YMMV / Far Cry Primal

• Awesome Music: "The Wolf", an ominous, tribal song by Fever Ray originally written for the Red Riding Hood movie, is put to excellent (and hair-raising) use here.
• Broken Base: Some praise the pre-historic setting for this giving a very different setting to all of the previous Far Cry games. Others deride the setting for being too different compared to said games. Meanwhile, those who consider the game is not different enough from the original games are also likewise divided on whether it's a good or bad thing.
• Complete Monster: Batari is the prophet and leader of the Izila clan plaguing the land of Oros. Batari uses her tribe to kidnap, enslave, and torture countless people from the clans of Wenja and Udam, working them to exhaustion then burning them all alive in sacrificial slayings. Personally castrating a prisoner and laughing as he bleeds out before her, Batari also burned her own son, Krati, alive for crossing her years ago, and propagates the legend of "Krati the Destroyer" returning from the grave to destroy the Izila as a threat to keep her terrified people in line under her. Batari ultimately intends to put all of Oros to the flame if it will not cow to her, and tries to start by destroying the Wenja village.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Many are sympathetic to the plight of the Udam and their leader Ull, given that they are dying of "skull-fire" caused by their cannibalism. Their ongoing cannibalism is seen as merely desperate attempts to cure the plague by consuming the healthy. This tends to downplay that the Udam display just as much homicidal contempt for every other human tribe as the Izila, Ull's stated intent to genocide the Wenja, and that their reaction to meeting other humans is invariably violence.
• Genius Bonus: While the game takes many liberties with its setting, the developers clearly did their research and it shows!
  • Players are never outright told the true nature of "skull fire", but rather are left to deduce that it is, in fact, kuru on their own, given the lack of in-universe knowledge at that time period.
• Goddamned Bats: The eagles in this game are just as annoying here as they were in Far Cry 4, randomly swooping down to attack you for no reason whatsoever. Only now you can't mow them down with machine gun fire.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • By the end of the game, Takkar has managed to defeat the malicious Izila priestess Batari who was enslaving and murdering his people. The next Far Cry game to feature a priest as a villain who the protagonist is fighting against doesn't end as well.
  • Sayla, voiced by Cara Ricketts, is one of Takkar's constant allies throughout the game. The next Far Cry game Cara Ricketts voices a character in, her character is a Scary Black Woman and leader of a murdering Highwaymen band.
• Heartwarming Moments: Just the entire ending of the game could qualify. Most Far Cry games have either Bittersweet Endings or straight-up Downer Endings, with one of the heroes' allies betraying him, or the hero finding out that the side they were fighting for was Evil All Along. Not this game. Takkar ends the game with his people reunited and making a good life for themselves in the Oros, they've overcome the opposition from the Udam and Izila, and thanks to Takkar, they have someone who can defend them from the dangerous wildlife. Oh, and they don't plan to kill Ull's endearing children for the Sins of the Father, and The Stinger implies that Ull's older child is growing to be a Beast-Master themselves. What's not to like?
  • Just Takkar in general. Apart from being a Friend to All Living Things in Oros (well, most living things), he's also willing to try and understand the tribes his people traditionally consider enemies, sparing the lives of Dah and Roshani, initially out of pragmatism, but later becoming their friend. When he finds out the Udam's plight, he's even willing to spare Ull's children and adopt them into the tribe as well.
  • Takkar burying his brother Dalso under a mound of stones in honor of his sacrifice to save Takkar from the Bloodfang Tiger.
  • Any Pet the Dog moments Takkar has with his tamed beasts.
  • Sayla gives Roshani a cowrie shell bracelet to welcome him into the tribe. A remarkably friendly gesture, given that she let Dah be hauled out of his cage and taken to a cave to drown.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Pretty much a common critique that this game has been receiving from players and critics is that the game is "just another open-world Ubisoft game/Far Cry Ubisoft game", with a focus on collecting items, a very detailed hud that informs when enemies see you, a vast open world with no real landmarks, slight stealth, taking over enemy territories to reveal the map more, a "special vision" that helps you see enemies and items better, etc. and etc.
  • And now it's revealed that Far Cry Primal's map is literally a recycled version of Far Cry 4's map, after the game already reuses the engine from Far Cry 4. This was apparently intended as an Easter Egg, before conflicts within the story team shifted the setting to Central Europe.
• Memetic Badass: Yes, badgers are back. And this time, you can recruit them.
  • Bonus points for the skill needed to recruit them being A) right at the end of Tensay's skill tree, and B) also being necessary to tame ''cave bears''. That's right, this game puts the fuzzy little bastards right up there on the food chain next to something at least five times their size and able to kill Takkar in a few hits.
  • And once you get them, their two abilities are all too fitting: they can come back to life at least once after dying (honey badgers are really damn tough) and they terrify all other animals away from you, including super-predators.
• Moral Event Horizon: It would be hard to pick exactly when Batari crosses this. Setting fire to an innocent Wenja hunter, and forcing Tensay to Mercy Kill him. Cutting off the testicles of a captive Udam and presumably bleeding him out. Enslaving Tensay and burning his arm. Burning her son Krati alive. Deciding to set fire to Takkar's village (and Takkar himself) once she's had enough of him.
• Nausea Fuel: During one village mission "The Rotten River", Takkar has to investigate why the river water is making the tribesmen sick. He finds a few bodies of other victims while following a trail of dead fish, namely another tribesman and a brown bear, indicating the disease could get worse if left alone. Eventually, he finds the source: a cave laden with rotting Wenja corpses being eaten by wolves. The corpses are highly detailed, especially the discolorated skin, the open wounds, and the maggots living in those wounds. And how does Takkar resolve this problem? By picking up said corpses and moving them. Be glad you can't smell through your screen.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Between the very loose prehistoric Europe setting, protagonist walking the Earth that is much more advanced than everyone else, ubiquitous sabertooth cats, and Ubisoft being French, the game could be considered an unofficial adaptation of Rahan.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The opening of the game. Takkar and his hunting party have spent days tracking woolly mammoths in order to kill one and get a decent meal to keep themselves alive. And then, once they finally kill one, a saber-toothed cat shows up and kills them all one by one, forcing Takkar's mentor Dalso to shove him off a cliff to save him from the big cat. After both men fall and roll all the way down to solid ground, Takkar recovers just in time to say goodbye to Dalso, and then makes sure to bring his shell necklace with him as a Due to the Dead. Seriously, you want to give Takkar a hug. Also, Takkar buries Dalso under a mound of stones before he leaves in search of Oros.
  • The Udam's situation is utterly heartwrenching. They're being gradually killed by a horrific disease that they have no idea what caused, and they can only think of curing it by consuming Wenja. Sadly, to a modern viewer, this disease is clearly kuru, a sickness caused by the Udam's cannibalistic appetites in the first place, so their efforts to cure themselves are only increasing their chances of death. For a Cannibal Tribe, they're also really close to being The Woobie.
  • One moment when Takkar visits Dah's cage to find it empty, and Sayla waiting for him with her club, whereupon she delivers a What the Hell, Hero? to Takkar.
  Sayla: Looking for Udam?
  Takkar: Where is Dah?
  Sayla: Udam kill many Wenja. But you bring Udam beast into our home!
  Takkar: Dah brings us rot bane! Helps make Wenja strong!
  Sayla: NO! Udam bring only screams!! (Beat) Wenja take Udam to forest. Go watch it drown.

  • What makes this even sadder is that up until now, Sayla has served as Takkar's most vocal supporter (apart from Tensay) among the Wenja. So to see her so enraged at his apparent betrayal of the tribe by welcoming a member of a race she considers to be Always Chaotic Evil that she actually tries hitting him with her club is just heartbreaking.
  • Ull's death. The massive, thuggish Udam warchief who has spent most of the game butchering Takkar's people and threatening Takkar himself repeatedly now desperately staggers away from his killer severely injured, eventually falling over just as he reaches his baby. Clearly worried about what the Wenja will do to his child, Ull pulls out a dagger and threatens to take the baby with him, but then his older daughter creeps out from hiding and sees him, so instead he begs Takkar to Take Care of the Kids and make sure they don't catch the "skull fire". No wonder Takkar says "Walk free" to him after he finally dies.
  • Dah's death. After becoming Fire-Forged Friends with the Udam and preventing the other Wenja from drowning him, Takkar has to give him a Mercy Kill because Dah's case of "skull fire" is too far along to be cured. He has to guide the dagger in Dah's hand home to his heart and then respectfully place the idol he's carrying over Dah's chest once he dies.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • None of the characters speak English and instead speak a prehistoric language throughout the entire game. Translation Convention only applies to subtitles.
  • Due to the stone age setting, the game obviously does not use guns. The Far Cry games have been made with gun-play in mind, but the main projectiles here are thrown spears and arrows. Fans are divided on whether this and the focus on melee are a shot in the arm for a shooting genre that was getting repetitive, or if the whole game was a mistake.
    • There's also complaint that while the game switches the emphasis to melee, it doesn't really adapt its controls to the increased melee focus. For example there's no controls for parrying, blocking, or quick dodging, which means that melee rapidly devolves into flailing at enemies without much strategy until they drop dead.
  • The second, third and fourth Far Cry games were apparently building up to be a kind of Shared Universe, but just from the teaser people couldn't imagine how is this game was supposed to be connected to the others. And then they found Hurk's ancestor, proving the games are still connected.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The vague geographical setting (somewhere in eastern Europe), inaccurate and clichéd technology and fauna, and the bizarre choice of having the characters Hulk Speak a version of Proto-Indoeuropean, makes this game a big disappointment for people interested in Prehistoric Europe.
• Viewer Species Confusion: The Udam are often assumed to be Neanderthals but Word of God identifies (dead link) them as archaic Homo sapiens. Those familiar with anthropology will notice that the Udam are significantly taller than Neanderthals would be and lack the characteristic protruding nose associated with the species.^note Though Science Marches On, revealing Neanderthals weren't short after all, but the nose is still absent.

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