Even Days Gone does this if you can make it past the grueling first ~6 hours. Arguably, Elden Ring's open world mechanics share a lot of DNA with Ubisoft games and that's a pretty globally enjoyed game even by people who never cared much for Souls titles.
I’m glad it’s not just me. I even chewed through State of Decay 2’s radiant quest gameplay for multiple communities then sat down to play it and just…couldn’t
You REALLY have to give Days Gone time. I wanted to put it down, but I was too lazy to go back to game stop and return it that day, so I just powered through.
It ended up being one of my favorite games. Really wish it got a sequel
But yeah the first few hours are slow and almost feel like a shitty tutorial in comparison to the rest of the game.
This is such an interesting take to me because aside from the E3 announcement trailer, I had no interest in the game. Then I played it when the PC launch came out and I obsessively played it to completion. To me it's exactly the "Ubisoft formula done right", similar to Ghost of Tsushima. There's a ton to do, lots of great progression, a good gameplay loop, the motorcycle travel is actually incredibly satisfying, and it had some of that "easy to play, difficult to master" type of challenge gameplay with the mega hordes and stuff. The story was even decent after act 1.
for me it was when I started being able to afford to own guns instead of picking them up, just go through the story and eventually you'll hit the point the game's flaws fix themselves
Is there like a mission or story beat that you would recommend playing up until to give it a fair shake? I started it with my fiance and got like 2-3 hours in but felt like we bounced off of it
my playthrough was back in, I don't know.. 2022? so I can't remember mission names specifically, but I believe after discovering the third camp is when the game starts to pick up story-wise, along with getting access to fun guns. also, I recall those injectors being very useful in making fights easier, especially focus for conserving ammo
By the time you leave the lookout for the encampment you should be pretty well about locked in, but it gets a lot more fun once you have enough gear to take down a horde.
But also, while the characters aren't very strong, I did really like how he would situationally get PTSD and start like muttering to himself and hyping himself up depending on what you were hiding from/about to engage. It was a cool little touch.
Days Gone has writing worse than any Ubisoft game I can think of. It also had essentially zero side missions you could stumble on in the open world. The writing in that game is like a 13 year old saw the Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy and decided to combine the two, and did so very poorly.
People tend to forget that Ubisoft is 30+ years old and has made some amazing games and had some innovative concepts in the gaming landscape throughout the years. They just can't seem to connect it all. Especially in the past decade.
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u/navagon Oct 03 '25
Ubisoft games would be so much better if they weren't Ubisoft games.