Completed the game with about 60% achivements unlocked. I will be honest I did not expect the game to be so fun. It is basically farcry 2 but without the flamethrower and a cool sniper mechanics instead. You have an open world, that doesn't really bring anything other than having some boxes with collectibles hidden here and there, but it's enjoyable to drive around, the the setting is really well designed. The graphics over all hold up really well IMO. You can see the game has it's years, but it's still looking good. The story is decent, althought there were moments where I laughed because of the delivery. If you treat it as a pulpy soldier adventure it's okey. It's really good in fullfiling that macho man power fantasy actually and I liked that a lot to be honest. As for the gameplay it's really good. The gunplay is top notch, using the sniper rifle to clear out an outpost of the bad guys from afar is very satisfiing. You also have some cool tools at your disposal, like the drone, or special ammo to scout ahead. The locations of the missions are well designed, with many paths to your objective, which I appreciated a lot. I played on the middle difficulty and it was okey for me, not insanely hard, but not too easy, there were missions that I had to take multiple tries but was never frustrated bc I felt it wasdue to my mistakes and not the game being unfair. The enemy AI is okey, there some quirks ofc, but it's nothing you can abuse, In general they will react to bodies, sounds and will spot you if you are in the open. If you are sniping them, they will take cover and try to reach you without showing themselves. I was happy with that. Now there are some bad parts as well. The game crashed on me a couple of times, but other then that I did not experienced any major bugs. Sometimes the savepoints are quite far apart and if you fail you need to retrace but it's nothing too atrocious. All in all, I will be picking up the other parts of the series :)
I had tons of fun with this game, played through the whole thing twice, once as a cleric and once as a warrior unlocking about 70% of the achievemnts. The visuals are amazing if you take into account that it's over 10 years old. Gameplay is rewarding, might seem hard at first, but once you get the hang of it it becomes really pleasant to play. Not too hard, but not too easy (unless you re a soulslike maniac). The story is okeyish, get's the job done, is a decent background, but what is most important to me it's not forced down your throat with dozens of cutscenes. There are some choices now and then that might not seem meaningful but they affect the ending, so dont be fooled. It might not seem to make a difference if you save a monk at the beginning or let him die, but actually at the end of the game you meet him again if he lives and he gives you a quest that unlocks different endings for example The game doesnt overstay it's welcome, it's the perfect length I'd say. You're not being led by the hand also, you can just follow the main questline, or you can delve deeper and explore as much as you want. During my second playthourgh I was shocked when I discovered whole areas that I missed when I played the game for the first time. Another positive in my book. There are some bugs yes, but nothing game breaking, and for today's standards it's acutally very stable. All in all I think this game is very good and I am having a hard time understaing why there are so many negative reviews I really recommend, esspecialy for the low price it's available at now. I think I will be coming back to this title from time to time.
