{"id":6275,"date":"2022-02-09T02:28:50","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T02:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xtremeservers.com\/blog\/far-cry-6-joseph-collapse-dlc-review\/"},"modified":"2022-02-09T02:28:50","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T02:28:50","slug":"far-cry-6-joseph-collapse-dlc-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xtremeservers.com\/blog\/far-cry-6-joseph-collapse-dlc-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Far Cry 6 Joseph: Collapse DLC Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After two of these roguelite DLCs so far, the formula for Far Cry 6<\/a>\u2019s villain-centric expansions has become predictable: you enter a character\u2019s mind, confronting their demons and learning more about their backstory while shooting everything in sight. Thus, Joseph: Collapse has a lot of the same strengths and shortcomings of Vaas\u2019 Insanity and Pagan Min\u2019s Control that came before it. Unlike those, though, this final entry in the trilogy has the critical flaw of starring the weakest villain of the bunch \u2013 by quite a wide margin \u2013 in Joseph Seed. The Zen-like militant cult leader from Far Cry 5<\/a> never made much of an impression on me aside from his unmistakable love of yellow aviators, and Collapse does little to make him more interesting. <\/p>\n

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For those who didn\u2019t finish Far Cry 5\u2019s campaign or skipped the follow up Far Cry: New Dawn<\/a>, consider this a necessary spoiler warning<\/strong><\/em>, but I have to talk about Collapse\u2019s ill-conceived attempt at redeeming the mass-murdering psychopath that serves as the main antagonist in those games. It\u2019s important in Collapse, because most of the story is centered around that redemption arc and Joseph\u2019s attempts at denying his egomaniacal nature. It\u2019s a tough sell, frankly, and one that doesn\u2019t feel particularly earned \u2013 you just hear him scream that he\u2019s sorry quite a bit as you direct him to commit acts of unspeakable violence. Little time is spent on justifying why he was so dang evil in Far Cry 5 aside from it being in his nature and that he\u2019s generally not a considerate human being.<\/p>\n

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Story problems aren\u2019t the only issues I have with Joseph\u2019s apology tour, either. For me, the biggest fault with the execution of the Far Cry roguelite pilgrimage is that it isn\u2019t challenging enough to lend itself well to a genre where you\u2019re expected to die a lot. Maybe it was just a fluke, but my first run through Collapse was also my first completion, and I even did all the optional waves of combat at the end that are supposed to serve as a final gauntlet. Since I only rarely felt like I was in danger of failing my run, I just focused on temporary upgrades and largely neglected the permanent ones that would have helped with future runs. I mean, why bother planning for subsequent runs if it\u2019s completely feasible to blow through it all in one go?<\/p>\n

One of the biggest strengths of the roguelite genre is completely undermined.<\/section>\n

And because it was so easy to complete Collapse on my first run, one of the biggest strengths of the roguelite genre is completely undermined: figuring out the story piece by piece with each new attempt. Instead of overcoming adversity and steadily making progress to unravel the mystery of Joseph Seed\u2019s mind, I just saw all the content in two hours then was encouraged to do it again on a harder difficulty with all the same story and boss fights. In fact, the breadcrumb storytelling design that\u2019s become a best practice for roguelites is completely absent from Collapse: if you die and have to replay a section everything will play out the same way, and once you\u2019ve completed a run you\u2019ve likely seen and brutally massacred just about everything there is to brutally massacre. <\/p>\n

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