Ghost Recon Breakpoint: A Retrospective 4 Years Later | JCG

[@voidofhope6259]

If Breakpoint had Wildlands atmosphere and if Wildlands had Breakpoints gunplay, that would’ve made for two almost perfect games

[@musicrevelations8904]

Factsssssss

[@UndeadKIRA]

Being a patient gamer Breakpoint is the most modern AAA game I have played, I just played wildlands last month and am now at breakpoint, I love it, it lacks in worldbuilding, but is very fun

[@fallenmarker9214]

Just play it in first person mf

[@fallenmarker9214]

@@UndeadKIRA and please let me know if you have wildlands I would genuinely love to play first person mod with someone

[@Sclopiopipio]

Play metal gear solid V phantom pain

[@fallenmarker9214]

@@Sclopiopipio play metal gear solid 2

[@cookie.2118]

​​@@Sclopiopipioghost recon breakpoint definitely uses Metal Gear Solid V as it's main inspiration but doesn't improve on anything that MGSV does. If you really love Breakpoint, MGSV gameplay will ruin it for you. The side missions is the only thing that is better in Breakpoint than MGSV. But the side mission in MGSV is more useful and helpful. So basically, breakpoint just feels like "MGSV but at home".

[@Error-000]

I’ve been waiting for this game to get polished, and now I can honestly say it’s one of the best casual milsim games out there-especially since it’s not first-person. My one gripe is they don’t do much to build up the story, which is a shame because it has serious potential. The whole setup with the tech, a powerful CEO owning a private island, and thousands of experts in different fields in one place building under a military occupation with rebels opposing them could be like a modern-day Rapture. But I can confidently say anyone who like milsim or casual milsim will love this game and its open options of open world military operations style of missions.

[@JustCG]

Part of the milsim fun is definitely setting up the experience instead of just charging in! Definitely the first chapter had a lot more potential to explore the various experts, but instead a lot of this gets put into the side missions instead since they don't have a direct stake with Operation Greenstone, but Episodes 2 and 3 were pretty good too

[@sylenzZ-80]

When it comes to Open World Tactical Shooters, there is nothing that comes close qualitywise to the complete package of Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Ubisoft delivered a class-A experience in gameplay & immersion after the updates 👌

[@ertsec]

Wildlands did such a better job

[@solidrockofjesuschristmini2423]

Wildlands imo

[@Marccubus]

playing Breakpoint with the Spartan mod and the First Person view mods are some of the coolest open world-fps moments i've ever experienced!

[@andreaodessa9181]

Never heard of them before. I'll try them for my next replay.

[@PaoMej]

Hoping the next GR will be coherent in style and art direction as GR Future Soldier, Immersive and gritty as GR Wildlands, the increased quality of life and even more improved changes similar to GR BP. Plus more tactics and options to strategize and AI that use tactics as well. I can't play Breakpoint as is without Spartan mod and immersion mods to make it fun.

[@JustCG]

@@PaoMej fingers-crossed that the next GR title can strike that balance between those styles in other entries

[@Namorat]

Wildlands is still one of my favorite games and I get back to it every now and then, but this game felt like such a step back and disappointment for me. I still played it for about 50 hours over three tries, but I do not think I ever left the first island, to be honest. It is always hard, when a later game loses something. The same with Just Cause 3, which I love, but the world in 4 just felt worse and empty.

[@Daniel__Nobre]

Same here. I went back to playing Wildlands very recently and man.. the ambience and the quality of the map are just something else. It's a shame Ubisoft got so scared with the all Bolivia government thing, because I think they actually did somethings good for the country. When I played it for the first time years ago it actually made me search for a lot of things and learn a bit about the country.

[@minty257]

I love splinter cell, ghost recon, and original rainbow six, basically anything tom clancy. But with the way ubisoft has been going, I really don't want another game from these franchises for fear of what we might get.

[@Daniel__Nobre]

Indeed! I think the key people that made those original games are probably not there anymore..

[@VvVN91]

Why anyone would rush to buy new games today is beyond me… never played breakpoint until like 3 years after it came out, wound up getting it for like 10 bucks with all the dlcs included… to think someone pre ordered or played this at launch with nothing and spent over 60 bucks for it is beyond me. Hell with any game that comes out today you’re only getting 30 percent of the game. With dlcs taking time and costing way more sometimes a game can cost upwards of 100-150 with dlcs being added on. It’s a complete waste of money… I stay a generation behind for my benifit and it always works out. So what if I’m not “up to date” I’m certainly enjoying my games at either super discounted prices or in some cases completely free. 😅

[@JustCG]

@@VvVN91 that’s fair! I’m also currently one gen behind and there’s definitely a few older titles that hold up great but at a lower price like Arkham Knight

[@woodoo4]

I agree. I just discovered Splinter Cell Blacklist and GR Wildlands

[@quademasters249]

Some of us have money and don't mind spending it for pleasure. Even at full price I've gotten more than my money's worth out of this game. It's certainly not a perfect game but it's good enough. I can always earn more money. I can never get time back. I earn money to spend it for enjoyment. There are certainly games I'm on the fence about that I wait for a sale but a game like this, I'm willing to pay the price.

[@VvVN91]

@@quademasters249 yea but people constantly spending money on the dlcs and pre ordering and updates at full price just make games more expensive as time goes on. The company’s see this and make them higher priced. Those that can’t afford suffer as spending increases. In alot of cases it’s not even worth the extra u spend. I have games from way back In the day that I spent Maby 50 bucks for that I would replay over and over because the quality is there. As a whole the quality isn’t there anymore as much, and the games are almost half the price of the consoles they are played on… it’s def gone down in quality.

[@JulianY2K12]

Been doing the same for years. I only get something day 1 if it's by fromsoftware but everything else I can easily wait a year or 2 for a discount.

[@JimmyEss]

It's basically open world Splinter Cell (episode 2 is a head nod of acknowledgement to this) If you put it on immersive mode and disable gear levelling then use map and compass for nav and objective finding it's great. I personally think it's a brilliant game and just bought it again last week for steam deck oled, having it on the go is another plus and I'm enjoying it all over again.

[@gvido2923]

Damn i missed both of the ghost recon games so i got them both on sale for 20€ so i blasted through Wildlands on Extreme after that now i am on Breakpoint and damn i am playing it on all extreme settings plus i started modding the game i have to say as it is now it is way underrated…feels way better than other modern games the realism you get with all the hardest settings plus mods is insane

[@codenamedesertviper1825]

As a long time Ghost Recon fan (been playing since Ghost Recon 2), I waited until the end of this game’s life cycle to finally try and play it. And oh my gosh, I absolutely fell in love. I put 100 hours into it by my first month. The story and amount of content was lacking in comparison to Wildlands, but the gameplay was so incredibly fluid and the customization in terms of immersion allowed me to become fully immersed everytime I played it. While not a perfect game, it’s definitely one of my favorites from the franchise

[@JustCG]

@@codenamedesertviper1825 customisation has to be one of the best aspects of the gameplay in Breakpoint, really helps to fit the experience to the player and make it as immersive as you want it

[@TremelJackson]

Breakpoint and Division 2 are the last decent modern Ubisoft games I find worth playing and I still haven't bought a Ubisoft title since these two games.

[@christianguy6428]

Completely agree. Still two of my favorite games to date.

[@peoduction6068]

I chose to give this game a try in July, since i was attracted by the great movement animations of the soldier and it is free with Ps Plus Extra. I expected a repetitive unimmersive Ubisoft mess with bad rpg elements, which in a sense it is. But the interface and difficulty customizations absolutely save the game and customizing them to my liking made it a hardcore, immersive game with great gameplay and no rpg elements. I played it a bit by myself, then started playing it coop with a friend, and we've had a lot of fun, for 50 or so hours now, completing the main story and now we're at our third territory in Conquest mode. Sometimes i also find myself wanting to play some secondary missions/resistance missions by myself and to soak in the world and landscape by myself. It's far from a perfect game, it has plenty of issues (bad story and characters, doesnt go all in on certain features, definitely some Ubisoft checklist type of stuff, etc), but also some redeeming qualities and attention to certain details (dynamic weather, graphics, animation, the injury system, the movement system, etc) that make it a good game for people who look for certain things. Its the type of game that i keep playing because i simply enjoy the actual gameplay, not because of any story or progression or any of that.

[@JustCG]

Immersion mode 100% brought a whole new level of enjoyment for the game, really brings in the more tactical crowd while still maintaining the casual shooter-game crowd as well

[@wellerman8830]

I’ve re played both wildlands and breakpoint this year I must say Wildlands was fun But breakpoint is one step forward than wildlands, when breakpoint was on 80% sale I told my bro to buy it and boy money well spent we both enjoyed the game so much, my only gripe with breakpoint is the robots and drones , it just throws off the feeling of realism or milsim type thing for me. That just me tho.

[@JustCG]

I think the devs wanted to build more on the sci-fi of it all but the behemoths are pretty divisive, I kinda like them but as a comparative element to Sentinel it can be a bit jarring

[@glibchubik4090]

Very well made essay! I enjoyed my 70hrs with Breakpoint, but all of it's flaws became much more apparent when I played Wildlands. The liveliness of the world and a strong sets of villains are such deal-breakers for motivating the player into trying to take them down. I hope the next GR game will combine the strenghts of both

[@ComaToast712]

Worst part is that there's still an entire piece of the archipelago locked off from access. The NFT stuff really was the straw that broke the camel's back, and this game's end result was what made me dislike Ubisoft as much as I do now. Yeah- they made the game a lot better by the time they cut support, but, holy shit, they just continue to make horrible choices for their games that only instill more disdain for the company as a whole. Breakpoint is literally unfinished. whereas Ubisoft is steadily bound for that finish line, except that they're coming dead last after the race is already over.

[@JustCG]

Definitely feels like the release of Quartz was the final straw for Breakpoint. While I don't dislike Ubisoft that much, Quartz really was a somewhat questionable direction that did not receive much community support at all

[@Chonkems]

I still play Breakpoint from time to time. It's a weird but unique experience.

[@SynysterGoose]

I hated this game when it dropped. Tried over the years and still hated it. Randomly picked it up about a month ago and I’m loving it. Can’t explain it, but I’m having so much fun stealthily taking out bases. My only regret was not playing during the supported drops and limited time missions.

[@Gunny_101st]

Even with all of its faults, 4 years later I am still playing it on a regular basis.

[@JustCG]

Game has me coming back to get the Wolves outfits on Golem Island, kinda sucks the outfits aren’t perfect with weird gaps in clothing

[@Gunny_101st]

@@JustCG I can't begin to count how many playthroughs I've done. And how many different scenarios I've come up with to keep things interesting.

[@JustCG]

I haven’t done new playthrough myself but it has been a blast replaying missions in various outfits

[@joeg8269]

It's unfortunate that Ubisoft abandoned Breakpoint. As someone who enjoys military stealth games, this game is excellent! I tried Wildlands (after finishing Breakpoint) and I agree that the cartel atmosphere and story is more compelling...but I couldn't get past the gunplay in Wildlands. Breakpoint's gunplay is smooth and the sound of the weapons are top notch!

[@yaibaone]

I played wildlands then i bought breakpoint after all these content updates and play modes had been added and i enjoyed it. I had the luck of not playing it at release and this is something i have come to realise about games today. The only dev you can trust for day one release are some indie studios because the quality of their game will make or break them and a few AAA devs like Fromsoftware. I just mostly don't get hyped about day one because the games will mostly be lacklustre or buggy. I played Jedi survivor recently and surprisingly all the bugs that people were talking about at release were gone. 1 year later lots of fun.

[@JustCG]

I get that, a lot of games now release with Day One patches, and even then sometimes it's not all ironed out. What is important is that they improve upon it, so breakpoint is really one of those that sticks out differently, content-wise, to its Day One counterpart

[@zay_tiggygaming]

370 hrs on breakpoint and I love it. I don't play it much anymore, but it's still a great game. Extreme no hud with no gesr score or drones is how this game should be played. The dialogue is terrible tho

[@Nanniclips]

One thing I’ll never ever forgive the fact that in any cut scene they remove your mask and goggles helmet and show your player face but in wild lands you wouldn’t have that happen and with hot ugly faces looked in breakpoint I was spamming to skip cut scenes and didn’t care about the story cause it broke my immersion every time

[@bussin1337]

u didnt miss out on a single thing bro the story is so fkin bad and dumb anyway

[@ertsec]

All of Wildlands and DLC missions had more personality than the slop that came with breakpoint. I’m still mad they did Bowman dirty and neutered all her edginess

[@Kroberto]

Ngl, I only heard it sucked at the beginning. It's very nice that this video shows that it has improved a lot!

[@emissarial6598]

Great video. I'm getting back into this game after only playing a little after launch. It's very good now, but as someone who enjoys pve multiplayer in the open world, I've found the newer missions and mission modes seem to divide the player base. I've been pulled into modes that I hadn't heard of and didn't understand, sometimes harming the team as I figured things out.

[@JustCG]

Happens sometimes, not a lot changes mission to mission but some small things can be tricky (like sneaky lasers in Episode 2 missions)

[@smdawson6357]

Picked this up the day after release and wore this game out for a cool 3 yrs straight 1300+ hrs Im still looking for the trailer with the female voice narration and its so weird I cant find it nowhere I most def seen it on here thats what made me get the game but even when it was getting gutted and hated brutally I enjoyed every minute of it and the Operation Motherland was a chef’s kiss to say goodbye the whole community was crying for a new enemy type after teasing for so long and we finally got it just speaking as a Day 1 player and watched the improvement in real time

[@Plzseany]

This game’s soundtrack was insanely good

[@jj_1808]

Very nice essay, really enjoyed it. My take is, that like you pointed out, the world feels almost dead, the atmosphere is juts not there. And in addition to what you said about the characters, a lot of the dialog with important NPC is downright cringe at times. And even though the gun play is a lot better, things like shooting a suppressed 50.cal withing a meter of an enemy, and it then not alerting them, like it did in wild-lands. It feels like, who ever made Wildlands did not make Breakpoint. When they added the 3 AI NPC teammates they forgot to add voice-lines, they feel far more A then I.

[@JustCG]

I would have loved more characterisation and dialogue for the teammates. If Ubisoft ever plans on bringing this team back, I would definitely want some good lore references to their time on Auroa

[@MaxRamos8]

As somone new to the ghost recon franchise, Wildlands was MUCH more fun in gameplay and progression much clearer. Breakpoint was very much like a destiny 2 live service where you don't even know how to navigate

[@JustCG]

@@MaxRamos8 I think after the initial Ghost Experience update and also Operation Motherland, the gameplay + progression feels a lot better than launch, less live-servicey more just gunplay

[@skylight6904]

I wish if a mod exists for wildlands which brings in the gunplay and animation of breakpoint.

[@shalindelta7]

​​​@@JustCG is the world still dead in atmosphere ? Is there still no vehicle gps ? How about weapon holstering ? Those were major turn offs for me.

[@JustCG]

@shalindelta7 unfortunately there isn’t any weapon holstering or a vehicle GPS, but that might be fair considering Aurora itself may not have GPS information. I’d say the open world itself is about the same as launch, but with more Sentinel patrols, individual bases are also quite similar, but different hubs, like the Homesteaders hub, has definitely improved

[@dhruvster10]

Don’t think you played enough if your couldn’t figure how to even navigate the world. Gameplay wise breakpoint is much better than wild lands

[@PurpleSnake]

Please don't tell me I'm crazy. AI Teammates used to put on and off a suppressor on their main weapon (if it had a suppressor available) according to if the player did so. They don't do it nowadays, but I swear they used to years ago.

[@YM-zf8mt]

that's funny it's like when you make a finished product people like it and when you sell a half assed pile of steaming garbage that you advertise as a finished product people hate it WHO WOULDA THUNK ? maybe one day investors will grow a brain and this industry will be fixed then

[@quademasters249]

I loved the world they built with this island. If it was a real place, I'd want to move there. The problem was the plot and story. It just wasn't that compelling. I liked that it wasn't another "great white savior" trope like "WildLands". I loved wandering the island, fighting the big bots. Seeing and exploring the buildings and campuses they built. The gun-play was top notch. The drones were pretty deadly. It just felt like a missed opportunity. Someone should take that engine and build a fantastic story out of the bones.

[@my0866]

Breakpoint was made on a fictional island due to the fall out Ubisoft faced after Wildlands. If you know you know.

[@JustCG]

I remember Ubisoft getting flack from the Bolivian government for its portrayal, which I think it’s what you’re referring to. It could’ve motivated this shift for sure, but it also meant that they had a lot of big shoes to fill for world building

[@hjk9934]

I appreciate your in-depth analysis. However, Breakpoint was an insufferable snoozefest to me even by Ubisoft standards. The biggest flaw was its broken enemy AI. I could see Breakpoint was trying too hard to be its own Metal Gear Solid but the enemies' simplistic behavioral patterns made it impossible to achieve that goal. For example, when you are on a rooftop, they always come up stairs in line. This means you can just wait patiently for them to appear at the end of the stairs and pop their heads one by one. It was a huge disappointment that eventually turned me away.

[@JustCG]

I kinda get that, positioning yourself right at the edge of the stairs make it an absolute arcadey shoot fest. I think on the ground it probably worked a little bit better but, unless it was specific drone operators, snipers or rockets, it did just feel like cannon fodder sometimes

[@DeltaTwoNine]

One gripe for me was not letting our "Nomad" keep his or her gear on in cinematics, really killed my reasons for replaying the main missions.

[@JustCG]

Crazy that, for all the weapons in the game, all the cutscenes use the same pistol, can throw off players during cutscenes for sure

[@DeltaTwoNine]

Yeah we looked so much cooler in wildlands when we kept our gear on, sucks that only the season 2 and 3 skins keep their gear on, wish they would to it on the season 1 skins then i could replay the game again.

[@williamhill9658]

Most people I've talked to say breakpoint was a step back from wildlands, for the most part I disagree, except when it comes to the civilian NPCs. The civilians in wildlands were WAY more realistic. Start a gunfight in the middle of town and you have to really watch your shots because you might be lining up a target only for a civilian to panic run in front of you right as your about to fire, as where in breakpoint that just stand there or crouch in fear. Besides that I personally think breakpoint is way better than wildlands, but that's just my opinion

[@IDFWU650]

PVP was fun as hell. Really enjoyed it.

[@dominiqueodom3099]

The only thing keeping me from playing this game is the lack of an offline patch. Wildlands is pretty fun and ive found myself enjoying it alot so hopefully the new one has a few of the extra tweaks that Breakpoint has in terms of its cqc animations and combined it with Wildlands AI and more enjoyable open world+the aggressive animations from Future Soldier and offline patch and we'd have fun

[@Salsa_Dip]

Wildlands will always be superior in my opinion. As much as i love good customization, wildlands has content. Not just bases sprinkled around a world like actuall content.

[@JustCG]

Wish there could be more done with bases and make the whole experience more cohesive between the wild elements of Aurora and the technological elements of Skell

[@TooGoodForTV]

Greatly made video!

[@JustCG]

Thanks for the support!

[@Tom-bf2nm]

The game was pretty but too dead in comparison to Bolivia. The gear score never made sense to me. It seems ubi wanted too much Division in my Tom Clancy game. Haven't really played the game for a good year +. While I enjoy my time with it when I do play it. In comparison to WL's, I just found the mission set-up to be super messy, which has led to me never completing the game, let alone taking on the rails or DLC content. I wasn't against being a lone soldier, and it made sense during the opening. But I'd have preferred if the game had been a bit darker having me find of my old teammates. One being tortured for info on our whereabouts, one that's doing the same as me. trying to work out what's going on and team back up, and one member thay was actually dead. They missed the mark

[@JustCG]

There's always one thing that irks me about the teammates and that, despite the fact that they weren't there on launch, there were in the trailers as like separate characters. I think in Ubisoft's initial idea was just for the multiplayer aspect to make a Ghost not alone, but the addition of AI teammates definitely shows that there was space for more story there, a chance for Vasily, Fixit and Fury to shine atop of Nomad's characterisation (that got left for Holt and Midas in later missions though)

[@theveteransergeant]

The biggest fault with Breakpoint on release was just how dead and fake the world felt. Wildlands' Bolivia felt like a real place that people lived in and its towns and cities had traffic between them and you could see the citizens doing normal day to day things. Little shops and restaurants and such, delivery trucks driving around, cabs, etc. It wasn't super sophisticated, like there wasn't actual routines or such with the NPCs, but it made Bolivia feel like a real place that your characters were operating in. The island in Breakpoint was just a random jumble of buildings with no logical connections between them. People didn't live near where they worked, and there was no traffic or mass transit or anything to connect them. There would just be a random building or factory or other such out on the map, with random dudes in the wilderness to fight who didn't seem to have any reason to be anywhere you found them other than the ones guarding the randomly placed building clusters. I knew it from the Alpha they released. Told my friends "This isn't fixable." They were like "It's just an Alpha, the release will be better," and bought it anyway. It's still a joke years later. I offered to buy it when it got down to $10, because we did have fun with Wildlands. They won't go back to it, lol.

[@JustCG]

There’s parts of the design that left me wanting, but there were certainly places where it worked like the farming area or the central Skell city down South. Would’ve loved some more NPC diversity, just felt more concentrated in other factions and not Skell

[@Shinjiro_37]

If only ubisoft didn't abandon the game and stop updating / adding new content.

[@JustCG]

@@Shinjiro_37 pretty curious about what Ubisoft potentially had planned for the game post-Motherland and post-Quartz, would it have the same longevity as The Division 2? I guess we’ll never know

[@Shinjiro_37]

@@JustCG One could say that they might have pulled a No Mans Sky. I never played the game at launch so I can't really say how bad it was. But its decent now at least. I would have started playing the game sooner if I had known about the immersive update. But with ubisofts reputation, figured it would be a disappointment and moved onto other games. Really enjoyed wildlands though, was in the process of 100%-ing the game but ran into a save file corruption issue. Hopefully the next game takes all of the things people liked about the last two and crams them together.

[@PestoIsLarge]

I just got it off steam for 80% off. I had no idea about the launch and all that but I have had a blast in my first 15 hours. Its a shame it wasn't delivered like this initially.

[@kestrel1917]

That was my experience too. Everything people complained about can basically be turned off in the menus post-patch.

[@PestoIsLarge]

@@kestrel1917 It blew my mind the amount of customizability the game experience has.

[@JustCG]

@@PestoIsLarge it is definitely a shame this wasn’t what was first delivered! Whole-heartedly feel the game is in a better place after the updates and patches, and is definitely fun with all customisation, especially if the UI is overwhelming

[@PestoIsLarge]

@@JustCG The UI is alot but learning it is part of the game in my mind. I'm trying to get all my friends to give I a try.

[@HYDRARMOR]

Great review, bro! But for me, Wildlands is simply the best. The only part of Breakpoint that I enjoyed was Golem Island. Other parts - lacking

[@JustCG]

Golem Island is certainly one of the highlights of the future updates, a very cool section of the map that had a memorable design with the volcano biomes and sulphur springs, definitely a great place to explore

[@kiekeyz]

In terms of world and story, Wildlands is MILES ahead. The way the AI teammates interacct with the story etc was obviously a favorite of fans of wildlands and they completely removed it at the start of breakpoint. Then they had to go the Gear score nonsense route in a ghost recon game smh. Breakpoint was filled with so many horrible decisions and I have so many gripes with it. I can't know it for the player movement and stuff but not much else there to praise in my opinion.

[@liamodahl1205]

I will say, I really like conspiracy theory type stuff and the high tech drones, but the outfit customization in Wildlands was waaaaay better. The Wolves definitely have the drip, though, and I wish I could have the raincoat that some of the Golem Island snipers have. I like hood/facemask combos, and I got like, two.

[@JustCG]

The Wolves outfits were amazing, but the ones you can pick up from Golem Island were a bit flawed

[@liamodahl1205]

@JustCG I don't like the red as much, or the weird ghillie beard thing, but I like the Walker-style hooded raincoat in black. I just wish the coat was more prevalent

[@JustCG]

Currently I run the level 20 Medic outfit, and I think the red works for that one, just subtle enough where it really separates you from just a plain Wolves uniform. I think a Walker's coat item would actually be really dope to have

[@AODunplugged]

GAME HAD INSANE POTENTIAL AND WAS NEARLY THE TITLE THAT PUT UBISOFT IN AN EARLY GRAVE.

[@HallowedKhaos91]

Ubisoft needs to reign in their map sizes. Breakpoints map could be less than half the size it is and it would still be too large.

[@iminder]

Dude I really tried to play breakpoint... I just couldn't );

[@JustCG]

it happens! sometimes the game just doesn't quite sit right with a player, perhaps you'll give it a second shot in the future

[@alexroselle]

I played the very first Ghost Recon (and original R6) game, missed the sequels until Wildlands which I loved and played the hell out of, and have just finished Breakpoint’s main and DLC campaigns. And while Breakpoint is decent now with some fun improvements to gameplay, I agree that it feels pretty empty and lifeless in terms of setting, with a barely-coherent story compared to Wildlands. Also despite the enemies in Breakpoint supposedly being ex-military PMCs with big budgets, they hardly ever feel like a real challenge unless I crank up the difficulty settings and get to the later missions against Russian mercenaries (lol that part must not have been written since 2022). But why don’t enemies have NV or thermals, why don’t they use tactics, why can’t I control my AI team more realistically, and I could go on. I don’t expect Ubi to make a tactical shooter with mil-sim levels of “realism”, but I don’t like the more arcadey open-world FarCry/GTA direction they’ve taken.

[@JustCG]

Definitely more arcadey with the largest bit of "strategy" just being different Sentinel soldier classifications but mostly just footsoldiers on the regular battlefield

[@grapeape8177]

damn didn’t even know it came out on my birthday, been playin it recently and i really don’t know what to think about it, beat the first episode and got the dlc for $8 and haven’t even done more than 10 missions, it’s all the same stuff over and over again.

[@FriedrichMeier0]

I miss the predator mission from wildlands. what a time

[@andreaodessa9181]

I've been replaying it since April and it's way better than I remember. I agreee with the overall consensus: the worldbuilding is the only thing that still sucks balls.

[@bigstonez1125]

Having played the entire ghost recon series… My hot take…I like grwl and bp over the rest of the series.

[@JustCG]

to each their own! the open-world elements in wildlands and breakpoint certainly make the gameplay loop different from other entries

[@tony62197]

Put on the resistance AI its more lively

[@JustCG]

Had it on for a while and it was great seeing the Resistance actively fight Sentinel!

[@drethom087]

30:50-30:55 huh? Is that a waltz?

[@ertsec]

What always killed me about breakpoint was how it came after wildland and managed to use more cutscenes to make a more boring story and worse gameplay. Story wise, Josiah Hill never should have existed when Weaver or Midas would’ve filled the role better since players just spent an entire game with them instead of a random guy retconned into Nomads history that was forced in

[@JustCG]

Definitely would’ve loved to see more of the squad and see developments over the different episodes, and the new teammates too

[@november_victor9693]

Breakpoint was good after you can turn off all the crap. I would've preferred it to be less futuristic. I like Wildlands better. I hope they go back to the dark gritty feel but if they go futuristic im not interested.

[@JustCG]

The futuristic stuff definitely threw a lot of people off, especially those coming from Wildlands. I think the series needs to strike a better balance for the tech, since something like Behemoths and put a real cog in the suspension of disbelief of the game

[@november_victor9693]

@@JustCG Oh yeah for sure.

[@josh1800]

Breakpoint has better graphics and accessory/weapons selection. Literally everything about Wildlands is better.

[@astoncameron431]

As wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle.

[@boringrays]

i wouldve given this game a chance if it wasnt always online

[@JustCG]

It definitely can be frustrating, especially when some periods of time either the game's servers are down or one's wifi connection is smooth enough

[@FutureExitsMedia]

October 2019 was 5 years ago...

[@Oznerol1234]

Drones, behemots, tank drones are really ruining the experience for me. Bullets sponges, takes forever to kill them, always get spotted by the whole base if you try to and if you decide to ignore them, theyll find a dead body and the whole base would be alert. Maybe I'm missing something here but these drones arent fun for me.

[@JustCG]

They certainly leaned into the hi-tech aspect of Skell Tech with the drones, personally always left them for last when dealing with bases, really pushes you to be more stealthy and avoid the behemoth knowing that stealth against the machines is difficult

[@neobrutalist5233]

I just wish breakpoint was more confident in its design. It feels wide and shallow. Too much time in menus and unskipable micro animations. I could of had drones but I think the full on terminator mgs bots were too much. It should have had ai teammates from the beginning and never had the gear score. Adding the features after the fact broke the game imo. You almost have to play with gear score for the game balance to make sense

[@freXampl]

It just feels lifeless. There isn't civilian traffic or radio. The game is huge and because of the barrenness of it exploration isn't fun.

[@JustCG]

They explained the lack of presence with the lockdown, but it would've been nice to see a change in that dynamic overtime perhaps, maybe even occasional encounters of civilians risking it all to travel outside of curfew

[@dennissinned6299]

That's why i turned off the shitty gear score. It should add more damage and armor. Not one or the other. Otherwise what's the big deal with the colors ? Reminds me of games like WoW, where players raid endlessly to get purple gear. I have never raided and i don't plan to either.

[@JustCG]

If you look at the announcement trailers, gear doesn't even exist which I think confused a lot of people when the actual game released. I do agree gear could play somewhat more meaningful part, I don't think I ever felt the impact of gear during my playthrough, not much need to actually pick out your gear comparatively to say The Division

[@dennissinned6299]

@@JustCG I didn't play The Division games, so i cannot comment on them. I do like both Wildlands and Breakpoint and frankly, i enjoy the latter much better withiout levels and colors, it's just confusing, beacause, as you pointed out yourself, it doesn't feel as if it has an actual impact.

[@wolfrexo9966]

Honestly the game was fucking amazing

[@thetrashcanman7537]

The changes didn’t bring in players because we don’t reward companies like Ubisoft that’s first off and second we don’t care by the time they fix the game . Shouldn’t have came out trash don’t compare this to cyberpunk that ran good on computers and had great story, characters and gameplay at launch on PC

[@JustCG]

Like you said, I think part of the reason that it never recuperated is simply because people did not care by the time it reached the place it is in now. Definitely did see a rise in tactical ops gameplay vids once the updates rolled out though, customization really helped out on that front

[@davidsabillon5182]

Like commented and subscribed 👍

[@JustCG]

Thank you for the support!!

[@OrphanCrippler1]

The issue with the game is that the enemy AI is so dumb, you can exploit every single area

[@bonebrew22]

I think you mean a retrospective?? Introspective doesn't seem to make sense in this context

[@JustCG]

Good catch, I completely missed that error myself, and for the title of all things!

[@jacksaw556]

Most cars in today games are made of tnt. Three shoots and explosion.

[@botellopiedraleonelcristob6366]

Its a Masterpiece. Better than Midlands.

[@dimaz3]

Breakpoint has just too dumb of an AI system to be fun fot me. It's so easily exploitable with drones and stuff.

[@JustCG]

It definitely feels that you can just mark everyone with drones and go on an arcadey shooting spree, same reason why some people balanced that with a higher difficulty instead

[@untrucmarrant]

And yet WE still can't play with allied bots offline ..boy do i regret buying that mess of a game

[@JustCG]

still crazy to me that you have to be perpetually online for Breakpoint, maybe its because they needed it to keep the hub alive with other players

[@Zombiebambi99]

Moving to the lvl based gear shooter turned it into bullet sponge trash. I remember shooting a enemy in the head with a 50 multiple times. Dude shrugged it off like it was a bb. Put the game down and never played again.

[@JustCG]

That's interesting, in my experience headshots tend to kill the enemy no matter what gear level they were, since their level didn't actually mean it was some Division 2 bullet sponge gear situation

[@sebastianshades4]

No amount of updates will Breakpoint a good Ghost Recon game. Ubisoft try their hardest to make it a good game, but it will never be a good Ghost Recon game. There is a huge difference. GRFS was a great game but Ghost Recon hasn’t been itself thematically since GRAW2.

[@sladelius6174]

Such a good game. Don't let the Twitter Brained folk say otherwise. It was pretty mediocre on release and has only grown over the years. Immersive mode is peak.

[@OrphanCrippler1]

Have they fixed enemy ai?

[@sladelius6174]

@@OrphanCrippler1 No, they're still basically idiots. 🤣

[@bussin1337]

@@OrphanCrippler1 nah, ai still so bad in both wildlands and breakpoint. The only thing retarded in this game tbh

[@AnthonyToth-t5v]

Love wildlands more breakpoint is ok though

[@jamiemcnally8254]

Auroa. It's Auroa, not Aurora. Auroa. Auroa! AUROA!!!!!!!!

[@JustCG]

Well this is incredibly embarrassing considering that’s what I’ve been calling it in my head all this time

[@Marccubus]

I genuinely don't understand why this game got so much hate... sure the looter shooter mechanics were...something. but now? its just another GR game i feel like. just turn off the Looter Shooter mechanics and bam!

[@Maclues]

Besides being drastically different from wildlands in character and gear progression, location, story structure, and enemy behaviour, which were all generally negatively received, Ubisoft's typical greedy monetization practices were present throughout the whole of the games support. Everything right about Breakpoint is shadowed by something that's wrong.

[@Reawer]

sloppy movement, souless characters, boring environments I really hope the next one is gonna be closer to what wildlands was

[@JayLee-od8ob]

Bro Ubisoft sort of blew it with starwars so I couldn't imagine them doing anything else for a Tom Clancy game.

[@cesarmillan5657]

Breakpoint was boring visually and gameplay wise. I did not once feel like I was being hunted. Even the gear looks boring compared to wildlands. What a shame

[@astroguster5522]

Can't stand the vehicles in this game.

[@bpw102896]

Honestly the Ghost recon series has never had like a very solid story not that I think most of us really care like we play Ghost recon because we want to be a ghost all that particularly matters is we are the super special forces operator that we want to be and we get to fight bad guys and at least for me as long as fighting the bad guys is fun the story can take a backseat, like I've played through wildlands twice and I cannot tell you the story of wildlands except that I'm a ghost and I get to fight the cartel

[@JustCG]

That's definitely true, story often takes a backseat in these kind of games, but it's definitely interesting that the game tries to paint Sentinel soldiers as a morally grey enemy faction rather than a straight-up villainous one

[@sebastianshades4]

⁠@@JustCG Absolutely false, the Ghost Recon story has always been solid and about geopolitical hot spots, preventing world war 3. Back when Red Storm was still in charge of Ghost Recon, the story was way more Tom Clancy-related. Wildlands and Breakpoint were hot garbage compared to the older games.

[@chadreese9501]

I hate this game. It was the last game I ever pre ordered.

[@frankjohnstone6102]

tldr: It was trash then and is still trash now

[@Gdub33]

You talk so fast its hard for me to follow lol. I get it though, if you talked slower this video would be hours long. Thank you for all of the information, im considering buying this game. Enjoyed wildlands, but didnt like how the game barely had cutscenes and was so repetitive. I dont play online either. So pretty unsure if i want to purchase this game on ps5. Hopefully i can get some more informarion from the remaining 40 minutes or your video to help me decide. Edit: Ok yeah i think im going to pass. Watching you free the civilian NPC and then him acting like hes never seen you before and asking who you are two seconds later when you take your gun out is not something i want to deal with. I can see him acting like that if you were pointing the gun directly at him but you weren't. All emersion lost. Also so lame that they only have civilians concentrated in their little communities when they had civilians everywhere in Wildlands like it was a real living, breathing environment. Plot seems lame. Would much rather be fighting against cartels and a South American dictator then some mercenaries on a weird and fake island. And you only have yourself and not your ghost team? Why in the heck would they do that? That's one of the best parts of the ghost recon series. I'm disliking this game more and more as I watch this video lol.

[@JustCG]

I did go bit fast in the video, but thanks for sticking with it anyway! I would say that from a story perspective there's very good reason for civilians not being on the road since restrictions were imposed and thus limiting them to these different areas. Whether you like that or not is really up to you, but Sentinel presence in the open world isn't particularly strong either. Also, you do get teammates! But I don't think they are built up the same way, they act as support and not much dialogue and characterisation are done for them. You'll never be quite alone with them, but they aren't as involved in the story. You could always give the game a try when its on sale, it's good to form your own opinions from your own experience as well!

[@Gdub33]

@@JustCG for sure. I might give it a try someday when Im bored. I wish they would come out with Wildlands 2 or another GR altogether that's more like Wildlands than breakpoint. Ubisoft made some of my favorite games growing up (GR, Splinter Cell, Watch Dogs 2). But they're making each series more mediocre with each release. Thanks again for the informative video!

[@MrAden1307]

Are people not paying attention to Ubisoft right now 😂 There isn't going to be another game of it's calibre 😆 Get used to comparing wildlands and breakpoint. Like i do with SC backlist and chaos theory 😆