While most initial reviews categorized New Dawn as an add-on game of FC5, playing and experiencing New Dawn revealed a wide range of new exciting gaming features that develops FC far more than any other title in the sequel so far (the only exception was maybe FC primal that was a real unique exciting development of the game).
FC New Dawn introduces several key developments that I believe UbiSoft will make as a standard in any future titles of the sequel, including:
1. Levels of weapons and enemies - every weapon has different level based on it's effectiveness and power and every enemy has a different level based on its power and resistance to attacks. This create a gradual development path in which create for the player another dimension of development within the game
2. Expeditions - new concept of side missions taking place outside of the ordinary world map with clear mission and clear game rules. a bit of treasure hunt with the adrenaline of time boxed mission. there are 7 or 8 of them in the game with different landscape and different level of challenge
3. Scavenge an outpost - many will consider liberating an outpost as one of the most fun activities in FC, the ability to scavenge an outpost, and re-liberate it, but now with a higher level of difficulty, makes this fun last longer
4. Multi part story - with sightly different objectives, and added perks helps to create a better story
Some additional point of strength:
1. The graphics - as usual top notch, manage to make the world looks better than ever
2. Less repetitive missions - compared for example with FC5 where players had to escape multiple times from a very similar prison, you will barely find anything like that in New Dawn
Still, the game is not flawless, and have some defects, especially with some gun-for-hire characters rendering (when some of them have their weapon crossing through their bodies)
Areas of improvements:
1. The progress is not linear- it took me a while to more from level 1 of 'Prosperity' to level 2, it was much much quicker to reach level 3 and almost instantly to level 4 - I believe that a more balanced progress will be conceived more realistic and satisfying from players point of view
2. The last mission of killing Ethan - frustrating game play of running and shooting endlessly. If the whole theme of FC is to look for more sophisticated approach of taking outposts silently, or having effective battle in expeditions - this last, flagship mission, is the exact opposite
3. No money - instead collecting some component. It requires more effort to understand what you need to grab to generate new weapon by assembling 3 different type of components. with money its much easier - either you have enough or not.