It's a great game with some minor flaws and, sadly, technical hiccups.
The positives: Much of the mechanics from Far Cry 3 that returned(most of them) have been streamlined quite a bit. For example, the sliding crouch and ability to hide bodies are no longer skill points you have to waste, but are actual abilities you have from the start. The syringes have been improved upon as well, as green herbs will auto-craft health syringes as you collect and/or use them, plus the various other syringes have been combined to reduce the number of syringes you need to keep. Also, animal kills now show up on you minimap/radar as tiny Xs. It's small and simple things like this that really help.
The new stuff added is also great. The elephants, for example, are just awesome and fun, even if a bit overpowered. You can use any of your weapons while riding them, smash and flip vehicles, grab nearby enemies and bash them into a bloody pulp, and even coax other elephants to follow you and fight along side you. Finally, the elephants can swim, and make it so you are not attacked by the damned devilfish that populate the rivers and lakes of Kyrat. Honestly, one of my favorite additions.
Also, there are now flying vehicles called "buzzers". They're essentially one-man gyrocopters, and make travel much easier. Plus, it's quite fun to bombard enemies bellow with your grenade launcher.
The negatives: The worst part of the game is the technical problems. For whatever reason, Ubisoft as of late has been very anti-PC gaming, and sadly it's showing. Constant framerate stuttering on a vast majority of rigs, buggy game save problems causing deleted files or ignoring player progress, and certain locations on the map not acknowledging player discovery are all the biggest culprits.
A lot of people will complain about the story and characters, and honestly, I think they're quite silly to complain. People seem to think that stories have to have a protagonist that is the epitome of good, and that the evil antagonists have to be a certain way. I personally really like the horribly flawed characters that Ubisoft has created for their games(be it Aiden Pearce from Watch_Dogs, Jason Brody from Far Cry 3, or Ajay Ghale from Far Cry 4). It gives the games more pesonality.
Lastly, the worst parts of the gameplay are actually the collectibles. Let me explain. You see, as you collect the lost letters, journals of Ajay's father, the evil masks, etc, you earn more experience points and other rewards for reaching certain progress milestones. The problem with this is that, by the time you're done with them, you will have been max level with all skills unlocked for ages, and there are only a couple weapons that you can unlock this way. So, by the time you're halfway through the game, you'll have probably unlocked all the really good rewards. I feel Ubisoft could have balanced this out better.
Oh, and the predatory animals.....they're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s. They're far more aggressive than they were in Far Cry 3, and far more dangerous. The worst ones in the game are the eagles, and only because they come out of nowhere, swoop down and attack, and most of the time are completely unavoidable. The rest of the time it will be when you're scouting out an outpost, and just about to pull the trigger on your sniper rifle to take out the enemy scout, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tiger or leopard or honey badger eating your leg. 9 times out of 10, this will cause you to give away your position and totally screw you out of bonus xp for taking the outpost undetected. Luckily, the game now has bait that you can throw and hopefully draw the attention of the predators away from you(and have them attack the camp for you instead), or you can use the hunter syringe and cause animals to be a lot less interested in you.
In the end, even with the aforementioned flaws, the game is fantastic. I haven't had a chance to play co-op, so I can't comment on that, but the multiplayer is a lot of fun once you figure it out. Oh, and before I forget, there are a LOT more random events and encounters throughout Kyrat, so you rarely will go more than a couple minutes without wandering into random firefights between allies and enemies, or hostage situations.
All in all, I highly recommend this game to anyone that enjoyed the other Far Cry games, or enjoys FPS in general, or are simply sandbox game enthusiasts.
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