The Best Far Cry Games, All 9 Ranked

The Far Cry series has been one of Ubisoft’s longest running franchises, offering players tight first-person shooter action, sprawling open worlds teeming with missions to complete and bad guys to gun down, and an absolute bucket-load of weapons. Whether you want to go the silent, stealthy route, or make lots of big, big bangs, any and all approaches are welcome as you fight off against the series’ notorious villains. Alas, like lots of things in life, not all Far Cry games were created equal. Some are great, standing the test of time over a decade later, while others… well, they’re better off just being forgotten. After spending dozens upon dozens of hours with the series at this point, we’ve put together our definitive ranking of the best Far Cry games from worst to first.

9. Far Cry

Credit to the first game in the Far Cry series for kicking things off, but after what came before it, it may not entirely stand the test of time. Considering when it was released, the original Far Cry looks pretty great and it sold the jungle environment very well. The enemy AI is mostly intelligent, and the weapons have a good balance between them.

But when you look at where the series has gone, the original Far Cry doesn’t feel quite as right. Despite being open-ended, many areas are trial and error, and are designed to be done in a way that just isn’t fun. Enemies are painfully stupid when you’re close up, and the checkpoint system… well, the less said about that, the better. There’s also the disappointing story, with characters that either weren’t likable or just lacked personality, and a protagonist with a truly awful looking lau shirt.

8. Far Cry 2

The second game in the series is a marked improvement over the original Far Cry. Enemies are more responsive, it looks even more gorgeous, and Africa is a perfect setting for the series. It was a unique departure from both the open world and shooter genres.

Unfortunately, the game’s biggest stumble lies in its own plot. Once you choose which badass mercenary to be, you go to Africa and get malaria…but you’re nursed back to health by the very guy you’re trying to kill. So maybe calling you a “badass mercenary” is a bit of a stretch. That’s really about all you’ll get from the plot, which doesn’t give you much to work with most of the time. But even that doesn’t matter, since it’s so unimportant that you could forget things as you go along.

The draw here comes from the atmosphere, but sometimes it can go too far. At times, Far Cry 2 can be so slavishly committed to realism that it makes the gameplay very not fun. Contracting malaria every 20 minutes or having your guns and vehicles jam is a tad overkill, and for console players, the save system didn’t help matters much. It’s not a bad game, but just when it seems like you’re having fun, it feels like it’s putting you in hardcore mode before you’re truly ready.

7. Far Cry New Dawn

Far Cry New Dawn was the immediate successor to the rather fantastic Far Cry 5. It took place in Hope County once again, but the map feels significantly smaller, and the gameplay largely focuses around having you repeating content without enticing enough rewards to warrant you actually wanting to do it.

The main pull here is that New Dawn takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of Hope County, where there’s a bigger focus on crafting and acquiring resources. Your weapons and their attachments are a hodgepodge of whatever you can find lying around the world. But the post-apocalyptic vibe only lasts for so long, when you realize there’s a strange abundance of ammo everywhere you go and resources aren’t actually all that scarce.

The big bads of New Dawn, the twin sisters Mickey and Lou are so inconsequential that it’s easy to just forget about them entirely after a while. Everything about New Dawn just feels a little scaled back and limited in its ambition. This one’s only recommended for the most die-hard Far Cry 5 fans out there.

6. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon sounds like something that a fanfiction writer would think of while bored one afternoon: “Man, I really dug Far Cry 3, but I feel like it’s missing something…I know! It needs Michael Biehn, an 80s synth vibe, and giant dragons!” Much like how Kingdom Hearts showed us that Disney and Square Enix was a much better combination than we were expecting, so it goes with Blood Dragon.

Despite having the Far Cry 3 title, Blood Dragon has no relation to the base game, which is a bit baffling, to be sure. But while the title is a bit confusing, the game itself is a blast, feeling like a modern game that was made for old retro game fans. More than the indie 2D games that try to evoke nostalgia for Mega Man or Castlevania, Blood Dragon leans on that nostalgia factor hard, from the synth soundtrack to the CRT scanlines and soft fuzz static. Biehn’s deadpan delivery meshes nicely with the 80s action film script, and it’s hard not to laugh at pressing the right stick to flip the bird or at lines like “Lady Liberty taught me that winners… don’t use drugs.”

Thankfully, Blood Dragon has the gameplay to back up its looks. While it’s essentially a copy-paste job of the base game, there’s no denying the appeal that comes from shooting Daft Punk with sci-fi rifles. The titular Blood Dragons add some danger to things, but whether or not it’s fun to exhaust all your ammo and explosives to avoid getting turned into Kyle Reese’s Pieces is going to fluctuate. Still, for $20 (or less nowadays), Blood Dragon is great and shows that the series doesn’t necessarily need to lean so hard on gritty character stories of survival to work.

5. Far Cry 6

The latest entry in the Far Cry series is also the most disappointing. It’s not a bad game, and it’s still a darn sight more enjoyable experience than the games that have come before it in this ranking. But in 2022, fans were expecting so much more than what the game offered, especially when Giancarlo Esposito was plastered all over the marketing as the main antagonist, Antón Castillo.

To his credit, Esposito did a pretty fantastic job of portraying the fascist dictator of Yara, but he just didn’t get enough screen time to really make a lasting impact in the same way other Far Cry villains have.

Far Cry 6 just didn’t do enough to really advance the series, either. 3 was the entry that set everything in motion with an unforgettable villain. 4 was just downright entertaining, and 5 felt like the most intriguing in terms of its story. But 6? It just did an okay job at all of these things without ever really giving itself a standout feature to write home about.

I did have a lot of fun with the Macarena gun, but there’s only so many times you can listen to the 90s classic as you slice someone through the neck before you start wondering what more the game has to offer.

If you’re looking for the most modern and generic Far Cry experience, 6 is what you’ll want to check out.

4. Far Cry Primal

Far Cry Primal gets a pretty bad rap in our eyes. Sure, there wasn’t a whole lot of story going on, there weren’t any standout characters, and the experience felt very… light, so to speak, but the core mechanics were strong and it offered a different take on the FPS series.

Taking us way back to 10,000 BC, Primal cast aside the guns and advanced weaponry the series had become synonymous with, and left you with the bare, stealthy necessities instead. A bow, some throwables, and your natural instinct to take down your blissfully unaware foes.

Is Primal going to be for everyone? Absolutely not. But now, in 2023, after seeing Far Cry 6 offer just more of the same typical Far Cry fare, Primal stands out as a half-decent effort to diversify the series. Even if all the parts weren’t quite there, it’s still worth checking out for die-hard fans all the same.

3. Far Cry 4

Not many predicted just how quickly the series would grow after the release of Far Cry 3. As the year was winding down and everyone had decided what their favorite games of that year were, Ubisoft slyly put it in at December. People ended up latching onto it and as the old saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Hence Far Cry 4.

It’s unfair to compare games, but FC4 really does feel like FC3 with the Pacific Islander undertones swapped for Buddhism. The shooting, driving, stealth, and crafting system all feel like they were lifted wholesale from FC3 with little to no adjustments (which is fine, since they still work pretty well here). Environments are still beautiful, the level progression is still fun to go through, and there’s still some dark joy in watching an enemy group get torn to shreds by a wild animal. Oh and riding an elephant? Yeah, that’ll never get old. 

None of that is bad, but that also means that Far Cry 4 can only occupy the same airspace as its predecessor instead of elevating the series. There’s not a lot that’s terribly new, and what is new either makes things more annoying (animals can be more of a hassle this time around), or just feels thrown in for the sake of it such as gyrocopters that make tailing missions insultingly easy. Most noticeably, protagonist Ajay Ghale and his tale of honoring his mother’s dying wish on the island of Kyrat, fell flat compared to Jason Brody’s desire to save his kidnapped friends from pirates, despite having a fairly solid Troy Baker as the sadistically entertaining Pagan Min. At the end of it all, Far Cry 4 isn’t a bad game, in fact it’s pretty great, but it doesn’t quite have the same spark as before.

Also, eagles. Screw eagles.

2. Far Cry 5

By the time Far Cry 5 rolled around, we very much knew what we were getting from a new entry in the series. A big open world? Check. A disturbingly evil villain? Check. Lots of outposts to clear and side missions to complete? Double check. And yet, Far Cry 5 managed to do something even its successor and those games before it couldn’t. It provided one of the more compelling narratives complete with engrossing story beats and set-pieces that had us fighting against the Seed family right to the very end.

Rather than taking us to some distant foreign land, the fight took place in our very own backyard, too. It helped the events hit harder, and the beautiful, varied terrain of Hope County just made for some enjoyable side content that we’d not had in the series before.

Round that all out with each of the Seed siblings’ various regions and boss battles feeling distinctly different and Far Cry 5 was arguably the most gripping entry in the series since, well… the very best game in the series.

1. Far Cry 3

Far Cry 3 is a damn great game, but it’s great in a way that’s almost subtle when you think about it. Yeah, there’s all that fun open gameplay and watching pirates get jumped by a tiger, but the draw is also in the Rook Islands and what it does to the player, Jason Brody. The island is as much of a villain as Vaas is, helping Jason shed his doughy privileged rich kid skin to become a guy willing to run over animals and gut dudes without blinking an eye. Vaas tortures Jason’s mind and the island tortures his body, turning the game from sandbox mayhem to survival horror.

The appeal in the gameplay comes less from the combat and admittedly simplistic stealth design, and more from how the game allows you to play however you wish. You could go in guns blazing with an LMG and rocket launcher to free the outpost and gain a new piece of territory. Alternatively, you could snipe everyone in sight with a silenced sniper rifle and release a deadly tiger from a cage to do your dirty work. Or hell, just wingsuit into the outpost and slice everyone’s necks open before they know what hit them. Far Cry 3 doesn’t do a whole lot to revolutionize the open world genre, but it sure as hell knows how to give players incentive to use what’s presented before them.

What’s your favorite entry in the Far Cry series? Let us know in the comments below.