The Forest was a game that I somehow completely missed when it first went through Early Access and its original release. When I found it, it felt like those old days before streaming services where you accidentally ended up watching Tremors at midnight on basic cable having never known that it existed, or that the franchise was already three sequels deep by the time you discovered the original. Because of this "found media" feeling, combined with the themes of the game itself, it felt like accidentally finding a really neat creepypasta in the form of a video game. The survival mechanics also worked decently well, and while the story required a fair bit of suspension of disbelief, it ended up being a mostly coherent narrative with a contemplative ending.

Then... they made this game. The survival stuff carries over and is improved and polished, but they also decided to vastly expand the narrative here and, christ in heaven, what a perfect example of not all ideas needing to be given life. I won't bother spoiling it, I'd suggest either playing through the insane nonsense yourself if you like the gameplay of The Forest, or just watching a youtube video summarizing it, but suffice it to say, this title was a gameplay mechanic in search of a narrative, and it would have honestly been better off doing 90% less, leaving a bunch of stuff completely ambiguous and just letting you kill body horror creatures in the woods. I also feel duty-bound to mention Kelvin. There, he's been mentioned.

A huge disappointment and an unfortunate departure from the first game that's more reminiscent of Dead Island than The Forest.

• No massive claustrophobic interconnected cave system that you can get lost it like in the first game. The caves are just either a short corridor that ends in a dead end or a tunnel with another exit.
• The cutscenes and story are nonsensical. While The Forest feels like a well-written horror novel with meticulously hand-crafted elements that all fit together, Sons of The Forest feels like a bizarre fever dream of a B movie director with random nonsense haphazardly thrown together.
• The map is bigger than the map in the first game, but is also super boring to navigate. The game gives you a golf cart right at the start that never runs out of battery and then a paraglider, both of which make you feel invincible.
• Most caves are marked on your GPS at the start. Everything is marked on the GPS. It honestly feels like a Ubisoft game, where the vast open world exists solely as a backdrop while you run around ticking off tasks on your checklist. Tedious, just tedious.
• No sense of exploration.
• No sense of survival.
• AI is dumb and easy to kill.
• You get tons of explosives and ammo.
• You can just run past most anything, even in caves, and it never feels like you have to fight for your life. I've never even been chased or stalked by cannibals past 20 meters.
• Crafting and building are completely optional. You don't even have to hunt, you can find plenty of food lying around. And you don't have to collect any resources. You have an AI buddy to do that for you now.
• You're never in any danger. There are a bunch of spots on the map where you can skip time and avoid playing at night entirely. And they've added stealth mechanics as well, which let you avoid pretty much anything. I once built a bed in the middle of cannibal territory and just slept until morning undisturbed.
• There's no feeling of scarcity. Resources respawn after you close and reopen the game.
• The game is just not scary. It's not a survival horror game, it's a walking simulator with FPS elements.

Very similar to its ancestor. It's a fun game but some things have changed. I got the early access version so there are still a lot of things that need to be fixed (hopefully they have now that we have the full release). So far, I've seen objects disappearing, namely my Kite and my GPS locator. I've also marked some places that got unmarked on their own.

1. You've got a new member of the crew (actually two if you count with Virginia. She fights while Kelvin assists you in building).

2. After dying, you don't need to spawn in the same place where you started the game. You will be reborn near where you died.

3. This sequel is more difficult. I am not sure about enemies strength or the usefulness of pills but you die way more often. One of the difficulties present in this game is that when you die, sometimes you reappear at the Cannibals' camping site. This makes your escape more difficult, as one blow from the Cannibals kills you (you start with the lowest HP).

4. The map is much bigger. Caves are not marked after you go inside one so you never know which caves you have explored. Your houses are not marked unless you use one of your GPS locators - something that wastes materials...

I am not sure if they have changed any of this but I will edit my review once I try the full release. In terms of enjoyment, I am liking the game so far and you can still play it with friends, which helps immensely. I guess a bit more complexity, even in terms of building, would help a little bit with my final consideration.

a tao aguardada sequencia(por mim pelo menos)!! eu amo de paixao the forest entao sou mt suspeita pra falar que amei esse tambem.
pra quem era viciado no primeiro jogo consegue notar as melhorias de mecanicas nesse daqui, mas algumas coisas retiradas tb, oq eh triste. o novo modo de construçao eh bem mais realista ao msm tempo q eh foda nao dar pra colocar a blueprint(ate onde eu sei).
amei as musiquinhas e a ambientação, da pra mandar um solo de guitarra com as msc da trilha sonora vsf sabe
esse melhorou tb em questao da variedade de canibais, se bem que na 100h começa a ficar manjado, mas ainda sim eh otima. igual ao anterior, esse poderia ter mais mutantes e algo que representasse maior perigo lá pelo late game.
quanto a história e as localizações, ok, eu acho? espero que adicionem mais pontos de interesse pra ter mais objetivos.
algo que eu AMEI de paixao foram os companions, o pobre do kelvin e a maquina de matar que eh a virginia, como eu adoro a companhia deles e botar o kelvin pra trabalhar igual escravo. (..ainda acho que eles conseguem me ouvir pq eles reagem quando eu falo com eles o.o)
num geral, 4/5, bom pa caraio, mais otimizado que o primeiro, menos bugado, imersivo e divertido por mais que fique bem facil dps de um tempo msm nas maiores dificuldades.

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.

There is something about video games that doesn't feed me every single piece of information required to play but rather, encourages discovery and problem-solving to uncover endless quirks and abilities within the game.

I quickly fell in love with the co-op and building mechanics of this game, it was as if I was playing Minecraft for the first time again. Filled with wonder I ventured into this 40-hour experience in such a unique cannibalistic setting, I have always been aware of the original 'forest game' but never got around to it, this time I am glad I did.

Chopping down trees in this game is equivalent to throwing Kratos's axe in GOW, this alone is reason enough to play. I am excited about the full release!