Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint Review for PlayStation 4

Sprawling open worlds, complicated skill trees, myriad side quests, well-fortified enemy outposts, and staggering amounts of collectibles have been defining characteristics of a Ubisoft game for years now. While entries like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Watch Dogs 2, and Far Cry 4 managed to utilize these gameplay elements to garner critical acclaim, the developer’s newest release Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint drowns in its attempt to closely hew to the standard Ubisoft formula. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint admittedly offers an experience that can be as satisfying and addictive as its predecessors in short bursts, but it fails to feel like anything other than a retread lacking an individual, cohesive identity.

In Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, players take on the persona of a grizzled, battle-tested Ghost who operates under the name Nomad. During the game’s opening moments, Nomad’s mission to infiltrate the island of Auroa goes terribly wrong and he is left to fend for himself in a land being lorded over by a militant army purported to be under the thumb of a crooked, ultra-wealthy CEO. As players progress throughout Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, they accompany Nomad as he attempts to bring order back to a chaotic Auroa.

Players will get to create their own vision of Nomad by designing the character’s features, which allows them to inject into the game some of their own personality. However, unlike in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, customizations that affect plot do not run significantly deeper than the cosmetic level. In Odyssey, branching dialogue options enabled players to fashion their protagonist into the character that they truly wanted to play as. But in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Nomad’s personality is relatively settled. And while not as unlikable as Far Cry 5’s mute protagonist, Nomad is stolid and wary as a Ghost and thus hard to forge a bond with.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint offers significantly more content for players to wend through than just its main questline: side missions, faction quests, and more are available to players. The profusion of quests, however, is presented in an overly convoluted objective screen. Furthermore, keeping missions active takes up an incredible amount of screen space when actually playing Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Hiding missions also means concealing the game’s mini-map though, which means players will need to make a sacrifice when they shouldn’t truly need to.

While not winning any awards for its ingenuity, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint’s plot  constitutes an almost perfect set-up for the game’s main draw: the vast open world of Auroa. Featuring innumerable roving enemies, Ubisoft’s signature heavily-guarded outposts, and countless collectible weapons and armor, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint’s setting spans thousands upon thousands of kilometers and covers a multiplicity of distinct terrains. Auroa is impressive to behold, with dynamic day-and-night cycles and weather conditions.

However, Ubisoft seems to have targeted quantity over quality in their attempt to adequately populate their overwhelmingly large island playground. A significant portion of Auroa seems to have been stuck into the game solely to house collectibles and lengthen the amount of time it will take a player to traverse from point A to point B. And since Auroa is a fictitious setting, exploration isn’t as fun as sightseeing in Watch Dogs 2’s San Francisco or Odyssey’s ancient Greece.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint utilizes a leveling system to provide incentive for players to continuously upgrade Nomad. Levels are determined by the quality of the weapons and armor Nomad has equipped at any moment, and this mechanic profoundly impacts gameplay. Players will constantly need to swap out guns to stay competitive against enemies, which heavily discourages them from sticking with their favored playstyle.

Nevertheless, combat can be extremely satisfying in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Stealth in particular is much smoother than in recent Ubisoft releases; sneaking up behind enemies and taking them down silently with a melee move never disappoints, and picking off lone enemies with a well-timed headshot from a silenced pistol is a great test of skill. Although not stacking up to other Ubisoft entries, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint still manages to showcase the potency of the developer’s game design.

Also central to Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint is a complicated skill tree offering players the ability to upgrade many of Nomad’s abilities. Players can earn skills by racking up points by doing certain activities in Auroa or by leveling up their character to a certain amount of times. The skills that players can choose from can give huge boosts in stealth, gunplay, and overall survival. However, the game limits players to utilizing a maximum of three “active” perks at any given time. This constraint significantly caps the usefulness of purchasing most skills, which in turn undermines the system.

The existence of microtransactions impacting gameplay may also leave a bad taste in players’ mouths. In addition to offering cosmetic incentives to spend real money, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint enables players to purchase experience boosts and weapons that enable them to level up Nomad much quicker than through playing the actual game. Microtransactions of this sort have no place in a Triple-A game that already costs a pretty penny to play.

Boasting a large open world rife with secrets to tease out of and enjoyable stealth mechanics, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint had the potential to be a worthy addition to one’s game library. But clunky menus, microtransactions, a restrictive skill tree, and leveling system preventing players from engaging in their preferred styles relegate Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint to mediocrity.

Rating: 7.1/10

Check Out the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint Trailer:

For more information, please visit here: https://ghost-recon.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/

Jori Grossman

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I'm a recent graduate of Columbia University. Gaming has been a passion of mine my entire life; I enjoy everything from RPGs and FPSs to stealth and narrative-driven games. I love the deeply immersive quality that good video games inherently possess, and am looking forward to highlighting games worthy of acclaim. When I'm not studying or reading, you can catch me playing games like Uncharted, Dishonored, The Witcher 3, and Far Cry.

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