YMMV / Far Cry: New Dawn

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: As annoying as Ethan is, seeing him die in Joseph’s arms is actually quite sad. Not to mention this is the moment that finally makes Joseph realize how bad of a person he is.
• Base-Breaking Character: Joseph Seed. While a closure to his story is necessary, newcomers and even returning players feel that the supernatural elements are out of place when faced against the survival and fighting band of raiders elements of the story.
• Bizarro Episode: While previous games (disregarding the first) tend to explain that most of the supernatural occurrence is due to drug-induced hallucinations, nothing is explain about the Apple of Eden that gave the player supernatural powers and turning Ethan into a Yeti-like creature. Even if the Far Cry and Assassin's Creed series take place in the same universe (due to the presence of a file with the Abstergo logo in 3), the Apple in this game not only functions differently than in the latter franchise, it is also edible.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After having to go through all of the previous game and not being allowed to defeat Joseph Seed and instead witnessing the world come to an end, you finally get the chance to kill him in this one. Granted, you can spare him, but the ending won’t actually change if you kill him or not.
    • Sparing Joseph may actually be even more cathartic as he has a full blown Villainous Breakdown as you walk away and refuse to kill him. If you kill him then by his faith he atones through martyrdom, but letting him live with the guilt of what he's done leaves only judgement after death or suicide. Neither option ends with Joseph going to Heaven.
  • Likewise, the ending cutscene in "Through the Wringer" where the Captain uses the Gift of Eden to break free and beat the everloving shit out of the Twins after enduring their taunts and threats up until that point can feel nice, since it's the first time you actually manage to catch them off guard and scare the shit out of them.
  • Those who hate rap and dubstep may find it pleasing to beat the crap out of the Highwaymen in their outposts and replacing it with more classic hits.
• Continuity Lockout: Inverted. Newcomers, those who didn't play Far Cry 5, and those enjoying the game as a standalone game find the game's plot perfectly manageable on its own, but those coming from Far Cry 5 will find slight continuity issues and quirks within the story. For instance, it's implied that the surviving Guns For Hire wasn't even there during the fight against Joseph Seed, given that Hurk, Grace, and Nick Rye survived and with the exception of Grace who lost her sight after the nuclear flash, are all healthy. That and the new generation of New Eden are aren't as unkempt as the Peggies and the three Seed siblings are very largely forgotten.
• Difficulty Spike: If you scavenge outposts more than once, or complete a few story missions before you've properly prepared, you'll find yourself faced with enemies you and your allies are incapable of silently eliminating, making stealth suddenly impossible.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Of all the new companions, the Judge quickly became very popular for their cool, mysterious appearance and behavior. It helps that they're the Junior Deputy from 5.
• Evil Is Cool: The Twins, Mickey and Lou, gained a fanbase due to being a pair of badass women with cool breaking speeches. Many players expressed interest in the idea of a DLC permitting you to play as them.
• Fridge Brilliance: In a game which centers on the theme of faith, it makes sense that Ethan Seed would be an Obvious Judas.
• Fridge Logic: When Rush returns to Prosperity, he tells the others how he witnessed two Edeners attack the Highwaymen, eat more bullets than any human could possibly survive, and then disappear back into the night. This implies that they shared in the Fruit of Eden from Joseph's tree, with the problem being that this happens long before anyone including New Eden even learns that Joseph is still alive, and Joseph makes it very clear that he spent his exile making sure that only The Chosen One will receive Eden's Gift.
  • New Eden's fighters in the field are referred to as "The Chosen," and Joseph specifically tells the Captain that his people used the apples to make it through the "dark times" following the nuclear end of the world.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Fang For Hire Horatio stands in as an Expy of Cheeseburger from FC 5 as this game's animal tank companion, but unlike Cheeseburger he's actually extremely useful in just about any situation. He smashes Brawler shields to pieces as part of his basic attack, has a Foe-Tossing Charge that knocks all humanoid enemy types down, deals enormous damage very quickly, has tons of health, and to top it off, he auto-revives indefinitely once he's notched 15 kills. Once you've unlocked this skill, all you need to do to conquer any outpost regardless of difficulty level is to send in Horatio and enjoy the ensuing carnage, with the only thing you might need to take care of yourself being any snipers he can't reach. Even the dreaded Enforcers go down with barely any resistance once Horatio starts mauling them. Did we mention that all it takes to recruit him is to kill half a dozen level II mooks?
  • Nana counts for similar reasons for as long as outposts are at level I or II. She can One-Hit Kill any enemy from extreme range without raising an alarm, so all you need to do is pull out your binoculars and designate targets from a safe distance until the outpost is yours. The same applies to expeditions. Her usefulness drops massively at level III, though, due to all enemies wearing helmets.
• I Knew It!: As soon as The Judge was introduced in preview materials, there was already speculation that they were what became of the Deputy. It's confirmed multiple times in the game itself.
• Memetic Mutation: Joseph screaming "RELEASE ME!" if the Captain refuses to put him out of his misery at the end of the story has been used in reference to other people or things that might beg for some kind of release, such as Tamagotchi that haven't been played with in years.
• Narm: The Highwaymen can invoke this with their bright pink armor, cliche anarchist motives and taste in music. The fact that their leaders are a pair of teenage girls named Mickey and Lou probably isn't doing their image any favors either.
• Obvious Judas: Judging by the furious rant he goes on about his father abandoning him to take care of New Eden for years, it's pretty clear that Ethan will betray his father at the drop of a hat. And he does.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The provocative cover art depicting the Twins about to execute a bound victim caused outrage in some circles, while others praised it for being "progressive". This isn't exactly new in the series, since Far Cry 4 got flack with Pagan Min sitting on a ruined Buddhist statue lording over an Asian man, which was perceived at the time as an case of "white supremacy" or "homophobia" since Pagan was blonde and wore pink, even though he was half-Asian and straight (which is a plot point).
  • The same thing can be said for the powers provided by the apple of Eden; most of them first showed up all the way back in the first game's console port, Instincts.
• Padding: The challenge system's main purpose appears to be inflating the game's playtime by a factor of two or three, just as it did in FC 5. The weapon challenges are especially aggravating. If you prioritize upgrading Prosperity's weapon bench, chances are you'd stop using basic guns after 1-2 hours in the game, but the game forces you to waste a lot of time with them anyway to earn enough perk points to stay competitive. Once you advance to purple and eventually golden gear, the pattern repeats all over again. What's worse, gaining access to upper-tier equipment in the first place requires rare resources you only get by repeatedly liberating outposts or going on expeditions, which adds even more repetitive actions to an otherwise fairly bare-bones game and story.
• Replacement Scrappy: The Highwaymen are usually considered to be a step down from the Peggies, given their Card-Carrying Villain attitudes, less fleshed-out background, and terrible taste in music. It doesn't help that they have fewer named characters for the player to fight, as Frank is basically a throwaway enemy and Irwin Smalls isn't an enemy at all. Not to mention, it was eventually discovered that every time they get an advantage over the Captain, it's because the Captain lets them.
• The Scrappy: It's hard to find anyone who likes Ethan. Not only is he incredibly whiny and unlikable, his very existence contradicts several pre-established elements of Joseph’s character. Also unlike the Seed brothers and many men of Eden's Gate, he lacks a beard.
• Scrappy Mechanic: For whatever reason, this game does away with several Anti-Frustration Features from 5.
  • While the character creation is almost identical, unlike 5 you can't redo your appearance after the initial customization screen - only clothing and (facial) hair remain customizable. The fun part is that by the time you get to see the available clothing options, you're already stuck with the gender/race/face you chose earlier. Don't feel any clothing suits the character you went with? Tough luck. The Scavenger mod, available from Nexus Mods, rectified that, although to change gender you have to start over.
  • After 5 finally gave you full control over weapon customization and removed the accessory limit, this game removes all weapon customization. Instead of giving you a handful of weapons with lots of customization, you're given lots of weapons with preset attachments on the higher tiers, though with excess resources, lower tier guns can be upgraded in damage points.
• So OK, It's Average: New Dawn averaged a 75% on Metacritic across all three platforms, making it the lowest-received game in the series since Primal, with the consensus being that it's a fine game and interesting expansion of the story from 5, but the home-base building & addition of RPG Elements don't offer enough to elevate it beyond the game it's built upon. It doesn't help that it's the 8th game in the franchise using the basic "Open World FPS" game mechanic.
• That One Achievement:
  • "Anger Management", awarded for killing 10 enemies in a single activation of Wrath, is universally loathed for being extremely frustrating to unlock. The first major hurdle is to even get so many enemies in one place, and if you manage that, chances are you'll run out of Eden's Gift time before you can kill enough of them. Players have gone on record reporting that they tried this for 8 hours or more without success, and even the ones that did pull it off agree that it was a pain in the ass. A few cheese strategies that can make this easier have been discovered since, but they still suffer from the issue of gathering enough enemies in one place first.
  • "Master Skinner" is another annoying one, especially without a guide. All it requires is killing and skinning one of every type of animal in the game, which sounds easy enough on paper but can be a nightmare to actually complete. While the player will likely find and kill a good 80% - 90% of the required animals just by playing normally and exploring a few can be a bit tricky to locate. Sharks and crocodiles, for example, are only found regularly on certain expedition maps with the game giving no indication of where the player might need to look. To make matters worse the game offers no readily available checklist to show which ones are still missing. Worst of all, however, is the fact that each species of Monstrous Animal is counted separately from its normal counterpart and will require some serious grinding before the player will be even close to ready to go hunting for them.
• That One Level: The Prophecy, for being a slow-paced puzzle-only mission.
• Ugly Cute: Horatio is surprisingly adorable for a giant murder boar, especially when you pet him.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Zero Punctuation points out how the game has inherently conservative undertones in contrast to its predecessors. The villains in this game act against authority and basically utilise a "might makes right" approach, often playing modern electronic music, whereas the heroes and their allies are a tightly-knit community built upon the ideas of tradition and conformity, who also prefer classic and early 20th century music.