I'm not exactly close to finishing the story of the game but I've plugged in my fair share of hours into it so I like to think that I have a rather... qualified (?) opinion. But it is just that, a review based on my own opinion so it may and will vary from one person to the next so keep that in mind when reading.

Customization:
In the Character and Weapons Customization video the first thing said is "you need to... adapt... change... know when to become silent" and shows a a suppressor being put onto a weapon and the character changing into a ghillie suit. A suppressor on a weapon makes sense, but the ghillie suit, while ascetically appropriate makes no difference to how hard you are for the enemy to spot. Your tactical vest / body armor doesn't give you increased damage resistance.

It's actually kinda disapointing that they didn't offer bonuses for the clothing you had on in order to actually give you an edge in different circumstances;
  • Ghillie suit - Reduced chance of detention when around trees, bushes or prone in grass; offers no damage reduction
  • Tactical Armor - Greatly educed bullet damage but increased chance of detection
  • Civilian Clothes - Reduced detection in towns, in cars and on the side of the road; offers light to medium damage reduction

I feel if it was something like this it would actually force a more tactical approach on how to tackle a mission based on the clothing we choose

Also shown here is something that is a big thread on the forums... customizing your AI team mates

Something else that might not seem that important to others is our own personal land vehicle. I know we are soldiers in a country we aren't meant to be in so discretion should be used where possible... but I don't think that stealing every civilian vehicle we see is exactly low key. So why not let us pick up a vehicle and upgrade it as a personal vehicle that will be where we fast travel or to call in? Upgrade engine, suspension, armor... hell, a turret ring we can mount our own personal LMG to if we have one would be amazing! Would love to have a buggy with a camo net on it with armor plating like the one in the initial loading screen... sadly it was apparently not meant to be.


Weapons:
Honestly weapon selection is great, there's a large variety... but it forces a limitation on what we choose. When you are undetected you can shoot someone in the foot with a suppressed pistol from 50m away and it will be a one-shot kill... but as soon as you get spotted it suddenly because a 2-3 hit with DMRs, 4-6 hit kill with ARs / LMGs and I don't even know how many shots from an SMG to kill to the chest with all headshots being a one-shot still, that's fine, but it's there to give a false sense of difficulty and limits how you want to try to tackle a mission.

What I don't understand is why they didn't set the values for limbs, torso and head depending on caliber as a consistent over a variable (detected or not detected):
  • Head: 1 shot for all weapons
  • Chest - 1 shot for snipers, DMRs and LMGs; 2-4 for ARs, SMGs and pistols
  • Torso - 1 shot for the HTI; 2 shots for snipers; 2-3 shots for DMRs and LMGs; 4-8 shots for ARs, SMGs and Pistols
  • Limbs - a lot

This would be the ideal situation as stealth missions require a far more tactical level of precision while going loud doesn't make every enemy a bullet sponge where a Cartel's singlet has the same bullet stopping potential as a Unidad's ballistic vest.

The other issues I have with weapons are these;
- You can't mount a hybrid scope to the DMRs
- DMRs are classed as snipers so the carried ammo is seriously limited
- No bipods for snipers or LMGs (hell, no grips for the PKP either on that note)

Those first two points I can kinda forgive... but no bipods? Really? I may not be much of a gun nut but don't snipers and LMGs usually use bipods a lot over a foregrip / angled grip?


Tackling Mission
I mentioned in that last segment that with the damage of weapons as it is limits how you try to tackle a mission. This being that most of the time you try to do it stealth in order not to be raped by Unidad or Cartel swarming your location while constantly calling in more and more forces in an ever growing attempt to slay you, and you need to go through a lot of bullets since, once spotted, everyone apparently goes from the a person to a god damn tank (more on this later).

But as it stands right now I feel no desire to try to rush into an enemy base with guns blazing cause I know I'll just be downed and have to rely on the... question Artificial "intellegence" (I'm sure everyone knows what I'm talking about here.) when I'm playing solo. And this runs contradictory to what they have said in their Dive into the World of Ghost Recon Wildlands video where they say, "It's not about us determining this is a stealth section, or this is the bit where you escort the guy or you have to do a full frontal assault. It's, here's a situation and it's up to them how they want to do it, they write their own story." But instead if feels like every mission has to be stealth. Changing the damage dealt to enemies would resolves issue.


Class Loadout:
Now, this might just be me but let's talk equipment and drones. Let's start with equipment, we carry a lot of it. I'm talking grenades, mines, C4... enough explosive to level a small town, and then we have flares, diversion lures and flashbangs. To me, your loadout should only be changeable at ammo crates. It makes sense and that's how it was in the beta, you had to think ahead on what you were going to be doing and couldn't do it on the fly... it was more tactical, which is what the game is, a tactical shooter... so make it so.

Grenades, mines and C4 are primary equipment
Flares, lures and flashbangs are supportive equipment

You can only take one set of primary and one set of supportive equipment. Grenades and Flashbangs or C4 and lures. You shouldn't be able to adjust and be ready for any situation from the menu, the only thing that I can accept from that is the weapon attachments but not the weapons or equipment themselves.


Repetition:
This is by far and above one of my biggest issues with the game. Every stealth mission feels the same, every extraction mission feels the same, every assassination mission feels the same. There's no choice or greater variety and with how many missions there are it gets very repetitive very quickly. In the video linked just above we can clearly see two different ways to do the mission; Go in loud, torture and interrogate or go in quick and extract the enemy... I have yet to have anything close to having a choice with what to do with a boss, I'm always told it's either kill or extract. There's no torture and let live for the wolves, there's no alternate cutscene that comes with the decision.

Despite it being "open world" what you can do is very firmly set on rails.


Living World:
In the same video linked in the Class Loadout section they call Wildlands a "Living breathing world that's happening autonomously, separate from the player. Something the player can choose to engage in or not" The only thing that suggests this is true is the random raids on transports for resources. As it currently stands the world feels pretty dead. Villages are empty, the cartel and Unidad forces never seem to thin. It makes me question if I'm actually making a difference.

I would honestly like it if some of the smaller outposts and SAM sites we attack and clear out get taken over and occupied by rebel forces. That, when we clear the story missions and boss out of a province that we see villages and towns become more active.

It gives a sense that what we are doing has purpose and that we are doing is right.


Vehicles:
There is no way that you can pass a review of Wildlands and not have mention of vehicles.

Boats:
You can't **** this one up and they haven't here so no complaints... there's no reason to use boats as much over a car/truck or a chopper so it's funny that this is the vehicle they actually go well.

Cars/Trucks:
The handling is actually trash and vehicles that should be good off-road really aren't. It's actually painful to drive at times. The best vehicle I have driven so far is the trophy truck, and when that's not available I'll take the dirt bike thanks.

Aircraft:
I don't have any particular issue with planes, in fact, I think it's fine... the issue is the feel of choppers. The controls are, as many have noted, horrible. You can't strafe left and right and even trying to get it to stop climbing and fly in a straight line on a flat trajectory can somehow take more effort then it should.

Now, Wildlands isn't a flying or driving simulator... but you would expect that in a world as large as it is that they would try to make the driving and flying comfortable since you will need travel in them over long distances.

The other issue with vehicles is the vehicle health. I swear that all vehicles have the same health, It might just be me but the pick-up and trucks should have more health then a sedan, the armored varients of the pick-up and and dozzer should have more health again and the APC should have the most health... Actually, on the topic of APCs, why the hell don't the Unidad ever seem to drive them? They have heaps of the things and just leave them outside of the base on the side of the road for anyone to take. You would think that they would start rolling up in them at a 4 star (?) wanted level... actually, again, why aren't there any Unidad convoys?

These things, or there lack of, confuses me greatly.


Rewards:
The game does not feel rewarding at all. I mean, we do get a single piece of character clothing and a locked weapon variant... but it's locked. Why not just have the skin and any special attachments unlock on the regular version of the weapon so that it can be customized to the players liking? It would have been nice if there were two ways get weapons and attachments;

1 - picking them up unlocks them to be automatically customized and kept permanently.
2 - finding them in weapons cases as they are now

You could even have a weapon only be acquired after clearing all the side missions given by the rebels. It's just that right now there's no fun or adventure to getting weapons. I mean, it would also be nice if they didn't show where every weapon and attachment in a province is... seriously, how the hell does a civilian know where an LMG is located in a military base?

And this leads me to my last point...


Micro-transactions:
I like to think that I've restrained myself until this point and held back on the swearing... yer nar **** that mate, not in this section.

WHAT. THE. ****. Ubisoft you money hungry ****s. If you want to do micro-transactions then that's fine... as long as it's purely cosmetic. Play outfits and gun camos? Sure, it's all cosmetic... but why the **** would you would you remove one of the biggest reasons to explore the map by selling ALL weapons and ALL attachments in ****ing shortcut packs? And why the **** are there micro-transaction exclusive weapons in packs? I'm talking about the Stampede rifle, the Ice Shard shotty, the Whisper and .357 Joker pistols.

Does anyone actually think that this **** is ok? This is a ****ing single player / co-op open world tactical shooter that rewards exploration... If you don't want to play through for the adventure then you're clearly in the wrong game.

If it were up to me I would remove all the weapons and attachments that people purchased with real money and refund everyone and make them play the game as it were intended. This is a blatant ****ing money grab in-order to inflate game profits.

On this front, the **** is with the price of the season pass? Contains two expansions for $70 AUD? I can pick up the whole ****ing game for $79 AUD... I better be getting 50% of the original game with each expansion because that's ****ed. The Division had 3 expansion and it's season pass was $60... but that's still $10 cheaper and a whole expansion more...

Get you're ****ing **** together for once Ubisoft.





*exhales* alright, sorry about that. But seriously, all of these issues should have been and were pointed out during the closed beta and early access demo... *sigh* sorry, open "beta". If you're going to hold an open beta... DO SO A MONTH OR 2 BEFORE RELEASE! All of these things, or at least a vast majority of them would have been fixed or addressed in someway or another by the release. Worse case scenario the game gets delayed (again) so that you have a good game at launch... speaking of delays... Why was it delayed? Nothing about the current game suggests it was delayed for improvement, and if it was then I fear for what it was like in development back then...