You are correct. My bad. (I just double-checked. It 'auto-holsters' at certain places, such as inside certain buildings.)

That's intentional. The intro & early parts of the game feel like they are meant to make you dislike the main character. Why they've gone this rout will make more sense later on. Don't worry about this. XP is not a limited resource, and you'll get more than enough to make up for this soon. If anything, XP is far too easy to come by in Far Cry 3, making the choices you make when leveling up feel less.


One particular design choice that I really like about Far Cry 3 is the fact that it never takes you out of the first person perspective. This does wonders for the immersion, and it really makes me wonder why so many modern first person games are so fond of taking you out of first person.

So yesterday I finished FC3: Blood Dragon and loved almost every minute of it.
The only thing that was tedious was liberating the first Garrison including the most obnoxious tutorial that was at least obnoxious in a fun way - meant to be like it.
It was a real bonding experience that the protagonist and me both hated the tutorial with passion.

So, full of hope I gave Far Cry 3 another try today and whatever the reasons it doesn't connect...
I can't seem to like it no matter how much I try...
I am furious by the choice of the developer and being furious is not my favourite choice of mood for my valuable free time.

No it's not. You can RESET all THE OUTPOST only after you finish the game! At least that's what the Internet tells you when you google it.
Why should you have more user controls? Why can't we decide for ourselves when to repeat a level or not? Inside the game controls and menu I feel like I am inside a prison camp. Like an iPhone - without Jailbreak...

It's not about the amount of XP, it's how I like to play. If I want to harvest the "Stealth" Bonus in the first garrison, I want the game to tell me there is a stealth XP bonus beforehand, to give me a chance to earn it and to give me a chance to repeat the mission if I am not sastisfied with the results. But that's too much to ask, obviously.

Well that is only partially true. I am a execeptional expert on the first intro cinematic as I was forced to watch about a dozen times. ;-) (Nope no skipping the video) So you can actually see the main character in almost every scene of the intro cinematic. Which makes the whole cinematic very strange, disconnecting and not really fitting to the rest of the little scraps of game I was able to see thus far.

Finally,
I don't know you guys, but my precious free time is limited.
Free-time is very expensive, considering how much I earn and how much work I have, how much overtime I could do instead.

And this game robs me of valuable free time, shoving me two or three lengthy intro cinematics in my face without even bothering to offer me the option to skip them.
Why?

Worst of all, I didn't like the cinematics and story line I was shown the first time, it got hardly any better after the 11 other times I restarted the game because I was unhappy with the results of the tutorial mission.
It's not that I'm allowed to save after the cut scene, now that would be something I could live with, I have to do the entire tutorial bullshit again.
I can't skip that either.

I'm bothered by loading screens, tutorial messages and intro cinematics all detrimental to my gaming experience.

So now I have the choice to live with the fact that I completed the Tutorial Mission in a way I didn't like. With results I rather would not have.
Or I could do this stuff again, surviving the unskippable intro marathon again and trying to find out if I am more pleased with the results another time, hoping that this time the game and I both agree that I liberated the garrison stealthily. (Again the game tells me after it saves the progress, so I have no real idea if the alarm triggered or not)

Well that, or deinstalling it again, making room for games with feature a skip button and a better save feature.

If a "skip button" is too much ask from a tripple A title that is advertised as "open" and "offering freedom" I can't be anything but disappointed.

The intro is a video is a video that they have on their phone though, which you can see when Vaas holds it up to the main character.

I do agree with you that unskippable cinematics is bad though. As I only watched every cutscene once, I did not even try to skip it, but would I play the game again, then yes, I would probably want to skip the intro.

A lot of cinematics hide loading now-a-days, that might be why they're unskippable.

Max Payne 3 being a shining example of this :D

Modern games and FPS go for a more immersive approach and getting a big "Do you want to replay the mission" on screen is not very immersive. Instead you have checkpoints and if you move past one and fuck up then you have to live with the consequences of that fuck-up. You can't save-scum your way through the game. It's not about right or wrong but simply a different way of designing games.

You are more than welcome to quit the game and uninstalling it but you are blaming the game for stuff that many other games are also doing and that even old games also did (like no holster key etc. ).

some of these are console controller decisions.

The game must work on consoles and console controller has very limited amount of buttons.... if you design only PC in mind, well, you wouldnt run out of buttons any time soon.

How did you watch the first intro so many times? I think perhaps there's a huge disconnect between how you're playing the game, and how you're suppose to play it. Makes me think of wanting Monopoly rules in a Chess game, or something.

Obviously, if you force some type of gameplay not encouraged by the rules of the game, then you're going to leave unhappy.

I can't remember most things about FC3, but I remember it was enjoyable to play it since it provides a nice flow of action, story elements, and has varying types of missions. But maybe the game isn't for you? Also, didn't Blood Dragon have the same gameplay as FC3?