While the previous DLCs for Far Cry 6 may have spotlighted previous series villains, the most recent expansion returns to familiar territory differently: by jumping the shark completely. Lost between Worlds puts you back in Dani Rojas’s shoes and tells the story of an alien entity called Fai that crashes into Yara, causing a lot of time rifts and openings to other dimensions. A series of semi-roguelike levels that are interconnected and can be played in any order is what follows. Even though it essentially felt like a watered-down version of the main game, I found it to be a truly enjoyable way to conclude Dani’s story, and I happily played through all six hours in a single day.
Lost between Worlds isn’t afraid to end Far Cry 6 by getting a little weird, just like Far Cry 3 gave us the neon-drenched Blood Dragon, Far Cry 4 gave us a fantastical valley of Yetis, and Far Cry 5 took us to Mars. Five shards were scattered into other dimensions by Fai’s arrival, and it needs your assistance to locate those shards and reassemble its ship to escape the planet. Fortunately, the process of collecting shards should also prevent the world from ending; convenient, right? I found that suspending my disbelief right away was the most enjoyable way to play Lost between Worlds. I started having fun blasting away at the DLC’s colorful, crystal enemies as soon as I realized that there is no real explanation for an alien craft hitting Yara.
To acquire shards, one must travel through portals into rifts, unstable alterations to the real world. Each rift is essentially a self-contained level with a distinctive quality that presents a new challenge and has the appearance of a cool, bizarro-world version of Yara. For instance, one fracture experiences intermittent lightning strikes, one more element is a gradually sliding winding of destruction from the mists, and another is thoroughly dark other than the pink gleam of the valuable shard.
You can also gather sparkling “Glint” fragments by traversing rifts. If you have enough Glint, you can spend it when you die to respawn at the beginning of that rift; if you don’t, you’ll have to start over with Fai to get back to the beginning of the rift. That is a welcome safeguard for anyone not as into a more customary roguelike recipe, yet I didn’t pass on regularly all through Lost among Universes and moved credits with an incredible 1,000 Gleam set aside.
To move on, you must choose between the red or blue portals once you reach the end of a rift. The entryways are essentially doors to your decision of two other arbitrary cracks, and which ones they lead to remain something similar for the entire run. This not only gives you a fun sense of variety the first time you go through a new portal, but it also means that you will know where it connects if you need to go back through a rift later. Once you’ve visited each rift at least once, your map even shows you which portal connects to which rift once it’s unlocked.
Fai gives you a new piece of gear to help you travel faster through the rift after each shard you collect. She will, for instance, provide you with a C4-style bomb after you return the first shard, which can be used to open shortcuts on subsequent rift visits. A grappling hook for scaling walls to skip sections and a key for unlocking previously locked doors usually containing loot are additional tools. If you don’t have to play through all of the rifts from beginning to end every time you return, this is a great progression structure because it drastically reduces the amount of time spent playing through them.
Any weapons and gadgets you’ve acquired along the way will be lost whenever you collect a shard or die trying, except for a few permanent gear upgrades. I like this feature because it forces you to adapt to whatever is available rather than picking a favorite gun and never switching. There are only a few weapons available. As a result, even after a second or third visit, each rift continues to be entertaining.
You don’t even have to visit the same rift more than once or twice if you don’t want to because all of the rifts cross each other and connect in different ways. For instance, I detested the rift, in which you must swim underwater and float from bubble to bubble trying not to drown. Like most water levels, it was plain annoying and tedious. In this way, I just stayed away from it on all of my other shard assortment ventures. Ubisoft could have chosen procedural generation or random rift selection, which would have allowed me to play each scenario in the order I preferred, but I much prefer this style of pre-planned variety.
“Chromatic combat” is the other major twist introduced in Lost between Worlds. The enemies in this DLC are all crystallized humanoids that are either purely blue or purely red; to deal damage to one of them, you must switch your bullet color on the fly to shoot it in the appropriate color. Even though, for some strange reason, the default key for switching colors on a PC is “L,” which was obnoxious until I switched it to the thumb button on my mouse.)
Sadly, the fact that enemies appear to spawn in the same locations each time you visit a rift and that switching colors is as easy as pressing a button makes this color-changing idea little to no use. Other than enhancing the other-common visuals in plain view, it’s generally trivial. This is especially true given that, in addition to shielded machine gunners, snipers, melee rushers, and standard assault rifle users, there are only a few actual enemy types. Rather than adding an unnecessary layer of color-changing to combat, I would have preferred a better encounter design or enemy AI that was more creative.
The Verdict
Although Lost between Worlds’ Web of interconnected levels is more constrained than Far Cry 6’s usual open world, this wild new structure is perfectly functional. A creative alternate dimension concept that encourages replaying levels, unlocking new paths, and varying your approach made up for Ubisoft’s lack of extensive level design. There isn’t much to the story this time around, and the combat hasn’t changed much with the addition of color-coded enemies. However, the interesting premise and engaging gameplay loop at least help this add-on stand out from previous DLCs that focused on villains.
