Now Playing: Sons of the Forest

By the time this review is posted, Sons of the Forest may have had an update or two that directly addresses some of the criticisms I raise in this review. But I can only review what I’ve got and, at the time of writing, there’s only been one substantial update to Sons of the Forest and the issues I raise still exist.

I said in my First Impressions post that Sons of the Forest, as a sequel, is a little disappointing and now, having played through the entirety of the current content, that’s still how I feel. As its own thing, Sons is . . . pretty decent, I guess? It’s certainly not bad and I can’t say I’ve not enjoyed the 30 hours I’ve put into it. As a sequel, however, it’s undeniably disappointing in its current state.

Even with an Early Access release I would have expected Sons to offer a similar level of content to the original game. A sequel should try to build upon and refine. I don’t mind a more iterative sequel but if it’s really just going to be more of the same, then it needs to be just as good if not better. Sons, currently, doesn’t really succeed at being an iterative sequel or something new.

That’s not to say it doesn’t try anything new – the key word being try. I like the idea of seasons but right now, they don’t mean anything. You just wake up one morning and there’s snow, and then ten or so days later you wake up and there’s not. There’s a new building system that allows a lot more creativity and freedom than in the original but, the problem is, it doesn’t offer as much variety of objects to build. It’s also, right now, entirely pointless. Building in Sons, whilst undeniably fun, is actually detrimental to your survival.

It makes you a target in a way that simply staying mobile and camping on the move does not. You don’t need a base for food or water when they are abundant within the world. You don’t need it for shelter from the cold or rain. And there’s no point building walls to protect you when the local cannibals / monsters can simply glitch through.

Walls also present a problem for your AI companions which is another neat – in concept – new feature but, once again, it just doesn’t really work at the moment. Kelvin often just ignores your orders because he spotted a cannibal or got stuck on terrain. If you tell him to stay he’ll follow you regardless. He also can’t open / close gates so you have to babysit him every time you need him to work outside your walls.

And then we have Virginia, the three armed, three legged lady who is initially wary of you, but then suddenly trusts you for no obvious reason. You can’t give her orders and she really just hangs around your camp, drops the odd item at your feet and continually beckons you to follow her to the same nearby point of interest. You can give her a gun, I guess, but every time I tried she couldn’t shoot for shit and the gun would eventually just disappear out of her inventory and return to mine.

Companion AI kind of sucks and the cannibal / monster AI isn’t much better. The cannibals were one of the most interesting parts of the original game so I was hoping to see a real expansion to their behaviour and interactions with the player in this sequel. But Sons doesn’t do anything interesting with the cannibals at all.

They work exactly the same in the sense that they start curious of you, before turning hostile and sending increasingly harder variations of cannibals / monsters to murder you. There’s no rival ‘tribes’ on the island competing for land, there’s no way to communicate or trade. They’re all just dumb cannibals that spawn in and attack you in groups regardless of what you’re doing.

And then we have the caves beneath the island which is where the original Forest turned from being a survival game, to one of horror. The cave systems in the original were extensive, complex and exciting. You could spend days under the ground exploring them, mapping their routes. In Sons, the caves are incredibly lacklustre in comparison – at least in this current build.

There are several ‘caves’ which are actually just single rooms with a few supply boxes in so I assume these are going to be expanded into full cave networks later? At least, I hope they are. Because at the moment, there are only really three major caves to explore and they’re all fairly short and very linear.

I do like the modern bunkers you can find in Sons, but these are all mostly copy / pasted environments and there’s really not much to them. In order to ‘complete’ the current build of Sons, you only need to visit those handful of caves – which are all located within a small area of the island – to retrieve a few key items.

Once you have them, it’s just a case of trekking right across the island to pick up the last key item you need before heading to the exit. So it does have an ending – sort of. It’s clearly not finished. I mean, it better not be finished because what’s here is f**king terrible and very incomplete.

This doesn’t bother me too much, however. In fact, I think they probably should have left the story stuff out of the game entirely until it had been properly fleshed out and instead focused purely on the survival elements, building systems and the cannibal / companion AI.

But they didn’t. They just gave us a really half-arsed story aspect that doesn’t even feel close to half finished. They also gave us a half-arsed survival system and half-arsed AI. Like I said, none of it is bad. I still enjoyed playing through it. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend it was good, either. There’s a lot more work needed on Sons before it can even be considered as good as the original game, let alone better.

But what I will say in its favour is that the potential is there. It can surpass the original with the right focus and updates. But, right now, I honestly can’t recommend it in its current state. I’d say it’s best to wait for those updates. I wasn’t sure if I should score Sons, given it’s in Early Access. But if they’re selling it, I’d say it’s fair game. I will, however, update this score over time if the game does improve. Let’s hope so, because I really would like to play this again when it’s more complete.

5/10