Love the game but I hate Ubisoft. After almost 80 hours I now have an authentication issues with the Ubisoft launcher. I've sent them all the screenshots they have asked for to show proof of purchase, but have been denied every time as the information they are requesting apparently isn't good enough. Never spending another dime on Ubisoft.

You should really ONLY get this game if it's on sale (preferably 80% off like how it is at the time of this review). If you're a smooth brain like me and mindlessly do missions and side quests and you don't mind running around a large map for a long time and you like shooty, shooty, bang, bang then this game is for you!

When I reviewed Ghost Recon: Wildlands in 2023, I called it a game that offers a lot of open world content for fans of tactical shooters and is especially enjoyable as a coop game while noting that it also gets repetitive very quickly and suffers from occasional technical problems – so a typical Ubisoft game, including all the usual strengths and weaknesses. While I don’t remember much of the story or individual missions two years later anymore, I do recall a lot of fun moments that happened during my co-op playthrough of the game - which is why I was cautiously optimistic when the sequel Ghost Recon: Breakpoint was announced.

A quick note before moving on the actual review: Existing for quite a few years and spanning 15 games, the Ghost Recon franchise has attracted a lot of different players, from the hardcore crowd of the original games to maybe more casual players that joined with Wildlands. As a result, the newest game offers two different modes (“Regular” & “Immersive”, the latter one only being introduced later into the game’s lifespan) and various “Ghost Experience parameters” to finetune the experience - depending on if you want a more realistic experience without many HUD elements on screen for example, the “regular” experience that the game launched with or maybe an individual mix of the two. As a result, taking all the options and how they affect the game into account is beyond the scope of this review. Following this, only the default game experience, choosing the “regular” mode and with all settings left untouched, serves as the basis for this review.

Moving on, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint might best be described as Ghost Recon: Wildlands mixed with looter-shooter aspects of Tom Clancy’s: The Division, a few survival elements as well as a large amount of modern-tech/AI mumbo-jumbo. All of this takes place on the fictional island of Aurora, trading in the previous colourful setting of Bolivia for a non-descript mix of wetlands, arboreal forests and mountains. The story also sees the return of protagonist “Nomad”, which can be customised by the players, who is mostly chasing after friend-turned-foe antagonist Cole Walker.

To talk about the plot of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint first, while the game went with a more focused approach than the “eliminate all cartel members” structure of the predecessor, the story never moves beyond a cliched, uninteresting mix of military and modern tech themes, filled with flat characters and mostly presented through flashbacks aimed at showcasing the expected decline of the main antagonist. What’s worse, if you’re the owner of the Ultimate Edition of the game, you’re also swarmed by additional DLC story episodes, that constantly nag you to play them even if you haven’t finished “episode 1” of the story (= the base game) yet. Also: Locking the return of fan-favourite protagonist Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell behind paid DLC in a Ghost Recon game feels especially scummy when considering that his Wildlands appearance before was part of a free update.

Moving on to the gameplay, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint on default settings feels like a worse Wildlands experience overall. While the still enjoyable core elements are present, a big open world with dozens of enemy encampments to clear out with AI or human partners, additional systems have been half-heartedly introduced that do nothing but make things worse. For example, adding survival elements such as injuries feels like a superficial design choice when you’re also giving the player unlimited bandages to patch those injuries up. Another example would be the depleting endurance meter, that can easily be restored by drinking water from a flask that can be refilled almost everywhere in Aurora. Other design choices even take previous features away, such as the option to call-in vehicles from anywhere now restricted to being in a set-up Bivouacs instead.

But the worst new system that was added to Ghost Recon: Breakpoint - apart from Ubisoft’s strange attempts to put NFTs into the game, of which a total number of 15 (!) were sold[www.eurogamer.net]- would be the introduction of looter-shooter elements similar to the ones from Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2 – a game with its own fair share of problems. It introduces a “Gear Level” system, with every type of equipment and weapon now tied to a certain number, and activities from the game (e.g. finishing missions, opening chests, killing enemies) dropping higher-quality (= bigger number) loot. While there is also a separate level system based on experience points, which rewards you with points to spend in a skill tree, the Gear Level system is what really affects the player’s effectiveness in the game – attacking enemies that feature a high Gear Level as a player with a low Gear Level results in barely doing any damage to them and receiving lots in return, for example. The only exception to this are most human enemies (excluding certain boss fights), which can be killed with a headshot regardless of Gear Level, while hostile drones unfortunately don’t have similar weak spots.

In practice, you’ll quickly find out that raising your Gear Level is heavily determined by the game itself – completing activities in high Gear Level environments doesn’t reward you with equivalent loot for example, every new item will only offer a slightly higher Gear Level than what you’re currently equipping, no matter what activities you do and where. You’re constantly going to change out your weapons and equipment as a result, which means there’s little use in finetuning your guns through the returning “GunSmith” feature anyway. It feels like a pointless feature with no gameplay benefit, made just to keep players engaged by constantly giving them higher numbers to chase.

Following this, I do need to point out that the Gear Level system can be disabled by choosing the “Immersive” mode in the game instead, which does come with additional changes to the gameplay. What “Immersive” mode unfortunately doesn’t fix, is the repetitiveness of the game, that seems to plague every Ubisoft open-world title these days. Despite offering solid gameplay fundamentals in terms of combat and movement, not only are the environments of Aurora bland but the enemy encounters are too, with only few enemy types present in the game and mostly similar enemy base layouts that quickly become a blur. Just like Ghost Recon: Wildlands, playing the game with coop-partners does help to break up the monotony, but essentially Ghost Recon: Breakpoint plays the same at 5, 10, 15 or 30h into game, even with the Gear Level enabled.

If you just want to clear out enemy encampments with friends for a bit, be it stealthy or by charging in with guns blazing, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is an okay experience with unnecessary feature additions that simply does too little to properly switch things up and thus gets more repetitive/boring over time. While Ghost Recon: Wildlands does suffer from similar issues, I found it to be a more enjoyable experience overall that’s usually available at a lower price as well - if you haven’t played it yet, consider giving it a try first and only move on to Ghost Recon: Breakpoint if you just really want more of the formula.