3/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Sons of the Forest.

Sons of the Forest is fine, I loved the original game and played that multiple times throughout it's early access period and after it's full release. The Forest has given me a lot of good memories getting scared by screaming cannibals, giant monsters and incredibly loud bats, all of which are still present in this game. So If you liked The Forest, you'll probably enjoy this game too, as it feels like a more expansive version of that game, which sounds like everything I'd want from a sequel to The Forest. Unfortunately this game throws a lot of things at the wall, and only a few of them really stick. This game is a lot more advanced than The Forest. The building mechanics are a lot more sophisticated, the combat is a lot more in depth, the world is bigger, everything just feels more complicated, but almost needlessly so. Instead of just being able to place down a blueprint for how you want your house to look, you have to individually grab a log and place it in the exact spot you want. If you want part of a log in a certain place you have to individually cut the log in half and down into the piece you want it to be. From a technical perspective it's really impressive how much more freedom this gives you to build cool stuff, and I'd imagine a lot of people will love that about this game, but it's incredibly time consuming in comparison to the last game. Whenever you start a new save in the original game, one of the first things I'd do was find a place near clean water and immediately start trying to build a shelter before nightfall. This game still has blueprints, but the options it gives you are incredibly restrictive as the game almost incentivizes you to build your own stuff, the problem is that this process is extremely time consuming. I played this game with my friend and we spent nearly 3-4 real hours non-stop building a base. It was just a simple house with a wall around it, something that took us 30-45 minutes in the last game. It's a cool system, but it's almost too cool for it's own good. The inclusion of guns as weapons in Sons of the Forest is a mixed bag for me. On one hand it's cool to have a really powerful weapon in your back pocket when you're in a pinch, but the accessibility of finding these weapons and the almost infinite supply of ammo this game throws at you makes it feel more like a crutch. There's very few scenarios in this game where I would opt to use my my axe over my pistol or shotgun, especially when it comes to killing the harder enemies. For first couple hours of this game it felt like I was non-stop getting upgrade after upgrade until enemies just weren't really a problem anymore in general. It kind of takes the fear factor out of getting chased by cannibals in a dark cave when you're just easily able to kill them in a few hits. For those that don't know there's AI companions in this game, and while their usefulness is kind of limited, especially later in the game, the ability to give them weapons to defend your base feels kind of overpowered. You're able to just give them some of the most powerful weapons in the game, and they'll go out of their way to find ammo for it and basically clear out anything that's near your base. My least favorite aspect of this game for me is the GPS/Map. In The Forest I loved just exploring on my own volition and stumbling upon a cave or some giant structure, I was never prompted to go to a certain area, It just kind of happened naturally. Sons of the Forest marks every location on the map for you. You don't just stumble upon a cave or a lab this time around, the game actively pushes you to go to those points instead of taking your time and finding them on your own. The game will start to mark bunkers on your map of which inside you'll find items and more locations to bunkers, all of which leads to another bunker and eventually you're suddenly at the end of the game without even trying. It feels like any sense of the fun exploration I loved about the first game is gone, as I have almost no incentive to explore past a certain point. The long decent at the end of this game was really dull for me, without getting into spoilers this game just kind of abandons everything you've collected prior to this point in favor of a new mechanic that is only used in this area. Pretty much everything you've gather prior to this moment was for nothing because as long as you have some armor, health and this particular item used for the new mechanic, you don't even really need a main weapon. Sons of the Forest is a fine game, I know it's in early access and things are still subject to change, but with how the developers have described this early access period, I doubt there's going to be some sort of crazy overhaul before it's full release. I'd still recommend checking out this game though, if enjoyed The Forest you'll also enjoy Sons of the Forest, but if you already didn't this game isn't going to convince you otherwise.