Having played 6-7 hrs of FC3 I'm ready to make some criticisms, in order of significance:
1. The opening scene/mission where you have to escape a camp chock full of heavily-armed pirates by being super-sneaky without getting shot in the back, kind of set the bar much, much higher in terms of challenge and intensity than any ensuing gameplay (thus far) has met.
2. The open world aspect is both a strength and a weakness, in that it encourages meandering from one too-easily won firefight to the next. About the only challenge in all this are the animals, which are a pretty interesting threat. However they are (mostly) easily killed with any automatic weapon.
3. The business of needing to "craft" your own "holsters" to open additional weapon slots. You can't shove a pistol down your pants? (NJ)
4. It doesn't seem possible to select the big-ass knife you are handed by the black dude that is available for e.g. stealth takedowns, when you are confronting attacking animals.
5. I've turned on 3 radio towers thus far. None were guarded.
6. "Your wallet is too full to hold any more money. You need to craft a bigger wallet."
7. I've done a fair bit of swimming. Though I've seen a few sharks in the water, none have attacked me.
8. Enemy gunmen mostly let you get the drop on them. Even when they open fire first and manage to land a few shots, you can just duck behind a rock, put a bandage on your wrist or pop your knuckles, then blow them away while they stand around shouting threats. Also usually very easy to flank them, as they frequently cluster in groups instead of spreading out.
Still think it's a very cool game though, and plan to play lots more. Gotta get a damn holster.
They mostly would apply to 5, tbh. Maybe not wallet (keep spending my money on helicopters so no idea if I need to craft a bigger one), but definitely first stealth mission is mad hard compared to the rest of the game so far.
It's very beautiful, but I've not replayed it. FC's quite good at radically different game endings & Primal doesn't offer that. similarly with 5.
Finally got two more weapon slots by slaughtering some goats and deer. After I got one more I equipped it with a bow, thinking I could hunt without drawing the pirates by gunfire. Fucked if I could hit the broadside of a barn with it, wound up using an AR, then killing all the pirates too. OK, after they killed me first.
Interesting thing: if you get an animal skin then die right after (even if you craft something with it), you lose the skin/crafted item and have to start the hunt over. BUT, you get an automatic ammo refill, so you don't have to go back to the coke machine (are we sure this isn't in America?).
I'm finally getting the hang of this bow and managed to kill a few pirates with it on the storm the beached freighter and get some radio code bullshit mission. So that felt good.
I ran into it pretty early on. Had to go somewhere to speak to a guy, came across a camp in the middle of the road and spent 20 minutes carefully sneaking around, taking them out until the camp was empty. Drove round the corner and spoke to the guy I had to see. Drove back again and literally less than 10 minutes since I'd been back at the camp, it was fully repopulated again.
I don't like doing things that turn out to be completely pointless 10 minutes later, so I removed the game and didn't play it any more after that.
Hasn't happened to me so far in FC3, except whenever/wherever there's a firefight, more pirates drive up in jeeps in several waves, with brief pauses between. Well, I just did the destroy the weapons cache mission, and instead of hanging around and cleaning up the lumber yard (at which point it's officially 'captured'?), I took off and when I looked behind me it seems to have been repopulated.
Actually it was pretty weird because (I thought) you're supposed to go in quiet and disable the alarms before the pirates have a chance to set them off. I tried to do that, but was spotted right away (thanks to my shit bow skills), they set off the alarm and I had a huge gunfight on my hands, expecting all the while for the mission to fail. But no, I blew up the cache and that was that.
Oh no, FC3 was fine for it. I completed that and found it pretty good. Not the absolute best game I've ever played, but much better than FC2.
Still enjoying FC3. It feels like the pirate bots are getting smarter as [my] time progresses. I gave up on the bow and suppressed pistol, and switched to suppressed SMG. Not as quiet, but way easier and more effective. The bow seems terribly underpowered, like a kiddie toy. I used to shoot a real, 40-lb. compound bow, not super-powerful but it didn't have nearly the drop-off. The story missions continue to be meh, though the rescue + escape from pirate prison was ok. Too many cut scenes. Open world stuff is great though.
Chug along to FC4. It's the best and the brightest.