A lot to unpack here, but first I'll start of by stating I did not grind to level 100 to play the ending, Ubisoft. Fuck you.
I played a good 30 or so hours of this, all seemed fine in the realm of recent Ubisoft titles. Fully expecting most of the missions to be locked behind a grind wall in classic RPG style Ubisoft fashion but was surprised I could play them without facing that, but I was wrong. I was only level 77 by the time I reached the end and when I discovered I needed to grind to level 100 and level 150 to play the actual ending, my heart dropped and I closed the game. That's not to say I won't pick it up again, though. I have some plans to maybe play some side missions with friends in co-op and maybe tackle the ending at a later date, but I'm not dedicating more time where I could be playing a much better game to this.
Now, about grinding... I may have understated. Sure, there's no level up grinding for the most part, besides the aforementioned. However, the actual story missions themsleves are basically all grinding. The formula all in all is grinding. Go to point A, go to point B, kill enemy, collect intel, move on, talk to the next NPC. What's that? You finished the task? Oh, well, I forgot to mention, you have to do a million other things before I'll do anything for you. It's very tiring and not at all accompanied by at least a competent plot. It's incredibly generic and uneventful.
So, you may be asking, why the seemingly positive score, then? It may be a grind fest with an uninteresting plot, but I would be lying if I said the game isn't fun. I loved the gameplay, I had a lot of fun clearing outposts, customising my character with sick cosmetics and playing some co-op missions with strangers... it was the only thing that kept me going, plus the chance to see Jon fucking Bernthal in a cutscene again, the only consistently written character in the entire game. I would revisit this game with friends, the co-op has a lot of room to be thoroughly enjoyed, it's quite sandboxy.
For this alone, it's earned those three stars. I was quite surprised just at how well the gameplay was handled, Ubisoft doesn't really have a great track record with that these days.
I played a good 30 or so hours of this, all seemed fine in the realm of recent Ubisoft titles. Fully expecting most of the missions to be locked behind a grind wall in classic RPG style Ubisoft fashion but was surprised I could play them without facing that, but I was wrong. I was only level 77 by the time I reached the end and when I discovered I needed to grind to level 100 and level 150 to play the actual ending, my heart dropped and I closed the game. That's not to say I won't pick it up again, though. I have some plans to maybe play some side missions with friends in co-op and maybe tackle the ending at a later date, but I'm not dedicating more time where I could be playing a much better game to this.
Now, about grinding... I may have understated. Sure, there's no level up grinding for the most part, besides the aforementioned. However, the actual story missions themsleves are basically all grinding. The formula all in all is grinding. Go to point A, go to point B, kill enemy, collect intel, move on, talk to the next NPC. What's that? You finished the task? Oh, well, I forgot to mention, you have to do a million other things before I'll do anything for you. It's very tiring and not at all accompanied by at least a competent plot. It's incredibly generic and uneventful.
So, you may be asking, why the seemingly positive score, then? It may be a grind fest with an uninteresting plot, but I would be lying if I said the game isn't fun. I loved the gameplay, I had a lot of fun clearing outposts, customising my character with sick cosmetics and playing some co-op missions with strangers... it was the only thing that kept me going, plus the chance to see Jon fucking Bernthal in a cutscene again, the only consistently written character in the entire game. I would revisit this game with friends, the co-op has a lot of room to be thoroughly enjoyed, it's quite sandboxy.
For this alone, it's earned those three stars. I was quite surprised just at how well the gameplay was handled, Ubisoft doesn't really have a great track record with that these days.