Recent reviews by JannyS

I would prefer to post this as a "mixed" review, but as Steam doesn't offer that option, I'll have to turn more towards not recommending Sons Of The Forest. Contains no spoilers! Tl;dr at the bottom.

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First of all, there's a lot of good about this game! The graphics look good and there's some amazing effects with the weather, waves and snow for example. The map is huge compared to the first game and really has a sense of scale. Building has been improved and the player has been given more freedom with building their bases. The assist AI Kelvin is a great addition (although he does need a bit more tuning with his eagerness) and also the addition of Virginia and the option to befriend her is a nice touch.

But now let's get to the negative part...

I know most of this can be explained with the early access release, but as they prefaced the decision to do early access with just having more time to add features they wanted to add and giving the long development period this game had, it sounded like the game would still be pretty much done, which hopefully is not the case here.

At the time of writing this review, I have 8.7 hours played and I have finished the story in co-op with a friend. We definitely rushed the story forward a bit and I will admit that, but under 10 hours without looking at any guides is still quite lackluster. We didn't really put any time towards building a base or gathering resources, but that to me just tells that this game is too easy to survive in and let me open that up a bit here:

- We used the normal difficulty and didn't die once.
- Besides hunting a few squirrels on day one, we gathered all our food from loot sources in caves and facilities. Also eating raw meat didn't seem to have any real negatives.
- Water is just a free resource with the gracious amount of fresh water sources.
- Sleeping could be almost completely discarded with energy bars and drinks.
- Even the cold of winter/mountains wasn't an issue as it only decreased your max stamina a little.
- Mutants on above ground could just be ran past and they really didn't even attack us that often and the ones in caves could be easily defeated with the firearms and explosives found plentifully around the island.

The game gives out all relevant points of interest to the player immediately and doesn't really let you try and find those places yourself. Also in the first iteration, almost all of the caves were interconnected and once you acquired enough gear, you were able to travel through them without obstacles, but in this one, the caves are separate from each other and once you go through one, there's usually no real reason to visit it again.

Also without going too much into the story itself, it was really hard to get a hold of the lore in this iteration. I believe we visited all of the caves and points of interest and tried our best to read all the given pieces of information, but still during the ending, I wasn't really sure what was going on.

There's also many tools and mechanics missing from the first game with no apparent reason, like the log sled, water gathering stand, sanity system and many more.

To end this review, I just want to say that if you enjoyed the first game and especially the base building portion of that, you will most likely enjoy this one as said before, that part of the game has been greatly improved. But if you want an interesting story to unravel like the first one had in the end, Sons Of The Forest is not that game yet. Same goes with wanting an actual survival game out of this. You can't really count this as a survival game if surviving is not a challenge at all. Hopefully they pull the same move as with The Forest with this game and add more depth, content and mechanics to this game during future development, but at this moment, Sons Of The Forest can't be recommended for other than than messing around with base building, alone or together with friends. I loved the first game and will definitely keep an eye on this and try any updates they provide in the future!

Tl;dr: Sons Of The Forest in it's current state is a story game without a real story, a survival game without actual survival, but on top of that, it's a pretty good looking build-a-base-on-an-island game.

Definitely one of the games of all time.

Rock? Hard.
♥♥♥♥? Hard.
Game? Fun.
Hotel? Trivago.

A very good purchase if you're looking for a competitive CoD-like shooter!

The devs are more and more active and the latest updates have been great. Pretty much the game only needs a bigger playerbase and maintenance/more content from the developers, but it's already very much playable as is.

Played the game easily for over a 1000 hours out of Steam. This game has taken my life, my money and my soul. Can't really do other than to recommend this game to anyone who wants a grind, a fun way to spend time, a way to get really mad, and the most loving cancerous community!

Best Co-op game eu!