Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☑ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

Hello and welcome to my review of CI’s third iteration of their Sniper Ghost Warrior series. I’ll start with my impression immediately.
Good ambition, imperfect execution.
The reason why I gave it a thumbs up and reluctantly so, is because I feel that it would be too harsh from me to give thumbs down to a game that has so many playable hours embedded in it. I endeavoured to write my review to help gamers with my accurate impression of the game, including tips, hints to help gameplay.
Even though I gave it a thumbs up, the game leaves its players hanging incomplete because the game felt abandoned, buggy, poorly executed and because the game poorly explains the plot for the player assuming that the player is already aware of enemy organisation’s plans. The game did leave a little bit of an undesirable after-taste in my mouth, akin to a big meal with some items tasting bad at the end. But worry not, I’ve highlighted some topics which will prevent you from making the mistakes I made.
Some of the issues I talk about below had some fixes done by modders and some others were workarounds which the developers didn’t fix in over 8 years. And they seem to not have a clue about the hindrances in terms of graphical performance, one of which I wrote about below. It should never be up to us gamers to find the issues and fix them. They should know more than us and distribute the patch-fixes.
But anyways, let’s dive deeper into my review starting with the things that I liked.
Things I liked:
SGW3 has many missions to sink your hours in. Enemies do a good amount of damage even if you have armour, so that gives a realistic look. HP regenerates, but only up to the corresponding hp bar.
The game is designed to play from afar and if you are up close, there is a good selection of silencer equippable handguns/rifles to switch to a stealth playstyle.
Money can be abundant in the main campaign if you loot every dead body and if you kiII every NPC in every outpost. I bought/looted 99.9999% of the bullets and items used and didn’t rely on the crafting mechanic.
Outposts can be cleared but the enemy NPCs and items there will respawn after some time so don’t worry about collecting every item in every outpost.
The detection system of the enemy NPCs doesn’t detect you immediately, but it’s not too slow either and definitely not braindead. Makes it a bit challenging trying to close-up-stealth kiII every NPC.
Climbing is very versatile and well executed in this game. The climbing camera first person view is realistic too. ‘Scout mode’ is the pseudo touchstone of this game.
Fast Travel is quick (~3 secs), after the whole map is loaded from the very beginning of your game session (taking ~1-minute time at the start of every game session).
The graphics is pleasing at maxed settings, with or without high+ shadows from some angles and scenes, especially during day time and in the rain during the night time. You can take very pleasing screenshots near puddles. Rain and water effects in this game is beautiful.
You can pretty quickly figure out out by yourself (I believe) on how to acquire sufficient skill points in this game to max-upgrade your skills even before you reach the middle portion of the game in terms of story completion.
Things that I did not like:
The developers did a poor job explaining the technicals/mechanics of this game, directing the player to the POIs and the clue missions. I could not initially complete some POIs because they are located at far corners of the respective maps where there is normally no reason to venture to. And there is one POI that is bugged in one of the maps and despite 100%-ing the game, that mark on the map remained.
The wide variation of sniper rifles feels redundant after you realise that even the weakest sniper rifle with a 7.62mm bullet to the head is enough to kiII most enemies so why bother adding more powerful sniper rifles? Even with armour penetrating .338 bullets, the headshots are sometimes not enough for some mask/helmet wearing heavies, so you need to hit them twice on the head. Also, the damage stats of weapons in the game is all for show, and therefore meaningless. No, this is not a spoiler. There is no gain/fun in wasting hours, figuring this stuff by yourself. Knowing this from before can help you save time in just picking a rifle with the two most important factors, a bipod, highest-zoom optics and just sticking to it.
Enemies disappear from the map most of the time after you drone-tag them if you are 350m away from them. It’s a game fault. And that leads to difficulty in sniping enemies from far away. Can’t see = Can’t snipe. I mean c’mon, it’s a sniper game *smh*
Those were my Likes and Dislikes; let’s come to tips which can potentially make your gameplay easier if you play the game.
Tips and hints:
-(MOST IMPORTANT) Keep shadow settings to low/med. Almost 0 visual difference nearby and some difference afar which you won’t practically notice. This is the ONLY setting that separates the game from being playable to annoyingly-playable and yet the developers seemed to be clueless about it in steam forums years back, suggesting obscure, useless v-sync settings changes inside nvidia/radeon drivers *smh* Meanwhile, figuring this out took me just over an hour of tinkering.
-Loot every dead body, enemy-dropped gun to receive bullet heads and mechanical parts (if ever needed)
-To deal higher damage, pick guns based on bullet type & bullet damage (not the gun damage) (.50<.338<7.62<5.56mm)
-Silencers, scopes with higher zoom and bipods are key. Don’t worry about silencer repair money-costs if you intend to loot lots of dead NPCs
-If you bought all the DLCs, then you can carry your McMillan 338 till the very late game without needing to replace it for any other sniper rifle
-Run, crouch with handgun equipped to move faster, drain lesser stamina
-The drone’s max range is 400m from your spot, but you can extend the range 50m with an unclear drone view and then mark enemies
-You can get a clue of what items you can loot from NPCs by taking a look at their body. For ex: Medics wear medkit pouches around their armour
-Hacking 1 CCTV terminal deactivates all cameras for the enemy in that outpost. You can use 1 terminal to see through every camera to mark enemies.
-You can collect a used arrow from a dead NPC if you move to it and loot it within ~5 seconds
-Tagging bullets are OP; to tag without alerting, aim near the centre regions of an enemy area without enemies being near 20m of the fired bullet
-Skill points from stealth kills will not add for sniper skill points nor warrior skill points and vice versa. Sniper, stealth, warrior skill = snipe kill, stealth kill, close up kill enemies respectively.
-No need to go in loud to get warrior skill points. Approach an enemy from close behind headshot with a silenced assault rifle to rake in warrior points.
-Approach a mine, press-hold the interact button and only when the grey-yellow colours match/overlap, let go of the button to disarm the mine.
-I highly recommend visiting the pcgamingwiki website of SGW3 to check out a few graphical changes you can tweak, for ex: to remove ‘film grain’ (post processing) which I personally do not like. No intro-mod can be found in nexus mods. Other mods there were useless. The improvement project on moddb is well rated but changes the game drastically and so I didn’t apply it.
Conclusion:
The link below is the original larger review. The steam review is the compressed one.

Anyways, thank you for reading this, I appreciate it. Hope you can decide accurately if you wanna buy it and of course, you can always refer back to this review if you wanna check back on something. Good luck!

Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 doesn’t beg for attention — it lurks in the shadows, just like you. And honestly? That’s what makes it hit different. It’s not trying to be flashy. It’s not feeding you kills-per-minute. It’s giving you time — to crawl, to breathe, to calculate.

This isn’t a run-and-gun shooter. It’s a game that punishes impatience. Your rifle isn’t just a weapon, it’s a ritual. You calibrate distance, wind, bullet drop, and when that round hits 400 meters out? You feel it in your spine.

The story? Yeah, it’s messy — tangled in brotherhood, betrayal, and politics. But beneath the surface, there’s a loneliness to this game. You're a ghost. One man against warlords and war crimes, with nothing but a rifle and grit. The Georgian wilderness becomes your graveyard and your canvas.

It’s buggy at times. The open world feels like it had bigger dreams than budget. But when the sun’s going down, and you're watching an outpost through your scope, breath held, heartbeat syncing with your crosshair… that’s when it all clicks.

This isn’t for everyone. But for those who like their kills cold, their victories earned, and their silence heavy — Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is a slow-burning, satisfying crawl through mud, glass, and ghosts.

(And if you take the shot without checking wind? You deserve the miss.)

Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is an immersive and intense tactical shooter that puts you in the role of an elite sniper deep behind enemy lines. The open-world design allows for strategic freedom, letting you approach missions in a variety of ways—whether you prefer long-range precision, stealthy takedowns, or all-out action. The game’s environments are vast and detailed, creating an engaging atmosphere that enhances the thrill of each mission.
The sniping mechanics are incredibly satisfying, with realistic bullet physics that make every shot feel earned. The story, while not groundbreaking, provides enough motivation to push forward through dangerous territory. Customization and weapon upgrades add a layer of depth, allowing players to fine-tune their loadouts to fit their playstyle.
For fans of tactical shooters, Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 delivers a solid experience with rewarding sniping gameplay and a compelling open-world structure. It may not be perfect, but it offers plenty of tense and exciting moments for those who enjoy methodical and strategic combat.

I was hoping for another linear 4-5 hour sniper game, instead I got Far Cry Georgia. I wasn't huge into this change, but if you like that kind of game, you're in for something good.
My problem with an open world map is too much side content, going to the same locations all the time and generally stretching the playtime with needless driving around the map.
The story is pretty lame, no need to explain much. Kidnapped brother, forced love story, super soldiers, dumb tragic stuff.
The gameplay is mostly solid, except later enemies that can take 2 headshots from your sniper rifle unless you use AP or explosive ammo which is really limited.
Not sure what else to say, it's solid for the price. Worth a playthrough if you like the Sniper Ghost Warrior or Far Cry series.
Time to finish: ~20 hours

Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 improves on its predecessor, Sniper Ghost Warrior 2, by introducing an open-world environment and more freedom in gameplay. The sniping mechanics are more refined, and there's a greater emphasis on stealth and strategy. However, while SGW3 offers a larger, more dynamic world, it suffers from repetitive missions and technical issues that SGW2 didn't have as much. SGW2 had tighter, more focused levels and a smoother experience overall, making it a more polished title. If you prefer more expansive, tactical gameplay, SGW3 is a step forward, but SGW2 still holds up as a more consistent and enjoyable experience.

Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 aims to provide a tactical open-world experience centered around three core gameplay styles: long-range sniping, stealth infiltration, and direct combat. You play as Jonathan North, a U.S. Marine sniper sent behind enemy lines in Georgia to carry out covert missions while searching for his missing brother. The game features a large, semi-open world divided into multiple regions, each filled with enemy outposts, mission zones, and side content. Visually, it makes good use of the CryEngine, and at times the environment can be stunning—especially when you’re perched on a mountainside, watching sunlight filter through trees or lining up a shot during a nighttime raid.
The sniping mechanics are easily the game’s strongest feature. Bullet drop, wind adjustment, and scope calibration all factor into the accuracy of long-distance shots, giving every successful hit a real sense of satisfaction. The addition of a customizable drone lets you scout enemy locations, mark targets, and even hack security systems, offering a helpful strategic layer. Over time, however, this precision can feel unbalanced. Once you unlock high-caliber rounds or upgraded equipment, the challenge starts to fade, allowing you to breeze through missions with ease and removing much of the tension that the early game builds so effectively.
Unfortunately, the story does not live up to the gameplay’s potential. The initial setup, with Jonathan’s relationship to his brother and the emotional weight of their separation, promises depth but never fully develops. Dialogue is often forced or overly aggressive, and the characters struggle to feel believable. Rather than offering a compelling personal journey, the plot quickly falls into predictable patterns filled with military clichés and underwhelming exposition.
The open-world structure itself feels underutilized. While it’s large and looks impressive, the world often feels empty and static. Enemy camps and mission objectives are scattered throughout, but interactions with NPCs are limited, and side content becomes repetitive. Many locations reset after you leave, making it feel like your actions don’t have any lasting impact. Driving between objectives adds to the feeling of padding, with little to do during long stretches of travel except admire the scenery.
Stealth gameplay can be rewarding when it works, allowing players to infiltrate bases using silent takedowns, distractions, and drone reconnaissance. However, the AI is inconsistent. At times, enemies ignore you from just a few meters away; other times, they seem to have supernatural awareness, detecting you instantly through walls or dense brush. Actions like looting or planting explosives are sluggish, and the slow animations can break the flow of otherwise tense encounters. These issues are further compounded by a lack of polish in basic movement and interaction mechanics.
On the technical side, the game is plagued with issues. Long loading screens—sometimes several minutes in length—frustrate even the most patient players. Frame rate drops, texture pop-ins, and occasional crashes are common, even on reasonably powerful PCs. Despite post-launch updates, many of these problems remain, and the game never fully shakes off its rough edges. There are community fixes and mods that attempt to improve performance and balance, but these require extra effort to implement and don’t solve everything.
Despite its flaws, Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 does offer moments where its ambition pays off. Landing a difficult shot after carefully tracking a target, sneaking through a fortified compound undetected, or customizing your gear for a specific playstyle can all be deeply satisfying. For players specifically looking for a sniper-focused sandbox with a blend of tactical systems, there is enjoyment to be found. Still, it's a game that feels like it tried to do too much without fully delivering on any one front. With stronger storytelling, tighter mission design, and more technical polish, it could have stood out as a top-tier entry in the genre—but as it stands, it’s an uneven experience that only partially lives up to its promise.
Rating: 7/10