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  1. #1

    Completed Survival Mode on Expert w/Second Chance, wouldn't do it again though

    Hey everyone, I'm posting this to let you guys know that today I finished FCP Survivor Mode on Expert with Second Chance enabled.

    And I didn't enjoy it the way I thought I would. The essence of this game still thrills me, and it's beautiful; I love it, but I don't love it enough to try replicating this experience or attempting the ludicrous "ultimate challenge". More like ultimately disappointing challenge. Please, if you're an admin and you read this, don't congratulate me, it's insulting and the achievement didn't feel nearly as rewarding as I thought it would be. I had to put effort into finishing this mode because anyone mature enough to actually dedicate their time to it is usually busy with work/life/relationships and has to actually find time to play it. If what I just said doesn't apply to you, then the rest of us are probably pretty jealous of you. Anyway, my quick review of my experience.

    Overall, it was fun, but again that is because I really put all of myself into this game when I play it. If I didn't commit to the game in the way that I did I would have given up at the 50% mark when things got tough and I had to really pace myself.

    Stealth is borderline useless, which is an absolute shame because this game was made to be played solo, ie, stealth is key. Optional, but key when you play on the hardest mode the game can offer, so it's a real shame when you risk your life to tame an animal that's not capable of doing half of what it's supposed to. Many times, I approach a group of enemies underground/in a cave, so I call my lion which should tag them all if we're close enough. Instead of coming up from behind me or appearing slightly off screen, the lion comes to me by running RIGHT THROUGH THE ENEMY CAMP, which alerts them and ruins my tactical approach. And that jaguar that can "attack unsuspecting enemies without alerting others"? Bull-****. Plain and pure bull-****. Which brings me to animals

    They're bull-****. When you play the game on easier settings, it's fun and cute and innovative. But when you play the game the way it's MEANT to be played, they're actually functionally useless. Sabre tooth tigers take life and limb to tame and they commit suicide when they can't maneuver certain terrain. They don't attack feral sabre tooth tigers, instead they let you get mauled and eaten. Same with bears, which are a little better but are slow as hell which makes them equally useless. The small animals are the best and they don't survive very long. Sabre tooth tigers and bears are only good for facing small groups of people. They should have put WAY more effort into the animal AI. So I never really used the animals and I think they suck, personally. That was a MASSIVE let down.

    Fire also sucks. I can't light a campfire with an ignited club without setting the whole forest on fire. I burn some branches blocking a sack? 9/10 times I get burned, even when standing away from the flames. Gets tiring, especially since you're supposed to have "thick" skin.

    The game and story get MUCH better when life and death matter, which made the game much more immersive and enjoyable. The weapons are awesome and fun, I don't care what people say about the limited variety. It's somewhat real (albeit the double bow and berserk shards/bombs) and really fun when you have to make your aim count, unlike FC4 where equipping a grenade launcher, bow, and semi-auto weapon would guarantee success in all situations.

    The visuals and dynamics really drew me in, but the glitches were just unbearable and take away from a lot of what the game had to offer. For example, the fact that the grappling hook is literally a reskinned version of the one from FC4 is just pathetic to me; they didn't change a single animation and there are plenty of documented cases where people like myself go to grapple from a mid-section post to the top post and plummet to their deaths. Even if there weren't any glitches, the grappling animations are clearly awful compared to the rest of the games fluid actions. Climbing sucks too, I have no idea why they didn't take the initiative to make a parkour system similar to Dying Light or Assassin's Creed. Jumping from ledge to ledge with the same "oh I almost fell, let me get myself up here" animation gets tiring after like, the second time you do it.

    The villains were awesome, but Batari was too hard and her death seemed to be necessary first to make the story jive. A male dominated patriarch tribe that's dumb as **** and a female dominated matriarch tribe that's "advanced". It's honestly a little TOO politically correct to me; the idea that the men have the dumb tribe and the women have the advanced, holier than thou tribe. Back then that **** would not have gone over with men (I know there have been female dominated tribes in history but the PC-ness of the balance is prominent to me) - but I get why they did it and it still worked out for a great story. Watching that evil ***** burn was very satisfying, but like I said earlier it seemed odd that she had to die first to really make the story fit together nicely yet she was the hardest boss in my opinion. One hit arrow kills? What idiot came up with that? How is that even remotely fair?

    The Wenja people were really fun to interact with. The poor, helpless "hunters" lol Wenja means "the hunters" but I rarely saw them actually take down an animal. Most of the time two of them are hunting, get eaten, and then the animal that killed them attacked me. Would have been cool to see more Wenja actually being badasses than helpless man-babies but the feeling you get when you go back to your village really makes you feel like the saviour and leader of the people.

    Overall, I wanted to love this game as much as life itself and it ultimately fell a little short of its goal, mainly due the fact that no general animations or glitches were fixed and that's basically the only reason sequels work; if they actually fix the ****ing problems from the games before it. But they didn't, they wanted to rush the game and make some money and that will always be in the back of my mind when I play this game. It could have been one of the best console games in history, in my opinion, if they had just actually cared about making the game play smooth and forgiving.

    Survival Mode makes the game 10 times more fun, but due to the fact that the game wasn't balanced properly in a couple major aspects and was so glitchy that it ultimately is responsible for about 50-75% of my deaths in the game. That or very poorly programmed animal AI. The ultimate challenge is so not worth it, I don't even know where to begin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8bYABfkwec <---- skip to 30:39 to watch the message from the Developers and tell me that's not the biggest ****ing letdown you've ever seen in a game. I don't care if that badge is digital, felt, or precious metal, it's not worth the time and effort and frustration it takes to beat that mode, seeing as you'll probably die from the multitude of glitches or animal AI problems long before you die by the hands of an enemy.

    I recommend the game, and I recommend Survivor Mode, but I don't recommend anything beyond Second Chance. If they didn't put that in the update I don't think anyone would have really bothered. I just reread all of this and saw that it was mostly negative, but I think what I said was fair and well deserved.

    I'll still be around to post, but I've given up on the Thoughts and Ideas thread, seeing as the admins don't give a flyin' **** about anything we have to say unless you think lions should hunt in packs

    Smarka, fumaygan!
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  2. #2
    Hey Mate,

    That was a good read. I can definitely sympathise, though I haven't finished the game yet.

    The reason I haven't finished is precisely for some of the reasons you list.
    I've got a lot on in my life right now and it's just too damn stressful to play a game that can be so punishing.

    I'll reply with a lengthier response when I have the time/finish the game.

    Congrats on completing it though!
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  3. #3
    Butcherbird59's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by RogueSurvivor Go to original post
    .....

    I recommend the game, and I recommend Survivor Mode, but I don't recommend anything beyond Second Chance. ...
    This sounds more sarcastic than honest after reading your interesting review - Survival mode 10x more fun even glitches cause 50-75% of your death? Serious fun I guess? Somehow you sound implausible, no?
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  4. #4
    Originally Posted by Butcherbird59 Go to original post
    This sounds more sarcastic than honest after reading your interesting review - Survival mode 10x more fun even glitches cause 50-75% of your death? Serious fun I guess? Somehow you sound implausible, no?
    I completely understand where you're coming from. At first glance it appears that I'm contradicting myself because I say that it's fun but then go on to list a multitude of things I didn't enjoy about the game.

    I suppose my best response would be summed up by one of the introductory statements at the beginning of my review:
    Originally Posted by Rogue
    The essence of this game still thrills me, and it's beautiful; I love it, but I don't love it enough to try replicating this experience or attempting the ludicrous "ultimate challenge". More like ultimately disappointing challenge.
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  5. #5
    Originally Posted by mercuryspooning Go to original post
    Hey Mate,

    That was a good read. I can definitely sympathise, though I haven't finished the game yet.

    The reason I haven't finished is precisely for some of the reasons you list.
    I've got a lot on in my life right now and it's just too damn stressful to play a game that can be so punishing.

    I'll reply with a lengthier response when I have the time/finish the game.

    Congrats on completing it though!
    Hey man, thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to read my frustrated review. I hope you're able to finish it at some point but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't get around to it. Thanks for the congratulations; I appreciate it when it comes from other gamers who enjoyed the same title and game mode....but I feel like the admins only congratulate people because they shelled out $70

    Can't wait to hear from you, man!
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  6. #6
    Good read, I think I agree with everything you said.

    For one, I never understood some people's complaint about lack of weaponry either. It's so easy to compare this game to Far Cry 4 and say "Well there's more guns in Far Cry 4 than there are bows in Far Cry Primal so that's a big letdown" but honestly, how many guns in Far Cry 4 act almost exactly the same?
    Whereas in Primal every weapon acts completely different from the others, yet there are still more than enough options.
    So many different shards, bombs, takedowns, etc.

    These people claim Far Cry Primal doesn't have many weapons to offer, yet when I'm in the midst of a chaotic fight I can easily find myself sticking to the spears or bow while completely forgetting about the Berserk Shards, Fire Bombs, throwing my club to stun them, setting up traps, etc etc. There's a surprising depth to this game that most reviewers sadly didn't seem to put enough time in to realize.



    The beasts though... They were badass in vanilla Primal, but in Survivor Mode they're far too weak and randomly die every 5 minutes due to terrain. This was a huge letdown to me.



    Currently I'm 15hrs in, upgraded a lot of stuff, done a lot of sidequests but haven't really gotten very far into the main missions. From my previous playthrough I know what kind of "forced-assault" to expect in the later missions where stealth isn't even offered as an option anymore. Honestly I loathe having to do them at some point.
    Far Cry games have always had deaths that feel unfair to the player and that's because of its combat nature. In every recent Far Cry game the player can heal himself from 1% health to 100% health in a matter of seconds, and as a direct result this means that the only way for the player to actually die is if he loses that 100% health in a matter of even fewer seconds.

    This causes almost every single death in Far Cry to seem frustrating to the player. One moment he's fine, the other moment he's detected or receives an unexpected arrow to the chest. And right as the chaos starts, he's already hit (a second time) and dies.
    It's very frustrating in permadeath. I realize a slower game where you cannot die in less than 5 seconds isn't a suitable candidate for permadeath, but in Far Cry Primal I find it hard to believe that any player at all will see the permadeath gameover screen and accept his loss with a smile on his face.
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  7. #7
    Wow, really well said! I couldn't agree more with you Rickvs64!
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  8. #8
    I managed to beat it on permadeath expert and I had a lot of fun because of how afraid I was of dying. Every time I saw a bear in the earlier part of the game I was just thinking "nope! Stay the heck away from that!"

    Stealth is still pretty useful; it's similar to non-survivor modes. Tamed animals do have a bad habit of ruining your stealth unless you use one of the stealthy ones, like the leopards. When I want to stealth though I generally dismiss my pet from a safe distance (otherwise it might run into the enemies).

    Despite having lower stats in survivor mode, I'd say that tamed animals are stronger in that they're key in not risking your own life. Beasts can also pretty much always beat like two or three NPCs on their own anyways, except for chieftains.

    I was lucky enough not to have any beasts die from walking off cliffs, but I've seen it happen in other peoples' youtube videos.

    In my non-survivor playthrough I had one death during rappelling which made me paranoid of using rappel points during my survivor playthrough. I stuck to walking as much as possible in survivor.

    I think Batari made for an interesting finale to the survivor playthrough, as it really kicks up the difficulty a notch with her doing so much damage at such high range paired with the waves of enemies without much place to hide.

    Overall I really liked the survivor settings more than the normal ones in terms of gameplay pacing. Permadeath made me feel really focused and invested in the game, which is a nice change from just laughing off death and restarting missions until I succeed. I probably wouldn't play it again, but that's more because I'm not the kind of person that can get enjoyment out of replaying open world games rather than it not being fun.

    Overall I'd say don't do second chance/permadeath unless you're really up for a challenge. You can play survivor without permadeath and it's pretty fun.
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  9. #9
    Great review. I just got the game several days ago. I like the mode I'm on now. I find it amusing that people want complain about lack of weapons. You gotta be kidding me right? 10,000 years ago there wasn't many versions or types of weapons. I like the aspect of the game, no one weapon is OP. I do find the bombs pretty lame though and I don't use the animals as much as I thought I would. I use the bear the most because it distracts the enemy so I can smash their dome from behind.

    Not sure I will play the mode you described in your review. Seems to me my play style wouldn't work with the patience and time you need to complete it.
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  10. #10
    First of all, congrats, and then, as others also wrote: you were lucky.
    I could thank almost all my deaths for some kind of bug and slowly learned to micro-manage the game.

    Pets are a huge drawback in case of stealth. Send them away and don't even think to recall them, as they will rush trhrough the middle of the enemy towards you.
    Also there are certain points, where the pet die, no matter waht, for example if you walk past Tensays cave, there is a cliff. Approaching its edge, you pet fal down and die.
    All the time, so it must be a bug.

    If you change terrain level, send your beast away, else you could lose it easily.
    If you cross a river, send your beast away, and resummon far on the other side (except for bears, they can swim)
    If you need stealth, send your beast away
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