Far Cry 6: Insanity DLC - Review

Earlier this year we got to go hands on with Far Cry 6, and it was a late contender for my game of the year. Anton Castilo was a fantastically thought-out villain, and the follow up emails that you would receive from the Lion of Yara himself mocking you for leaving things unfinished, kept the game in your peripherals. A month on we are getting out first taste of the 3 major DLCs that will be coming out for the game, that allow you to become and fight as the major antagonists from the previous titles of Far Cry 3, 4 and 5.

The first DLC lets us becomes Vaas from Far Cry 3. A mad man steeped in his own delusions, ambitions and insanity. Not too far removed from Anton Castilo himself, Vaas is wildly delusional in his view of the world and why the events are occurring. In the first DLC, we get to explore the depths of Vaas’ mind and explore the insanity in his mind that led to his confrontations with Jason Brody, and his falling out with Citra that led to her using Jason Brody against Vaas.

Insanity is an interesting DLC. There are multiple levels of difficulty, and you unlock the next tier by completing the previous level. A scoring system allows you to push for high scores and encourages intelligent play, whilst also be optimal about your routing, if you intend to push for high scores. If not, the roguelite aspect of the DLC is what really stood out to me. Whilst you unlock permanent traits and weapons (plus their upgrades) through your playing, that carry across all difficulties. That is the only things you get to keep permanently. Upon death, any buffs you pick up, which can range from giving you more cash gain, to blast damage reduction, to even damage reduction in the rain. The buffs are fun, they drop regularly enough from enemies, whilst also being found in chests scattered across the map.

On top of that, you collect cash which you need to unlock higher traits, additional buff slots, and to upgrade your weapon tiers, as well as buying the weapons themselves. There are traits that help you retain more cash upon death but realistically. This DLC feels like a roguelite with a scoring system, that delves into the events prior to Far Cry 3 and develop the character’s of Vaas and Citra more deeply. Frustratingly, the mechanics involved in the DLC aren’t explained particularly well. Beside a little tutorial for the traits upgrades, you’re essentially thrown into the deep end. Case in point, that I didn’t upgrade my gun at all until the very final section. I then also didn’t realise I had to go into the upgraded weapon cache and BUY the upgraded version of the gun. A little more of an explanation of the slightly less obvious mechanics would go a long way here.

Where this DLC truly excels however, is in the visual world design. Vaas’ mind is collapsing. It’s chaotic, it’s warped, and it shows. Sharks flying in the air visibly above the beach, dozens of Vaas heads in the sand staring at a large boulder than looks sort of like a head. The ghosts of people that Vaas had killed coming back to haunt (and explode) on him during the night cycles. The world design is intense, thought out and truly unnerving at times. The first moment that really made me start paying attention to the world around me (besides the sky sharks) was the fact that the ocean and a whole waterfall is blood red. Which is connected to a scene that explains this thought process in Vaas’ mind.

The story development and the fleshing out of Vaas as a character and his motives is what is truly most important in this DLC. On top of the distorted reality, there are several events that move to unfold the story. These range in quality, from just fire fights to pure story driven and narrative sections. In the same way, the fire fights feeling lacking, and the story narrative parts are far more enjoyable. The major problem overall is that the gunplay itself feels far less enjoyable than it does in the main game. This is mitigated somewhat once you get your weapons upgraded to their highest tier, but the sheer lack of variety hinders the DLC in this aspect.

The major problem here, is that the DLC is designed with the intention that you’ll replay the same content multiple times to get the scores you want, and to unlock all the extra content. Yet, if you play slowly and methodically on your first mind level, which there really is no reason not to, you’ll clear almost all the content available in your first run through. On higher mind levels they do add some interesting world events, with Jason Brody and Citra becoming roaming mini-boss enemies that appear in certain locations and revealing some conversations those characters may have had that Vaas probably shouldn’t have been aware of but is. There are small touches here, but the major problem is the sheer lack of actual reason to replay the DLC.

All in you’re going to get about four to five hours of gameplay if you take it slowly and aim to get all the unlocks on your first “run”. To unlock all traits and the higher mind levels, assuming you do all the weapon unlocks and collectibles in the first mind level, you’ll probably get close to six hours in total. The problem, however, is because all collectibles are available from the word go, there feels to be very little reason to do the higher mind levels. The step ups in difficulty are mitigated quickly too if you were conscious about upgrading your traits and guns early on. You’ll burn through encounters rapidly with the max tier weapons.

For those who wish to push for highest scores with the lowest times, the Vaas’ DLC has a good offering here, and you’ll find yourself sufficiently challenged. The threat of death is thrown at you regularly, but careful play mitigates the real danger of it. There is a fundamental concept here, and if they intend to use this roguelite concept with the remaining DLCs, there are some improvements that could be made. Either in making the threat of death slightly more prevalent, an expansion of content available, or making playing on a higher difficulty a more appealing reason to replay the same content again.

The Vaas: Insanity DLC is a different take on the well-known gameplay of the series. There is a good chunk of content here, and there is an attempt to make it fun for replay but will fail to keep people truly engaged. The visual design of the world is one of the defining points and taking the early runs slowly to experience all the super cool and unique aspects of the world is ideal. The fleshing out of the character of Vaas is incredibly interesting and seeing the development of this mad man is impressive.

The Score

7.5

Review code provided by Ubisoft

The Pros

+Fantastic world design

+Great narrative sections

+Roguelite aspects

The Cons

-Very Short

-Unfortunate lack of replayability

-Lack of gun variety