this may be old news to y'all, but I've discovered this freakin' thing: https://downloads.fcmodding.com/fc5/. it's a moding tool that allows various upgrades to the standard Far Cry experience. there's a linux version which works wonderfully - point it to the FarCry.exe and it does its thing!

in addition to the tool, there's the Resistance mod with tons of tweaks. for me, the most important one was lowering the rewards so I have to finish all the missions, side quests, etc. before facing the Seed family members. otherwise, the game is over way too soon.

I also enabled skip intro (AMD, epilepsy, etc.) and start the game at Dutch's bunker, skipping the flight in and the car chase, thus eliminating prime irritants for replaying. I might try a patch that forces Vulkan instead of DX11 later on.

also, it works without issues with my game that I found somewhere, fell off a truck or something, I don't know...