Far Cry 4 has slightly better combat compared to Far Cry 3. The action is very cool and cinematic, the weapons have weight, and at the same time, the protagonist is very responsive, making the gunplay amazing.
Height is a major theme that represents Kyrat. Some missions require a breathing mask, you can use a wingsuit to travel from one mountain to another, and all locations have an altitude number on the side, constantly reminding you that you are very high up.
The lowest point of the game is the campaign. The game is a story-focused adventure, but it uses a looter-style quest structure. You do a bunch of missions that feel like side quests and have very little connection to one another or to the protagonist's objective.
Ajay is a blank protagonist who basically has opinions about nothing. He comes to Kyrat to scatter his mother's ashes, but after a while this objective almost disappears behind everything else. Throughout the game, you are basically a courier doing things for other people without really questioning why you are doing them. Ajay rarely develops a meaningful connection with the characters or with the conflict itself.
This is especially disappointing because the game actually has interesting ideas. The Golden Path raises questions about revolution, political power, religion, violence, and what happens to Kyrat after Pagan falls. The game even gives you interesting moral choices, but these ideas often feel like isolated concepts attached to missions rather than parts of one coherent story.
The campaign missions are also much more linear compared to Far Cry 3. Sometimes it feels like playing a Call of Duty campaign, where you simply shoot enemies and follow a designated path created by the game.
Far Cry 3 managed to make its open world serve its story. Far Cry 4 often feels like the opposite: a huge playground with a story happening inside it.
I don't recommend playing the game. You can already see the beginning of Ubisoft's formulaic open-world design here. The gameplay is slightly better, but the campaign and story are a massive downgrade from Far Cry 3.
