Coming at this one as a guy who never played the first Forest title and jumped right into the sequel. This open-world survival horror sandbox makes a pretty strong first impression as you try to survive the mutant freaks around you with little supplies and get your bearings. Unfortunately, the game quickly lost its luster for us.
I think my main issue with this game is that it's actually too easy, because your backpack is just ridiculously big. There's no real motivation to make a fort. I get that in a lot of survival sandboxes, the base-building is a "make your own fun" sort of feature, but in a game like Sons of the Forest I was hoping for it to actually have some utility, where I'd need to store stuff there and pick it up later. I realized how undangerous this world felt when I randomly decided to make a trek across the map and the mountains at its center without a care in the world. Why spend time building a shelter or managing your resources when you can just carry everything on your back and build a makeshift tarp tent with a clicks and survive the night that way.
Sons of the Forest is at its best when you're exploring the caves to find new items, or the secret lab bunkers spread across the map. I liked exploring these areas that give such a stark contrast to the look of the rest of the game, but they are all very linear. There's nothing stopping you from just going all the way to the back of the cave, finding your item, and leaving. The progression is simple and after a while my friends just said screw the survival element and made a beeline to the end.
The climax is rather poorly designed since there was nothing stopping us from running by the enemies and not engaging with them at all, and then you get an utterly wacky final reveal that didn't make any sense at all and I can only assume is teasing lore for a third game, and credits.
Sons of the Forest looks great and has moments where a really quality survival title shines through, but it is ultimately just too easy and forgiving since I could just carry everything I could ever need at any time, and generally didn't feel at peril out and about in the world. Just didn't really get into this one.
I think my main issue with this game is that it's actually too easy, because your backpack is just ridiculously big. There's no real motivation to make a fort. I get that in a lot of survival sandboxes, the base-building is a "make your own fun" sort of feature, but in a game like Sons of the Forest I was hoping for it to actually have some utility, where I'd need to store stuff there and pick it up later. I realized how undangerous this world felt when I randomly decided to make a trek across the map and the mountains at its center without a care in the world. Why spend time building a shelter or managing your resources when you can just carry everything on your back and build a makeshift tarp tent with a clicks and survive the night that way.
Sons of the Forest is at its best when you're exploring the caves to find new items, or the secret lab bunkers spread across the map. I liked exploring these areas that give such a stark contrast to the look of the rest of the game, but they are all very linear. There's nothing stopping you from just going all the way to the back of the cave, finding your item, and leaving. The progression is simple and after a while my friends just said screw the survival element and made a beeline to the end.
The climax is rather poorly designed since there was nothing stopping us from running by the enemies and not engaging with them at all, and then you get an utterly wacky final reveal that didn't make any sense at all and I can only assume is teasing lore for a third game, and credits.
Sons of the Forest looks great and has moments where a really quality survival title shines through, but it is ultimately just too easy and forgiving since I could just carry everything I could ever need at any time, and generally didn't feel at peril out and about in the world. Just didn't really get into this one.