I haven't played FC6 yet, and FC5 wasn't so bad with the in-game purchases (in FC5 most single player microtransactions are cosmetic items and skins), but I don't understand how you can enjoy Far Cry: New Dawn if you hate grinding.
Far Cry: New Dawn is a grind nightmare in the single player campaign, almost forcing players to spend money on the pay-to-win in-game purchases. The single player campaign was obviously planned and balanced with that in mind. If you want a balanced experience without spending on microtransactions, just doing all available side missions isn't enough, you have to keep repeating them multiple times over, even at normal difficulty. Of course maybe I could switch difficulty to the easiest setting but that hardly translates to a more enjoyable experience. And we shouldn't have to use mods or trainers to bypass this nonsense.
I've already finished 6 and there were some in-game purchases but I always get the supreme version of the game anyway because I love DLCs. I have no idea what the purchases are because I never could be bothered to look. If I have a game, I want to PLAY it. I don't give a damn if my gun isn't the "super-premium, made-of-gold, blah-blah-blah" version that glows pink and blue. If it shoots, it kills.
Honestly, I don't know. I did play Far Cry New Dawn and it certainly wasn't as good as Blood Dragon (the other Far Cry "mini-game") but I didn't notice much in the way of grinding. Mind you, by that point, I had become so good at taking out Far Cry outposts that I could clear them even while being many levels lower than what it recommended.
The thing about Far Cry is that, as long as you're a good marksman and the enemy doesn't see you, your level doesn't matter because a head shot is a head shot. My personal preference for sniper rifles probably only makes my character's level even more irrelevant. If you shoot an enemy in the head with an SA-50, they're dead even if they're so far above you that they'd one-shot you just by looking at you wrong.
It's possible that my whole style of playing Far Cry (that of a ghost sniper) is the reason that I never bothered grinding. My early goals in any Far Cry game are as follows:
Goal #1: Get a Sniper Rifle (improve the scope/get a suppressor if possible)
Goal #2: Get a BIG GUN Technical (or in Far Cry 6, a Tank)
Goal #3: Always have my armour and healing equipment maxed out
Any mission that I can't just snipe all the enemies from long-range (and there AREN'T many of those) will just have me attacking it with a BIG GUN Technical or the Far Cry 6 Tank. I don't play fair when I play Far Cry and I'm always looking for any advantage against the enemy. I never even know what my character level is (I didn't even know there was one until Far Cry 5...LOL). The reason for this is that the damage caused by my gun isn't dependent on my level, only the amount of damage that I can take is (and I always have tons of medicine on-hand).
I'll give you an idea of the way I play. In Far Cry 4, when I realised that the first outpost that you liberate had a permanent buzzer (mini-copter), I used it to fly all over the map and liberate the bell towers. I did this to START the game, not as I went along. That gave me every gun for free (and I'm guessing a tonne of XP). There's no way that I could have hoped to stand up to the soldiers and/or predators so early in the game but since I was flying, it didn't matter. Once I had the SVD, the game was essentially won because I'd head-shot the soldiers before they even knew I was around.
The other early goal that I have (that isn't always applicable so I didn't include it in the list) is to discover an equaliser. For example, in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, it doesn't matter what level you or your enemy are. If you Spartan Kick an enemy off of a tall cliff, they're dead. You could be level 3 and they could be level 25 but they're still dead (and you jump to like, level 10 for killing them...LOL).
Maybe I'm just so used to developing tricks to fulfilling missions that maybe I have no business even trying at my character level that I just treat it as normal. I have the same strategy in Deus Ex, Tomb Raider and Uncharted games as well. I never really know what my level is. Odyssey was different because it would recommend that I not go to certain places until I had reached a certain level but I was sacking the nation chests of forts filled with soldiers at least 10 levels above me. Of course, doing this takes time and patience, so it is like grinding in that way, but it's fun and exciting the whole time, knowing that if you're discovered, you're dead meat. Walking away with the treasure, knowing that I wasn't even supposed to set foot in that enemy area yet, is incredibly satisfying. LOL
