Sons of the Forest is a very beautiful game. Similar to the first game it is a genuinely pleasant environment to build a home in. Generally speaking, not a great deal is different to the first game, or the initial early access release. More polish, fewer rough spots. It is however a new, larger island to explore with new secrets to find and the addition of golf carts that very occasionally like to do sick flips from physics collisions.

Basic survival isn't terribly difficult or time consuming, which means you can dedicate more of your time exploring and building. The same as the first game you can in fact play nearly the entire game without building, harvesting food or cooking if you don't want to. Building is pretty straightforward with some nice options for making a structure the shape of your liking, and having the addition of an NPC to help gather basic resources also reduces the struggle of menial labour.

My criticism for Sons of the Forest is a little harder to pin down, and is again mainly a comparison to the first. Both have very spread out story elements, you're mostly picking up the pieces of what happened to other people around the island, and trying to understand what is going on. The first game felt more.. cohesive despite this, and more satisfying. Perhaps having the objective 'find your son' (hold on kid, gotta make a beach Jacuzzi) compared to 'find B-team' which is just to get you some of your basic exploration tools. I particularly appreciated in the first having a passenger manifest from the plane crash and being able to find all of them. Having all the caves marked on the GPS from the beginning also feels strange, rather than finding this information in the environment and adding it yourself. As for satisfying.. well, Son's primarily just leaves me saying 'okay? we just ignoring the elephant in the room?'.

Still, very solid game, pleasant, well made. Spooky too if you're not used to it - kind of glossed over that it's a horror-theme game with cannibals and monsters running about. Too much crunchy groove.

Sons of the Forest is a very beautiful game. Similar to the first game it is a genuinely pleasant environment to build a home in. Generally speaking, not a great deal is different to the first game, or the initial early access release. More polish, fewer rough spots. It is however a new, larger island to explore with new secrets to find and the addition of golf carts that very occasionally like to do sick flips from physics collisions. Basic survival isn't terribly difficult or time consuming, which means you can dedicate more of your time exploring and building. The same as the first game you can in fact play nearly the entire game without building, harvesting food or cooking if you don't want to. Building is pretty straightforward with some nice options for making a structure the shape of your liking, and having the addition of an NPC to help gather basic resources also reduces the struggle of menial labour. My criticism for Sons of the Forest is a little harder to pin down, and is again mainly a comparison to the first. Both have very spread out story elements, you're mostly picking up the pieces of what happened to other people around the island, and trying to understand what is going on. The first game felt more.. cohesive despite this, and more satisfying. Perhaps having the objective 'find your son' (hold on kid, gotta make a beach Jacuzzi) compared to 'find B-team' which is just to get you some of your basic exploration tools. I particularly appreciated in the first having a passenger manifest from the plane crash and being able to find all of them. Having all the caves marked on the GPS from the beginning also feels strange, rather than finding this information in the environment and adding it yourself. As for satisfying.. well, Son's primarily just leaves me saying 'okay? we just ignoring the elephant in the room?'. Still, very solid game, pleasant, well made. Spooky too if you're not used to it - kind of glossed over that it's a horror-theme game with cannibals and monsters running about. Too much crunchy groove.