Just Cause 4

Ok... So... Just Cause 4... Just Cause 4 Reloaded is... absolutely fine. That's it, fine. Not awful, not bad, not horrendous like some people say, it's just fine. When compared to JC2 or JC3, yeah, not good looks, but looking at it as it's own game, it's fine, even great at some fronts.

Just Cause 4 finally has a different story than "overthrow an authoritarian regime in Central America", also, finally some character development too, Rico is a bit more grumpy than expected, but still a good character. The story has... Something! They tried for once, it's no God of War but it gets the job done, and of course, ends on a cliffhanger. I will never forgive you if you don't give us a JC5 Avalanche >:(

Gameplay is better in every way imaginable (M/KB), some things were added, some removed, some changed (don't know who had the idea to auto-retract the tethers >.>), but overall, I still like it. Much easier to control Rico in the wingsuit and use all the gadgets.
Gunfight is still the same as JC2 and JC3, and by that I mean that it still awful. Using the rifles feels like you are shooting stone statues with a healthbar and that's it. No impact animations, no blood wounds, no physics, no gore, once their health reaches zero, the stiff statues become a ragdoll, and that's it.
Use explosive weapons or shotguns, believe me, much better.

Action is still awesome, destruction physics are the best of all JC games, the tornadoes ripping through the land and taking everything along with it is marvelous, I do wish we had more control of the weather effects tho, it's pretty complicated to control the Tornadoes for example. Ah yes, the turret sections are fun too.

The mission structure is... Strange, you have to release a few regions to unlock main missions, it's fine tho, can get tiresome but nothing extreme. I just played the main campaign, wasn't in the mood to 100% the game, I just released the regions and made the main missions, had a pretty decent time, but if you do all sides it will probably take forever and be boring.

Graphics are a mixed bag, the horizons looks beautiful, the explosion effects are among the best I have ever seen, the particles, fire, rain effects, all brilliant. As for the atmosphere, it has a darker tone to it, specially when compared to JC3, it's taste, I like it but I get those who enjoy a more vibrant experience. As for the bad, man, the lightning and texture work of the cutscenes are HORRENDOUS, my god, what happened there? Literal PS1 textures, sometimes the hair glitches, Sheldon looked like he had metal hair and beard on some cutscenes, the cutscenes are waaaay too dark and low res (literally 480p), I don't know why they did it, the in-game cutscenes are MUCH better. Last, of course, the ocean, yea the water is strange man, while it looks good at night with winds, during the day it looks like paper. Awful.

The performance is also fine for me, no framedrops at all, not even in tornadoes, the FPS is completely stable, much better performance than JC3 in all possible fronts and I had a single crash while playing and reproducing a stream on my second monitor. The only stutters I had was when I completed a leaderboard challenge, but once I disabled those in the menu, no more stutters.

As an old time fan that played all JC games (Really old, JC1 on PS2 was fire), I actually like it. Not the best Just Cause, but not the atrocity people make it.
I would give it mixed rating, but since I like it more than dislike it. Soft recommended.

I can recommend getting JC4 only on sale. I feel like the devs got tired of making the game but felt that they still needed to get compensated for all the work they've done so far and decided to put it out as is regardless of what players and fans would say. The game plays good but there will be one big lag and some awful stutter. After doing some search, you can eliminate the stutter by simply going in the option menu - game play - and Select leaderboard and put it on show none. Crazy right! This could have been fixed easily. goes to show you there is no love from the devs this time around. I gave it thumbs up to support them. We can all fall from time to time. But also I have finished it and also got one of the DLC's. So I did have some fun but the game is not even close to JC3 or JC2 in terms of quality.

This game gets a bad rap because it's a downscale from JC3, but that doesn't mean it's not a great game.
I went in to scratch the itch of driving around blowing stuff up, and JC4 delivers exactly that, so I was certainly not disappointed.
It's a bit more sandboxy than JC3 because capturing regions require you to get squads, which you get by causing Chaos (i.e. blowing stuff up). So you can capture a region without even setting foot in it, though some regions require a specific operation without them to be done before you can capture them - but they're always available, versus only available after you destroyed all enemy assets in the region.
I read some players dislike that approach compared to JC3, on my side I do like it better because that gives you freedom in how you want to approach capturing a region. I got way more than enough squads just playing the game naturally, and before capturing a region I usually went in with a chopper or tank to destroy all the assets I could find (usually in parallel to doing the region-specific operation) just for the fun of blowing stuff up.
You also get mods for the grappling hook which are a fun idea, though a bit cumbersome to set up and use.
You do however feel that the game was a bit rushed, with expedited story lines and features, and a few bugs to overcome (like having to properly set processor affinity every time the game is launched, or fast travel displaying actual keybinds but still using original keybinds). Still very fun to play though!
DLCs are a mixed bag:
* Dare Devils is a hit or miss, I feel. I personally liked it because it's driving around blowing stuff up and that's my thing in Just Cause. If you dislike vehicle handling and physics in JC you might not have a good time though.
* Los Demonios is a great idea but terrible execution. Everything about it was frustrating gameplay to me, starting with the fact you can't use vehicles at all in that DLC which is a huge turn off for me. Add to that a constant supply of flying pestering enemies that suicide-explode on you and tanks blasting you off the sky and you get a frustrating combat experience.
* Danger Rising was okay. It's driving around blowing stuff up so I can't complain. I disliked the DLC vehicle (hoverboard) so your mileage may vary depending on that, especially since it adds hoverboard races which were among my worst experiences in that game. Endless respawning enemies is more or less okay, not so when there are many AA turrets around that you can't destroy with respawning enemies constantly going back to man them.
Overall: I wanted to blow stuff up, JC4 gave me stuff to blow up, I was happy. Less good than JC3, still a great game.

It's a great game, shame there's a lot of bugs and crashes, and no more patches.

Just Cause 4 was a bit improved compared with the previous game.
But still it wasn't amazing, atleast not if you play it on mouse & keyboard. The control of bikes, planes is pretty horrible. But I can appreciate the fact that the wingsuit was way more enjoyable on keyboard compared with Just Cause 3.

In the beginning I hated that they removed liberations and the challenges seem pretty hard, but after a few hours I started to LOVE the new challenges. In this one you have a lot of towns / military bases and in each you have 2 - 7 challenges, depends how bit the location is.

+ Wingsuit was improved and much controllable.
+ Challenges revamped which made the game even more fun, no more leaderboards.
+ Pretty interesting weapons and enemies.
+ Garland, Sargento & Javi your new buddies asking you to do different jobs for them, and complete all their taks was interesting.
+ The Graphic was improved a bit, probably a new engine but this will go on CONS aswell and you'll see why.
+ New tools, grapling hook that can tether in 2 points and lift stuff, the baloon tool was interesting and we have some boost tools but i never used it.
+ The story was pretty good and theres a big chance that you'll get attached a lot of characters. They were well done.

- Graphics are improved but in same time made some characters to look dead inside. Bulgy eyes and no light behind them.
- I encountered some problems with the water. Most of times when I plunge into water game fully crash and get some weird error.
- The game needs to be set in Full Screen and 50 FPS otherwise on a mission where you have to go underwater for some generator the game will crash non stop if you are not locked on 50 FPS.
- During game I plunged into water from helicopters and with cars and the bug reappeared even with 50 FPS locked.
- With new engine the hair and the character details sometimes looked weird.
- When you fully finish the game, they dont show on map everything, so you'll have to waste a lot of hours to search for hidden towns if you wanna make all stunt challenges.

I played this game on my YouTube channel took me 30 episodes and a total of 43 hours, 7 minutes, 13 seconds, and I didn't made it 100%. Still missed a good portion of challenges and all those Rampage races + 11 statues for Javi.

The game is good and I recommend it, is worth playing and offer a lot of content if you want to waste lots of hours to complete everything.

P.S.: YouTube in Steam bio if you are interested.
Happy gaming!

OVERHATED GAME ALERT
As a fan coming off of Just Cause 3, I can understand the frustration at release, especially with how the marketing material presented the game as far more than what it's worth.
As is typical for Western games, the game also released broken and unfinished.
I got it years after release for chump change, and with all patches and DLC.
Ultimately, this game isn't as good as the predecessor, but a lot of it is down to personal preference.
First,
The Cons
Let's get the elephant out of the room: The downgrade in GRAPHICS and PHYSICS is laughable.
However, I think one needs to understand that, unlike the predecessor, this game wasn't made with Unreal Engine 4, but Avalanche's proprietary Apex tool. Which is to say, a lot of time and money that could have gone into development was siphoned by making this tool. I imagine they didn't use UE4 because of licensing fees.
The SOUNDTRACK suffered, too.
But again, Avalanche can't really be blamed. You can beat Henry Jackman, who composed Just Cause 3 alongside Zach Abramson, and I imagine Jackman doesn't charge pennies either.
However, Abramson has done as good of a job as he could to learn from working with Jackman, and I think the effort should be complimented. The adaptive mixing is also back and better.
Personal Issue: The WINGSUIT CONTROLS are easier.
It was quite fun to spend hours crashing in Just Cause 3, but now being able to look back at just how good I've gotten at daring wingsuit maneuvers. It seems that in Just Cause 4, your wingsuit loses momentum much slower, and thus, the experience is also not as kinetic, since the momentum simulates wind resistance, and you hardly feel any of that here.
Now,
The Pros
The STORY is a mixed bag, but generally, I prefer it.
While Just Cause 1 and 2 were not to be taken seriously at all, 3 did have some important and personal beats, and generally communicated its theme rather well.
Di Ravello was also, while generic, a good dictator antagonist.
Here, both villains, Oscar Espinoza and Gabriela Morales, are eternally in the background and hardly interact with the characters. Especially Gabriela, being the sister of Rico's friend and sister in arms Mira, has so much missed potential.
However, Oscar Espinoza ties very well into both Rico's personal history, as well as that of the country of Solis, and is generally interesting because of that. I just wish we'd actually gotten to see him act like the crybaby which he looks like. I do like that he's an oligarch who uses a mercenary army, though, as both of those things are underexplored in ficiton inspired by contemporary politics. Like how Di Ravello served as a baseline example for fascism, Espinoza does for oligarchy.
The sci-fi tech is kind of out of the blue here, as, while it was already present in 3, there it had a coherent theme that suspended the audience's disbelief, that being the mineral Bavarium, which only existed in its ficitonal country of Medici.
Here, the Black Hand just have all sorts of insane sci-fi weapons, tools, vehicles etc., just 'cause Espinoza has unlimited money and can buy stuff from wherever he wants.
I really like the other CHARACTERS.
I found most characters in 3 to be pretty damn annoying (except for the radio propaganda guy, David Tennant), and I like how much of the personalities of 4's cast tie into your interactions with them.
The new radio propaganda isn't as funny as Tennant's was, but I like it being a talkshow where the hosts, Thiago and Santiago, legitimately believe the garbage their script says.
There's Sargento, the strategist of the Army of Chaos, who coordinates the army behind the back the one-man-army that is Rico. He's inexperienced, but he's got heart, and Rico inspiring and teaching him is cool.
Javi is an archaeologist who used to perpetuate the Espinoza dynasty's propaganda about how they were supposedly the ones who had been improving Solis in the centuries since the Conquistado Diego Espinoza de Malaga arrived, and who, after being locked up for getting sick of lying, now tasks Rico to help him uncover the relics of the last dynasty of indigenous ancient Solino rulers, in order to prove Espinoza a liar.
My favorite is Garland King, who is just female Michael Bay from New York and who wants to Rico to be her stuntman in what I can only assume to be the most idiotic movie since Morbius. I love her.
Many disagree, but I actually like that you take over BASES by completing certain tasks now, instead of just destroying all the chaos objects.
They are, of course, a staple of the series, and their meaning has now been reduced so much that they even respawn upon restarting the game, but the developers at least found some good use for them, which is that they make the arcade-style score counter relevant again, by essentially acting as experience points. Every time you fill the chaos meter, you get an additional squad of insurgents, which you need to take over more areas.
The new GRAPPLING HOOK is also cool.
Random tasks which you are given while exploring the map are nice, and they reward you by unlocking mods for your grapple, depending on which character gave you the task. It gives you a lot more to do while randomly exploring.
The DLC for this game is much better than the undercooked additons of 3.
While they added cool mechanics and expanded on the lore, 3's DLCs were really just tacked on.
4's three DLCs all add new missions all over the map which completely switch up your gameplay and have their own themes.
Verdict:
Some things better, some things worse, but generally overhated. Buy on sale if interested. Better with mods.
8/10

Still a very fun game. JC3 has better game design but JC4 may be more fun in terms of the open sandbox possibilities, and is much better looking.