Authors Note on January 16th, 2025: It appears there is life. The game has gotten a sizable number of fixes applied to it and raft structures have made an appearance. I’m going to leave the rest of the post as is for posterity. I will add that I have softened on the game after this. I do think communicating more updates were coming would have helped.
Original Post:
The original game, The Forest, gave me a ton of positive memories. Steam says I played it just shy of 60 hours, and I can say that I thought it felt like more because I was sucked in for a while. The game exuded horror and the survival elements felt like an ingrained challenge. Last year Realeo got me a copy of Sons of the Forest as a gift, but I wanted to wait until early access was over. Well it is over, sort of.
Sons of the Forest does not feel like the game I was hoping for next. I’m only about 15 hours in so far, but it is extremely apparent that the game is incomplete. With the last small hotfix coming 200 days ago, I do not think the game is going to see any more attention and that is a shame. The bones are still the same game, to a fault. However, balance and lack of growth hold Sons of the Forest back.
From the opening, you are treated to another flight-start but without the emotional investment delivered. Much like the first game, you collect resources and build a base of sorts, but this time you have an AI companion. Kelvin is this adorable fellow who you communicate to via written exchanges that are often ignored. You see, Kelvin has a singular brain cell. I won’t say too much more, but Kelvin is not the only friend you can meet but there are no more brain cells and so it is shared amongst them.
As a first iteration, Sons of the Forest would have been amazing. It would have left me wondering how they would improve it. As a sequel though, it improves and makes worse certain aspects of the original.
Building is better in some ways and more tedious in others, such as the loss of building stretches of walls at once. I am pretty sure there are less traps in the sequel as well. Traps were always a system that I had hoped would be greatly improved from the original, so it is mostly just a let down. Oh, and boats are just gone.
Lots of weapons, and guns, have been added to Sons of the Forest but they are not well balanced. In fact, a lot of the game is not balanced well. Could that change later? At 15 hours in so far, I don’t think it should take so long to find balance. That is a problem for the whole game though, as the survival elements of the first are largely missing with food and drink plentiful and easy to come by. I am playing on normal difficulty, but so did I in the original.
The color-tone of the game is different as well. Gone is the gloom of the original, and now the forest is vibrant. Plenty of games have bright pallets with horror, but I legitimately think the developers made the intentional decision to move away from how scary the original was. Look no further than pink outfits, unicycles, guitars, and golf carts to set the tone. Okay, I really like the guitar, but it feels more Dead Rising than The Forest.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Sons of the Forest improves upon its original in some technical ways. I am just disappointed to see it still in what feels like an early access state while the developers seem to have moved along after releasing it. Is it fun enough that I will play it more? Probably, but I dislike playing games that leave me wishful while playing them.
One More Thing
I was not feeling entirely confident in my post. I loved The Forest; shouldn’t I love Sons of the Forest? Maybe my vibe-reader was just off. After all, most of the things I enjoy are such because of vibes. I decided to play some more, starting a new base with just Kelvin and me.
I took Kelvin, my NPC companion, and found a large lake with an island in the middle. I decided we would start a new base here. ‘Kelvin,’ I said, ‘Clean up a 20-meter radius.’ Nothing, as he gestured confusion to me. ‘Kelvin, follow me,’ I told him. Instantly, Kelvin teleports across the lake and stares at me from the other side. I feel more confident in my post now.