[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVEfKfMXSUs[/embedyt]   Hope County was ground zero at the end of far cry 5. Far cry New Dawn takes place 17 years after Far Cry 5 and a lot has changed. The map has been destroyed, leaving some areas inaccessible. There is a new Sheriff in town. well… Sheriffs. A pair of twins named Mickey and Lou are the villains in the new Far Cry sequel. They are the leaders of the new enemy group called the Highwaymen,  and they are bad ass. Think of Mad Max kind of wasteland with a lot of pink shoved in your face. The game also features the return of the Deputy (now known as the Judge) and Joseph Seed, the protagonist and main antagonist of Far Cry 5. Some other familiar faces show up from Far cry 5 as well. New Dawn has a very different approach compared to the classic free roam Far Cry gamers are used too. Ubisoft has added RPG elements to the game. Different tiered equipment and enemies change the way how you have to play this game.  A bigger crafting system allows you to collect resources from different plants to gears, springs and duct tape, From common to legendary equipment. Getting all your gear takes a lot of grinding. Another new feature added was the Home Base. Here the player can upgrade different parts of the base to unlock access to crucial mechanics to the game. It unlocks fast travel, a work bench for guns, a garage, a healing garden for better med kits, and so on.   The player will take a roll of a fully customized character. Choose race, gender and clothing. Theirs a lot more to the crafting system compared to the previous games in the franchise.  This is thanks to the RPG elements that are featured in this game. It’s all about loot, and resources, and what game isn’t in 2019?. More colored guns to upgrade your character to reach the next objective. Damage values fly out of enemies as you shoot them. While this may be fun in looter shooter games when you have a group in The Division or Destiny 2, it’s not that engaging to grind just to have to upgrade your gear so you can continue the story missions and the story is pretty solid. It links to Far Cry 5 in an interesting twist. But overall  the game is like a Blood Dragon-Far Cry 3 cocktail which feels like a notable DLC. You can find a couple of weapon references in the workbench. The silenced burst pistol and a Bow. It takes advantage of the nuclear apocalypse to make a Far Cry 5 map smaller yet add a deeper game mechanic to compensate. The Highwaymen have all the Outposts in Hope County. Just like in other far cry games, you take over outposts to fast travel to. In New Dawn, you can take over an outpost up to 3 times, each time increasing in difficulty.  The first time there are only a few enemies and 1 alarm. The 2nd tier includes 2 alarms, and enforcers and so on. Once taken over your rewarded ethanol, which is a resource needed for upgrading your home base. You can scavenge the outpost for more ethanol, leaving the outpost to be taken back by the highwaymen reinforcements.     New dawn features Expeditions. These are side missions to play for extra resources, like ethanol, and like outposts, can be replayed at an increased difficulty for additional resources. Resources like circuit boards which are needed for most tier 3 crafting. There are 21 Expeditions in total.  Leaving tons of missions to come back to after end game and you are upgraded to the highest tier equipment. Other side missions that are familiar with Far Cry 5, like Treasure hunt missions helps with resources and extra perks. Guns For Hire missions to recruit allies that have their own special abilities and perks they can unlock as you use them. Each ally is designed for different scenarios. Whether your approach is stealthy like The Judge, or Explosive like Hurk. There are favourites for every play style. Since the map is smaller, it doesn’t take long to cover ground, especially when your fast travel is up to level 2. After that you can basically fast travel to any location discovered on the map.  While that may be convenient, when your actually in between missions running around, the game feels pretty busy. Hope county is Blooming with wildlife. Some of it is mutated, freak of nature wildlife but there’s a lot of it. Fishing is back as well which I enjoyed in Far Cry 5. It’s an easy way to gain some perks through challenges and there are challenges for every single animal you hunt in this game. Resources gained from skinning animals are very rewarding. You can take those skins and trade them in for more resources back at an outpost or a trader walking on a road. The more rare the skins, the better. In fact you ll see many survivors on the road, and they will join you if a random patrol of Highwaymen happen to roll by, or if a predator starts attacking.Remember its an RPG, so the rare animals are usually monstrous and require tier 3 weapons and equipment but also give out the best skins. One thing really bugs me about this game though is this is supposed to be a post apocalyptic land. Yet the Highway men have access to planes that deliver supply drops for support Which you as the player can of course steal. Giving a tingle to Battle royal players when the prompt comes up Supply drop incoming. But From where!? If Nukes caused a world collapse how do the Highway Men have such a surplus of supply drops to send themselves all the time.  It boggles my mind! but chasing them down is a lot of fun.     Another feature that was added was Photo mode. I find this mode is starting to make a trend in a lot of different titles this year. There are actually many features within the photo mode to set rotation, time of day, filters, poses for your character, 1st person, 3rd person. perfect for the social photographer expert.   At the end of the day it is  kind of Far Cry game, but with a different approach than fans are used to for sure. I’m not a big fan of the RPG features in this game. I get it. trust me… but id rather advance by upgrading weaponry rather than tiers of weapons. It’s a Far Cry game that jumped on a bunch of trends. At least in Blood Dragon it made jokes at the references they used down to the script and voice acting. New Dawn should have taken these trending features and included it in with the side missions or gameplay some how in the same way. Far Cry New Dawn feels like Far Cry 5 dlc. The campaign only takes about 12 hours to complete and has 22 missions, and 8 side missions. This game will scratch the itch of Far Cry 5 fans. Give it a try if you’re a fan of the series.