Far Cry 5 Difficulty Guide: Difficulty Levels Explained

Since the genesis of video games, there has always been those that enjoy a relaxed gaming experience and those that relish a challenge. This is why the Dark Souls series has such a loyal fanbase and equally why games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley have an equally loyal player base. So with that in mind, it is important for games that don’t live and die by their natural difficulty to offer a variety of difficulty settings to help players create a gaming experience that is right for them.

Far Cry 5 is a game that aims to offer a comprehensive set of difficulty settings that allow the player to take part in a campaign that is as challenging or as simple as they wish. For some, the narrative may be the part they wish to absorb and the combat is merely filler content, whereas there are players that don’t mind the painstaking difficulty of combat at the higher difficulty levels. As the saying goes, different strokes for different folks. So, with that in mind, we want to run through the difficulty levels in Far Cry 5 and tell you all there is to know about each setting.

Here is our comprehensive Far Cry 5 difficulty guide!

What Difficulty Levels are Available in Far Cry 5?

While a lot of games like to provide a cavalcade of different difficulty levels, with some providing sadistically brutal parameters for players to work within, Far Cry 5 decides to keep things nice and simple. The player will have an easy mode, normal mode and hard mode to choose from. Easy is recommended for players new to the series or to FPS games, normal is recommended for players who want a decent challenge, and hard mode is for those who want to be truly tested.

How to Change Difficulty Levels in Far Cry 5?

When in the game, navigate to the options menu. From here you will see an option that allows you to toggle the difficulty. Simply hover over this and use the analogue stick, left mouse or d-pad to change the level to the setting that suits you best. This difficulty level can be adjusted at any point in time, even during the game, and none of these settings is specifically tied to any achievements, so players who choose to play on easy will not miss out on any achievements throughout their playthrough.

What are the Differences between the Various Difficulties in Far Cry 5?

Many games are very thorough with the way they scale difficulty. The Last Of Us for example will make resources more scarce, make the AI more alert to your movements and every enemy will hit harder. However, when we look at Far Cry 5, it seems that Ubisoft has been very lazy in this department. The only differences between the easy, normal and hard mode in Far Cry 5 is the damage output from enemies. Meaning that the higher the level, the harder the enemies hit.

In some cases, this can be more than enough, especially in simplistic, arcade-style games. However, due to the open-world format and the huge scope of this game, this simply doesn’t cut it. Thanks to the abundance of weapons, ammo, healing items and perks that players can acquire throughout their playthrough, after the first few hours, there is rarely a moment that the player ever feels vulnerable, even in hard mode. Meaning that the whole difficulty setting feels superficial.

Now, in defence of the developers, there has been a patch released since the release that has introduced level scaling for enemies. This means that instead of stumbling across enemies in areas from the beginning of the game which will die by as much as looking at you, you will now encounter enemies that are around the same level you are. This provides a little bit more of a well-rounded challenge, but as mentioned, you still won’t feel overwhelmed at any point throughout.

It’s also worth mentioning that the AI within this game are not clever in the slightest and this has a major effect on the difficulty of this game. In a straight firefight, enemies are one track-minded and don’t use any tactical intuition to outsmart you, and this remains the case no matter what difficulty setting you choose.

Then, to add to this, the AI simply can’t deal with any of the stealth mechanics provided within this game. If the player is in any way proficient in the art of stealth, they will have an easy time invading a camp, taking out the enemies within, and most likely, not ever sounding an alarm or taking a hit. It’s an unfortunate oversight from such a well-respected developer, especially when games like Fear which are almost two decades old trounce this game in AI intelligence.

Is there any Way to Make the Game More Difficult?

So, due to the shortcomings of the developers, you may be brainstorming ways to make the game more of a challenge. Well, thanks to a wonderful article which you can pursue right here, there are a number of great self-imposed challenges that you can perform throughout your run. Here are just a few of the stipulations that you can use when going about your business in Far Cry 5:

• Hardest difficulty
• Only use bow, throwables, and one unsilenced pistol
• Turn off all HUD assists, compass, tags, most other HUD elements
• No fast travel
• No companion characters
• No first aid kits

It is also worth noting that when you complete the main campaign. The player unlocks the ‘Outpost master’ setting which allows you to refill your cleared camps with more enemies, allowing you to capture them all over again. This not only adds more content and replayability, but also makes the map more dynamic, hostile and alive, and means that there is more danger to contend with when playing.

Honestly, this game would really benefit from a survival mode or a hardcore mode but it seems that Ubisoft has no plans to make this a reality.

So that’s our comprehensive guide to the difficulty levels in Far Cry 5. What do you make of our guide? Was this helpful to you? Do you think that this game is difficult enough? What do you do in the game to up the challenge? Let us know in the comments section below and as always, thank you for reading.