Overview
I’ve played about 45 hours of Just Cause 3. In that time, I’ve done 54% of the challenges, liberated all provinces, found all collectibles and beaten the game.
It has had its ups and downs, but overall, the game works. Yes, it stutters. Yes, it’s beyond poorly optimized, but it’s still a fun, if overly repetitive, game.
I played this on an i7-4790k with 8GB of RAM and a GTX 980 Ti. After about two hours, the game would get stuttery, and the audio would stutter as well. Simple solution for me (not guaranteed to work) was to alt+tab out of the game, tab back in, and it worked fine for another couple of hours. Only twice did I have to quit out of the game and restart it to clear any stutter issues.
That said, if you’re still interested in the game in its current state (as of this review), continue on. If not, perhaps come back to the game after a patch or two and decide if it is worth it for you to buy then.
Pros
- Just plain fun to blow things up constantly
- Big open world
- Lots to do (races, frenzies, wingsuiting, etc.)
- Opportunity to create unique situations with physics and the upgrades available to you
- Fairly lengthy, will take you a bit to finish
- The world looks very good on max settings
- Music and sound effects, for the most part
- Lots of collectibles which reward unique vehicles or weapons
Cons
- Story is as bland as it can get, and been done countless times before; same goes for the dialogue
- Poorly optimized; beefy systems will stutter
- Repetitive; not much variety to the bases or towns aside from new things being added (early bases may not have monitoring systems while later ones will, for example)
- Main story and upgrades become gated behind the challenges, which make them necessary as opposed to optional
- Character models are bland, and enemies all look alike (regular soldier looks like every other, armored one looks like every other armored soldier, etc.)
Summary
The game is not without its issues. You could have a powerful system and still succumb to sub-30FPS without horrendous audio and visual stuttering. On the flip side, you could have a mid-range system and not have many issues at all.
Taken without its issues, Just Cause 3 is still a fun game. It’s best played in chunks, because the repetition will tire you if you were to play it for hours straight.
Finally, I recommend Just Cause 3 because when it works, it’s pure fun. There’s something to be said for arcadey games in today’s world, when a heavy focus is on strategy and realism, and with its insane explosions and aerial traversing, Just Cause 3 has arcadey in spades.
(This review was first written on December 14th, 2015, on the Steam store page for Just Cause 3)