do so and it turns out he had an Occo Berry or a Weakness Policy in addition Max Sp Def EV investment. Hop then brags that even though "you may know Type Matchups, I know there's more than that".

I wish Sword did something like that as stuff like this would have really improved both the story and gameplay here. For gameplay, it gives the base game more of a challenge (the base game is a bit too easy) and teaches the player more mechanics. And for story, it shows how Hop is trying to go out of his way to improve by implementing competitive strats against you. Making his loses sting even more since he couldn't even beat you despite doing cool stuff like that.

Imagine if every time you faced against Hop, he tried out a new stratgedy against you that often took advantage of you blindly just clicking super effective moves. In addition to using berries and Weakness Policy, he could have used a Zoarak with Nasty Plot to trick you into using Psychic moves against it. Or he has a really bulky team that used Trick Room to be able to turn the tables on you. It was a missed opportunity to not go all out here. I understand Pokemon is a game for children but prior games did these things before. B2W2 even had difficulty options for those who wanted more of a challenge (granted, unlocking them was convoluted but it showed these games could often be more challenging and use more of their depth).

A common criticism of Sword's story is directed towards Chairman Rose and his plotline. And I'm not going to argue against them. Rose's role in the story isn't done well. And I feel Sword is another example of how such over the top and "epic" storylines don't really work in Pokemon.

This is a bit of a long section but bear with me here. So developers of Pokemon games like Masuda have given interviews where they've talked about the world and stories of Pokemon. In particular that Pokemon's world is "a subtle version of utopia" and that "Hoenn was based on Masuda's childhood memories of going on vacation on Kyushu". Essentially, Pokemon games are generally going for a "nostalgic childhood vacation with your pets through a perfect world" feel. And the games really commit to this vibe. The Pokemon world has free healthcare. In Hoenn, we see examples of how people are concerned for the environment that places like Whismer Tunnel got shut down the moment it was clear there was ecological concerns. Gen 6 has people creating infinite reusable and clean energy with no downsides whatsoever. In Alola, you can visit a police station where the cops are kinda bored because there's nothing for them to do. There are no systemic problems in crime, housing, overpopulation, resources, energy, environmentalism etc. Hell, even food isn't a problem everyone is vegan (and they don't eat grass types). You won't even see many farms of livestock in Pokemon.

This isn't a criticism. This sort of vibe gives Pokemon games a really comfy feel. Even if there are some darker stuff in Pokedex descriptions or in the Manga, they are almost always disconnected from the games. You won't see any Drifloons stealing children or Eevees crushing people despite what their Pokedex entries say.

But this does limit the kind of stories that would work well in this kind of world. You can see an example of this in ORAS with Archie and Maxie. In a vacuum, their motivations make sense. One of them wants to expand the Earth's landmass to create more room for humans to build and expand. The other wants to return the world to a state fit for Pokemon untainted by human progress. But the problem is that the world they live in doesn't have the problems these actions would be solutions to. Hoenn doesn't have a problem with overpopulation or resources that would prompt Maxie. Nor is there such disregard for the environment to prompt Archie.

As a result, Archie and Maxie aren't great antagonists and their story is unengaging. Their motives are so disconnected from the world that there's nothing you can really latch onto. And even defeating them is unsatisfying because no progress can be made because the Status Quo is perfect anyway. It's a similar case for Cyrus, Lysandre and Rose.

This is why I feel Pokemon antagonists are at their best when they have smaller scale and more personal plans, generally related to exploiting Pokemon. Like, Team Rocket are great villains because they are essentially the mafia. They profit off stealing Pokemon. Their motive is greed. You can understand why someone would do that and they do leave behind consequences of their actions like Slowpokes missing their tails or missing Pokemon. So taking them down actually "fixes something that is broken". Same with Ghetsis and Co in Gen 5.

Back to Pokemon Sword, this is the main reason why I feel Rose's story falls flat. Like Archie and Maxie, Rose is concerned about a problem disconnected from the Utopian world of Pokemon. And one that was already solved in prior games. In order to make Rose's story work, you'd either need to put cracks in that Utopia, such as Galar actually having energy and sustainability issues, or change Rose's motivations.

One idea I have to do the latter is to kinda take inspiration from the Isle of Armour DLC. Why not have Rose and Leon in cahoots as the antagonists? Have Rose be the one fixing Leon's matches so he remains the unbeatable champion. You can have Leon either be in on this and have him cheat against the player (which would create an interesting dynamic for Hop to go through) or have Leon be oblivious and join your side so he can have a proper fight as a proper champion. This would shift the conflict to something more connected to the Pokemon world.

Switching topics but this is why I like Team Yell in Sword. They are just Marnie's rabid fans which justifies their status as jobber grunts. The rest of the story with Bede, the other Gym Leaders and even Swordbert and Shieldbert, I enjoyed.

As Galar is based on the UK, I really like how the Pokemon League here resembles more of an official spectator sport. And the game does a neat job with this idea from the stadiums and crowds and official League Cards and merch, to more subtle things like how Gym Leaders deal with their fame as essentially professional athletes. Like, you have Leon and Raihan that are show offs and play to the crowd. You have Alaster that is a lot more shy and scared of the attention he gets as a Gym Leader. You have Opal that's "been in the game so long" that she's past all the formalities. You have Kabu and Bede that take the competitive side more seriously. It's neat.

The DLC

Isle of Armour

Unlike past Pokemon games which often had a new version or re-release come out with features that should have been in the base game, Sword instead has 2 expansion packs that do that instead. On the one hand, I do feel this is the more consumer friendly option as it improves your base game and retains your progress instead of requiring you to buy a new game and play through familiar content again. On the other hand, there is no real "Complete Edition" of the game for sale. You kinda have to buy the base game and DLC separately at full price even if you're a late adopter like me.

Onto the first expansion, The Isle of Armour which takes place on an island away from Galar. It introduces a new Wild Area with around a 100 returning Pokemon, items like Max Soup to allow any compatible Pokemon to Gigantamax, a new campaign, and a way to spend your Watts to get more items easily and more stuff.

This expansion is...... alright. I like the story of Klara cheating to become a poison type gym leader. The Dojo and Mustard are cool. The new Wild Area with this expansion kinda feels like more of the same so it wasn't really that fun to navigate. I honestly felt a bit bored going through this.

I was excited for the Towers challenge. You have to bring a single Kubfu through a gauntlet of a 5 floor tower in order to evolve it into Urshifu. The game hypes this up as being this gauntlet and recommends your Kubfu is at least level 70 before entering.  Since this is post game and is paid, I was expecting a real gauntlet. That the game would go all out here with like asking me to perform a Solo Elite 4 run or something like that. I prepared by having my Kubfu ready with Leftovers, Choice Band, Life Orb and a few Focus Sashes on hand to swap as the fights progressed.  Ready for whatever challenge the tower had....But you just fight one easy mon per floor and move on. I chose the Tower of Waters and had to fight such absolute monsters like...... Krabby and Psyduck 🙁.

I feel this is a real missed opportunity here to make obtaining Urshifu special. The whole point of this story beat is for the player to bond with Kubfu, make him more confident and conquer their flaws to become worthy of evolving. Plus, this is a paid DLC that requires you to beat the base game in order to even be here. I'm not asking for full on competitive teams here to 6v1 me (though that would be cool) but at least a 3v1 every floor with Mons Kubfu would struggle against like Jellicent or Swoobat. This would make both the story and gameplay in synch here as you have to succeed with a Kubfu against a stacked deck, showing your resolve, skill and bond (or overlevel like crazy which is at least something).

Once you complete 99% of this DLC does the DLC finally get good. You have a challenging battle against Mustard which is really fun. Completing that unlocks a new Battle Tower-esque mode called "Restricted Sparring" where you have to enter 3 Pokemon of a certain type to get at least a 5 win streak and win BP along the way. The Catch being that any damage sustained is preserved between rounds and you only get 2 heals total. I love this mode because of how it impacts team building and playstyles. Normally in these Battle Tower-esque modes, I tend to play it safe with a Suicide Lead and a Setup sweeper. But the added restraints of a single type + limited heals really mix it up. For my first run, I decided to try and get the 5 win streak with Flying Types since I already had 3 good ones in reserve in the PC. I decided to lead with Choice Specs Togekiss EV-ed with HP and Special Attack with Draining Kiss, Air Slash, Aura Sphere and Ancient Power. The main tactic being that Draining Kiss would hopefully keep Togekiss healthy and do decent damage. Leftovers Corviknight EV-ed with Defense and HP with U-Turn, Hone Claws, Brave Bird and Steel Wing as a bulky pivot and something I could switch into Rock and Steel Types (stuff poor Togekiss would struggle against). My 3rd Mon was Shell Bell Gyarados EV-ed with Attack and Speed with Dragon Dance, Waterfall, Ice Fang and Bulldoze since I couldn't use duplicate items and needed a physical attacker.

Honestly, I could see myself coming back to this mode to get the 5 win streak for all the other types. It's that fun. It's just a shame that such a cool mode is the endgame for a rather mid DLC.

-The Crown Tundra

The second expansion for Sword takes the player to the south of Galar which consists of a quiet, snowy area and more typical forest-y plain areas reminiscent of the Wild Area. It's also just Ok. The overall level design is a bit tighter with more items hidden around and more things to explore but it's still relatively plain. I would have loved something more like Snowpoint City from Sinnoh where you have these long routes blanketed by snow and extreme weather. Perhaps even have deep snow you can trudge through slowly, fly over or "burrow through" each with their own pros and cons. Instead it plays more like the Wild Areas of main Galar and the Isle of Armour. One rather odd thing I noticed in both DLCs is how few trainer battles there are. Like, if I recall correctly, the only mandatory trainer battle in the Crown Tundra is the one you have with Peony when you arrive for the first time. There aren't any more. Not even regular trainers hanging around in the new Wild Are. It's odd.

I found the story here sorta engaging. I love Peony as this fun dad who just wants to have a fun vacation with their kid who doesn't want to be with him so you join him instead. I love how he puts so much into this adventure with his crayon drawings of clues he got from watching TV and his dad jokes. Like, when he gives you the quest to go to the Legendary Tree so you can start to hunt down Moltres, Zapdos and Articuno, you have both this terrible crayon drawing of the tree and this extremely cheesy and low quality MS Paint style text that pops up and says "The Legendary Tree of the Legendary Three". I love that. Number #1 Dad Right there.

I do wish the story was more this "vacation with a fun dad" affair. Caleryx is ok but I didn't find his interactions as engaging as Peony's. And after a certain point, Peony just goes back to the house and doesn't really come up as much in any of the expeditions. It's a shame. Still, I love you can talk to him about the Legendaries you catch and he gives his opinion on them. Like how Registeel looks like a Bowling Ball or how Regirock is shaped like the Gym Leader Milo. That was funny.

In terms of gameplay, there are a few new additions. The Crown Tundra reintroduces Roaming Legendaries. When the game did this, I groaned since I never liked this as past Pokemon games often made this process quite annoying and tedious. It wasn't fun having my Crobat Fly all over Jotho/Hoenn/Sinnoh to check specific grass patches/dive spots/caves for an Entei/Raikou/Latios/Latais/Mesprit/Uxie that would immediately flee. Assuming they were even there in the first place and didn't relocate during the Fast Travel. And while some games did provide some tools to make this easier (like Sinnoh providing their locations on the map, or moves like Mean Look trapping them or using a repel trick to avoid needing to Fast Travel), it wasn't ever really enjoyable. To my surprise, Crown Tundra makes this quite enjoyable. The game tells you upfront where each of the Legendaries went. When you are near them, you can hear their cry. And you can physically see them in the overworld and have to chase them down. You don't need to trap them as they won't flee when a battle starts. And you can reset the chase if you lose them.

Zapdos in particular had quite a fun chase that had me weaving through tall grass and other overworld Pokemon and trying to cut off and intercept his route. I am glad I did a few races and got those bike upgrades earlier. I wouldn't even mind if a new regular Pokes had a few chases like this in order to battle them. Like, imagine needing to chase down a Liepard or Miltank to catch them.

I do have a criticism of accessibility here. My hearing isn't the best so I appreciate it when games provide alternatives to audio cues. I have been playing Far Cry 6 recently and that game has an option for the subtitles to both caption events like explosions and gunfire as well as provide their direction and distance from you. I wish more games had something like this.

The only one I felt was annoying was Articuno. Articuno's gimmick here is that it only spawns randomly at locations. Once you approach it, it splits into 3 clones with one of them being the real one. It then spins around really quickly. If you select the wrong clone, Aritcuno flies away and can be really tricky to find. If you pick the correct clone, then you battle it like normal. This took me a lot of retries. I feel a better version would have been if you picked the wrong clone, you still fight Articuno but it gets an Omni-boost or something.

Also, Bit of an aside, but what is the lore reason for there being Galarian versions of Kanto Legendaries with different typings and appearances? Aren't there only supposed to be one of each Legendary as that's why they are Legendary in the first place?

The other main legendaries you can obtain as part of the main story are the Regis. Regirock, Regice and Registeel, along with a choice of either newcomers Regieleki or Regidrago (you can get Regiggas if you have all 5 Regis in your party first). You need to find certain temples hidden in the Crown Tundra and solve a puzzle to be able to access them. The puzzles and temples are a lot easier than they were in Hoenn games. There's no braille to decipher here, or really obtuse and unintuitve answers like "Dig Here", "walk in a specific way" or "bring a Wailord and Relicanth in your first and last party slots". Instead it's "whistle", "bring a Cryagonal (that spawns nearby anyway)", and "hold an Everstone". Not exactly as challenging.

I'm mixed on this approach. I like that Hoenn had these super obtuse requirements for obtaining the Regis. Really made them feel more mysterious and unique. It added to that "playground rumour" aspect of Pokemon and really made you go "oh S@$t" when it did end up working. And it made kids barely a year off gaining sentience learn braille.

On the other hand, I can see the value in making it easier. At this point in Sword, the player has access to at at least 2 legendaries as part of the main story (one of whom is broken enough to be in the "Anything Goes Tier" twice). And has 10+ legendaries minimum to catch as part of the DLCs. Almost all of whom are more useful in competitive than the Regis (minus Regieleki whose speed stat makes it amazing in VGC). It would be rather annoying to have to go through an obtuse set of systems to catch legendaries that even regular Pokes can outdo in PVP. Plus, we have the internet now so any mystery would be solved near instantly anyway.

The other main gameplay feature are these new Max Raid Dens called Dynamax Adventures. And remember 1000 pages ago when I criticized regular Dynamax Raids? Dynamax Adventures corrects many of them. It's set up where instead of bringing your own Pokemon, you choose Rental Pokemon and Team up with either other players or NPCs and battle through a series of 3 Dynamax Raid Battles. Before Every Battle, you have a choice of which pathway to go down. Each Pathway is marked with what type of Pokemon you'd have to battle and what items or help is present. Damage Sustained is carried over between Battles and you can only heal depending on what Items or Help you find along pathways. Once you complete a Raid Battle, you can choose to capture the defeated Pokemon and swap them out with your current rented Pokemon. And unlike regular Raid Battles, every catch is guaranteed (I got some good use out of my 30x Nest Balls here). Once you get to the final Raid Battle, it's against a Legendary Pokemon. You lose if your team suffers 4 KOs total at any point throughout the adventure. So if you get 3KOs on the first Battle and 1 on the second one, that attempt is finished. What's cool is that if you make it to the end and lose against the legendary, you can choose to note down that legendary and challenge for that one again immediately instead of needing to wait for the RNG to select it. Which is good because I needed 4 attempts in a row to get Landorus. Each attempt also gives you Dynite Ore which can be used to purchase some really useful items like Vitamins and Ability Pills.

This approach does address many of the issues with regular Dynamax Raids. Damage Persisting between fights, the multiple pathways and being able to have some control give the experience more fun and challenge in planning out how to complete a run. For example, if you know the Final Legendary at the end of a run will be a Dragon Type, the challenge then becomes trying to select pathways that give you a good matchup against that Legendary. And then selecting which pathways will get you to those pathways given your current team. If your current Rented Mon gets low on health, it might be better to replace him with one you got from a Battle that has full health to preserve your Lives for the run. And Losses aren't as frustrating given how you can Note and rechallenge Legendaries. So this is the best implementation of Raid Battles.

I do have some criticisms.  Firstly, while your team is much improved (nobody is bringing an absolute dead tier Mon), many of your starting choices aren't exactly ideal. Some of them are really good. Like a Drifblim that knows Will-O-Wisp, Psychic, Tailwind and Thunderbolt. That's a good set that lets it provide some nice team support, debuff a physical attacker and has decent coverage. Others don't really make much sense and you won't really know what moves or ability that Pokemon has until you select it. Such as an Abomasnow with the Ability Soundproof, not Snow Warning, and the moves Aurora Veil (which it can't immediately use since it doesn't have Snow Warning), Grassy Glide (which doesn't reliably guarantee the increased priority since you don't have a reliable way of immediately setting up Grassy Terrain), Avalanche (A -4 priority Ice Move with 60 Base Power), and Round (a base 60 power normal type move). Like, what is this moveset?! It doesn't play to Abomasnow's strengths in any way. Like seriously, give Abomasnow Snow Warning so it can instantly use Aurora Veil. Then give it Blizzard so it can fire 100% Accurate Blizzards and do some serious damage.  If you want to give it a physical Ice Type Move, give it either Ice Shard so at least it always gets priority or Ice Punch for the raw power and neutral priority over Avalanche. Grassy Glide is ok but I feel that without a reliable way to get recovery (and the fact that the opposing Dynamax Pokemon will probably outspeed and set up many buffs anyway or overide the terrain), a better option would be Giga Drain or Seed Bomb. And instead of Round, which isn't really useful for coverage, give it Earthquake, or Brick Break or Bulldoze or Earth Power or Giga Impact or Leach Seed or Outrage or Rock Slide or Toxic. Any of these moves would be an improvement.

Generally, you do usually at least get a Mon with a couple decent moves but lack coverage that play to their strengths. Like you can get an Absol with Night Slash and Slash, not bad physical moves that Absol can use well with its 130 Base Attack...... and Special Moves like Fire Blast and Blizzard coming off a 75 Special Attack. Or a Crawduant with Lash Out, Swords Dance and Facade ...... and Muddy Water instead of Waterfall. 

My guess is that since the player needs to defeat these mons first in order to use them, they didn't want to make the mons too hard to beat? But given that some mons do have good movesets, it's an inconsistent answer. Maybe there could have been a few "temporary TMs" you could find to customize some of these Mons during a run.

A bigger issue is that if you're playing with NPCs, you can't communicate or order them on what to use. And they love swapping mons even if it's the wrong decision. So it's not uncommon for a team that starts strong to have a less useful team by the final battle.

Still, it is mostly fun and enjoyable.

-Other Stuff

I really like the Gym Leaders and their challenges.

The Soundtrack is really good. The Battle Tower Theme in particular goes hard. With the exception of the Wild Battle Theme. I absolutely hated that one and would mute my Switch whenever I went into a wild battle.

I wish the Poke Jobs feature was faster. It gets boring sitting through all the animations and selecting stuff. I also wish I could send more Mons at once. Perhaps even make it like a version of the day care where you can leave them as long as you want and when they come back, you get a proportional amount of rewards.

I wish this game had a NG+ feature where you could replay the story (hopefully be able to skip cutscenes) ) but every trainer is now level 70+ using more powerful Mons. Would have been a great way to replay the game using a new team.

-Conclusion.

I don't love Sword + its DLC as much as I wanted to. But I do really like Sword + its DLC. I love the additions to the combat, the Gyms, the aesthetic of Galar and the Post-game content of the DLCs. The game's quality of life and streamlining make it hard to play older Pokemon games after playing Sword. I plan on one day coming back to the game to complete some of the post game content. But the game is bogged down by an occasionally tedious story, a rather bland world at times, and odd mix where some of its best content is either chopped into odd places, missing entirely, behind more tedium or behind poorly executed content. The fact you have to buy the DLC to get a proper experience makes it harder to recommend. At times, Sword is close being the best Pokemon game ever made with the heights it can reach. It rarely becomes terrible or a pain to play but but tends to average out to more of a C+ to a B experience. At the very least, I will say this is the best Pokemon game on Switch as of right now.

Thinking about GTAV's endings and how to improve them.

 

Hello everyone. Recently, I was re-watching GTAV's story on Youtube and was thinking about the endings. One thing I noticed is that many people choose C and C is widely considered the Canon Ending. Which is fair but I wonder why people didn't choose A or B as much. I feel the idea behind them are pretty good but the execution is lacking but almost there to being great.

Let's start with Ending A: Something Sensible: Kill Trevor.

The idea behind this ending is actually quite solid. Trevor has been such a loose canon and liability that he's jeopardizing the future of the squad here. Franklin and Micheal are using that as a justification to kill Trevor.

And the first 3/4 of GTAV's story does a really good job in showing how there's truth to that. For example, In the mission "Three's Company", he refuses to evacuate Micheal because he hasn't killed enough IAA agents to which Micheal shouts "I knew you were a liability You Turd!". In "Caida Libre", he kidnaps Patrcia because he felt he wasn't compensated fairly by Madrazo. This results in Micheal getting excited from Los Santos and the plan to rob the Union Depository getting put on hold until after Derailed. Even the whole Merriweather Heist. The whole point of that mission was to show how Trevor wasn't suited to be a leader.

But I have 2 issues with the way Ending A itself plays out. The first is that Franklin doesn't have any reason to kill Trevor (I will discuss this more later) and that Trevor was essentially on "good behaviour" for the past couple missions. I feel this dilutes the feeling of "Trevor's going to ruin this" that is justifying the mission.

I feel it would have been better if during the past couple of missions, Trevor continues to make mistakes. Like, let's say he deviates from the objectives and picks fights with the police or Merriweather or the Triads and isn't doing a good job at keeping a low profile. You can a go a step further and have him lose some of the money along the way (it wouldn't be the first time. See the Merriweather raid). So now, that's something Weston brings up to Franklin/The Player as a possible reason when it's time to make a choice. That if he doesn't kill Trevor, he could bring down more heat and lose the money. So even if the player likes Trevor and hates Weston, they may be tempted by the Money and end up rationalizing it the same way Franklin is doing it now. A rare time when both the player and characters are in synch in GTAV's story.

Now for Ending B: The Time's Come: Kill Micheal.

The intention behind this ending is to make Micheal's story come full circle. He starts the game by betraying his crew in Prologue so he could escape the criminal life and retire with his money and keep his loved ones safe. So the game here ends with Franklin betraying Micheal so he can escape the Criminal Life and retire with his money.

But the obvious problem here is that once again, Franklin doesn't have any reason to kill Micheal. And unlike Trevor, Micheal isn't as much of a liability and loss canon that you can rationalize killing him. Plus, the story spends a good amount of time showing how Micheal and Franklin end up caring for each other. An especially poignant moment is in the "Paleto Score Heist" where Micheal pushes Franklin into the train first for his safety despite Franklin not having the money on him. Showing how Micheal cares for Franklin here.

This would be a hard ending to improve and justify given the story so far. But if I had to make suggestions, I feel the story should have had it where Franklin's life gets significantly harder as a result of Micheal's situation with the FIB and he can't really take it anymore. This is something the game tries to sorta do. The line Frankin gives afterwards is "You wake up one day, and your legs... They just give, and you just can't run anymore" but I feel it's not enough.

Like, imagine if because Franklin is associated with Micheal, there are goons sent to his house just like the mission "Meltdown". Or imagine if there were attacks on Tanisha, Tonya, Lamar and Denise. Or that Franklin now needs to keep a low profile and can't enjoy much of the money he earns now because of the situation.

So in the ending choice, Ending B could be framed by Haines as "look, you're a smart kid. But I know working with De Santa has made your life much harder. You have to deal with constant attacks on you and your family. If you kill Micheal, We promise they'll stop. We'll even pay you [extremely large amount of money] if you do it. Plus, consider this. Micheal already betrayed his crew that considered him family once to save his own skin. What makes you think he won't do the same to you?".

I think this would be sufficient to make ending B feel more enticing.

Now for the fan favourite: Ending C: The Third Way: Deathwish.

The idea here is solid on paper. The squad put aside their differences and survive an onslaught designed to kill all of them from the combined forces of their enemies. Then, they split off and kill each other's antagonists as to not get the other suspected. Like, everyone knows Franklin has beef with Stretch. If Franklin were to go and ice him, everyone would likely go after him. But since Stretch's crew don't know who Micheal is and Micheal has no connection to Stretch, if Micheal kills them, then Franklin isn't a suspect and Micheal can disappear more easily after doing the deed.

My problem here is more the timing here. The way the mission happens makes it appear that the squad could have done this at any time. That they didn't need to wait until the end to do this and it wasn't that much of a stretch to do it.

This would be hard to improve as I feel it would involve tweaks to much of GTAV's story before this but if I had to make suggestions:

The first would be the premise of the main plot. Currently, GTAV doesn't really have a "main story progressing events" and the characters don't really have goals to push towards. They kinda just do whatever the next mission says.

So the first change would be that from after the mission "Fame or Shame", Micheal's goal is to rob the Union Depository. He tells Trevor and Lester not to go kill Weston and Haines just yet because with the heists they offer them at first, they can save some of the money to use for the eventual Union Depository Heist. This would explain why Trevor wouldn't go and immediately murder Haines or something since they need to play them for the Big One.

The second change would be during the mission itself, the squad use some of the tools and gear they collected along the way like the Juggernaut Suits or Getaway Car or Helicopter. This would better indicate that they are prepared now to stand against the Deathwish.

So yeah, these are my suggestions for improving GTAV's endings. What are y'all thoughts on these?

Robbery Bob 1 and 2: Really fun mobile puzzle/stealth games

Hello everyone. Today I want to quickly go over 2 stealth puzzle games on mobile I really liked and recently completed. Robbery Bob 1: Man of Steal and Robbery Bob 2: Double Trouble

 

 Let's start with the first game. RB1 is a top down stealth puzzle game where you play as the titular Bob. The story has Bob getting into trouble and needing to help out a figure by breaking into houses and stealing a particular item and then escaping. Bob's basic controls are that you can slowly sneak by moving the left virtual stick, run by holding a Run button while moving which makes sound which nearby NPCs can hear and is limited by Bob's stamina. You also have buttons for any contextual actions like boxes to hide in or items to use. One cool ability Bob has is a "fast forward" button which speeds up the game allowing you to speed up some tedious parts of stealth games like waiting for an enemy to pass which keeps the game flowing well.

And that's mostly it. Most of the challenges in levels comes from the creative way levels are laid out. Levels contain multiple rooms containing various traps, cameras, guards, dogs etc. and from additional challenges within levels. If the player is seen, an alarm is triggered where guards come swarming in and if they catch Bob, the level ends and you have to retry. Levels are generally quite short, clocking in around less than 2 minutes each making retries fairly quick and painless.

Levels themselves can be quite fun to crack using Bob's basic moveset as you look for the pattern between guards and cameras and sneak past. Each level has 3 optional objectives that award bonus stars upon completion. These are to complete a level without ever getting spotted, steal all x items in the level and complete the level under a specified time. Though, I found that was pretty easy to do in RB1. I occasionally had to some replay levels to get the "find all items" one but for the most part, it was kinda easy to get all 3 bonus stars in one run. Still, the levels themselves are quite varied and the difficulty curve does ramp up well.

The game also gets a lot of mileage out of its basic moveset. For example, if you run into a door, Bob slams it open which can attract guards from far away allowing you to lure away guards from their posts. Or if a pet dog sees Bob, they will instantly take a liking to Bob and slowly walk towards him which barking which can draw attention. Bob would need to close a door on the dog to break line of sight which can solve certain puzzles in levels such as getting pet Dogs to follow Bob and bark to attract guards away from their posts. Guard Dogs chase Bob on sight and will cause a mission fail if they catch him so the trick is to have them chase Bob until their leash is extended and then wrap around so their leash gets tied around furniture in a level so they get stuck. Some Levels can have teleporters and conveyors which you have to push a box onto and hide in as it moves past the visions of certain cameras and guards.

Bob doesn't have any normal ways of taking out enemies so the game encourages the player to try and ghost their way through levels which is a lot of fun. There are optional items in the game like a decoy mouse which can lure enemies away or a rotten doughnut that if an NPC sees, they will consume it and then immediately run for the nearest restroom. These can be bought with the money Bob earns from stealing items during levels or purchases via microtransactions. There's also a basic upgrade system that allows Bob to upgrade his reach, sneaking speed and stamina with coins that do help make later levels more manageable.

Being a free to play game, the game has implemented some monetization practices. For one, the game quite likes to bombard you with frequent ads. I mostly played this game when my phone had WiFi turned off as a result. The other is that you can buy items and costumes to help as stated earlier. But fortunately, I never found them to be necessary. There are some additional level packs you can buy if you want but I found the base game to be more than sufficient for me.

The story is quite charming and silly. Namely consisting of Bob being forced to break into and steal various items for other characters such as Divorce papers, an MMO disc in beta (good luck playing that mate), leggings etc. Some of the comedy comes from Bob misinterpreting what was asked of him. Such as Bob mistaking what he's supposed to steal for a wedding shower and stealing shampoo. The story not being too serious does allow it to be a nice bit of levity in between levels. Each set of levels is broken up into chapters consisting of a different character Bob needs to help for whatever reason. Each Chapter also consists of a motion comic with no dialogue establishing what's going on (with some nice art) with the levels themselves containing basic but still charming dialogue between the characters.

So yeah, that's Robbery Bob 1: Man of Steal. The game also has a free to play sequel on mobile called Robbery Bob 2: Double Trouble. Sadly, there aren't 2 Bobs like the title would suggest. It feels like "More Robbery Bob content". Which isn't a bad thing.

The first main change I found, and immediately disliked, were the controls. RB1 used a floating virtual stick which meant that no matter where your left thumb was, as long as it was somewhere to the left of the phone, you could control Bob's movement. But RB2 makes it such that the left stick is fixed to a specific point on the bottom left side of the screen. I found it rather hard at first to adjust since I would place my thumb a bit higher than where the controls were located and either Bob would not move or move up. I did eventually get used to it but I would have loved an option to switch to RB1's controls here.

Aside from that, RB2 is quite the step up in challenge and variety from the first game. The optional challenges that were quite easy to get in the first game are now much tighter in the sequel. Even getting the "complete under x seconds" one requires full on speedrun strats at times. I found myself often being happy just getting 1 or 2 stars and moving on.

Though, the game makes getting 3 stars more important now. Later missions now require a certain number of stars collected to be unlocked. As opposed to the prior game where just completing the level was enough. In addition, some levels you get 3 stars in unlock a "secret" version that you can replay with a modifier attached like "once you get the main treasure, Bob leaves footprints behind and makes loud noises", "Bob occasionally sneezes or falls asleep" or "Bob needs to collect puppies instead of treasure". These levels only judge you on time to complete. So there's a lot more content and challenge for the player this time around.

Levels are also more varied. Some levels have a new gimmick where Bob can mind control certain pet dogs using a machine and use them to draw attention and lure guards to certain rooms or buttons.

The game also changes how upgrades are handled. Instead of purchasing flat upgrades, you now collect suits/costumes that give an individual perk and upgrade that instead. Personally, I kinda dislike this change. It makes Bob feel weaker and less capable because you can only upgrade one of his traits at a time. Plus, given how expensive the other suits are and how much harder the levels are, it makes the experience a lot less fun.

 So yeah, that's the Robbery Bob games. They are also available on Steam and on Apple TV. I haven't played the Steam version but I have tried out the Apple TV version and found the text in that version to be scaled really small. As someone with rather poor eyesight, I wouldn't recommend that version.

 

Still, I'd recommend checking both games out. They are free and aren't too massive downloads. They are a really fun series of stealth puzzles. Just, make sure you have your WiFi switched off when you play them.

 

Next up for me is probably all of the Spider-Man games on Nintendo DS. See you then.