Feb 22nd, 2024 release planned for Sons of the Forest.
Indeed, it’s out today
Loading this up. Kind of enjoyed the first one…did enjoy the base building of this one in early access.
Between this and FF7 and Yakuza, sorry family, bye bye
I’m wondering too. Lot of complaints on things that concern me, but I want this.
I played and enjoyed the first game. I wish I were enjoying this more after the 22 hours I have in it.
The combat is janky and unsatisfying. I suppose the designers are trying to make it feel meaningful, but I am finding it both frustrating and unfair. The melee weapons are all kind of useless, save the occasional decapitation. I find myself wailing on enemies who simply shrug it off. Fire has been similarly underwhelming. You’ll be doing lots of running away, or dying while even low-level enemies leap out of your way or knock you over.
And the game isn’t clear about this, but you get ONE respawn. If you die again, your game is OVER. As in “no, you can’t load a save, start over from the beginning.” (Supposedly this may refresh every 2 game days. As it is, after the first 3 full restarts, I just started ALT-F4ing on death).
The base-building is nice, but inessential and a poor tactical choice. There is no real benefit or reason to build a base (as opposed to a tarp or hunter shelter for saving), beyond getting a better rest buff, which so far hasn’t made a difference. But bases mean staying in one location, and that means dealing with increasing waves of cannibals and combat. If they don’t kill you outright, they will smash up the log cabin you just built as though it were made of paper.
I like the NPCs, but the enemies also target and permanently kill these folks, the NPCs are largely useless in combat, and they won’t follow you into caves.
Caves are too dark. Yes, I get it, scary, real, etc. but I am mostly finding it incredibly annoying, especially when coupled with the inevitable janky combat in the dark. Early progress is gated by items you need to progress in these caves, and it feels like you are harshly punished for going to the wrong place at the wrong time.
But it also looks like everything is always in the same place, so once you learn a location (probably by dying a few times) it goes from challenging and scary to tedious.
The game wants to be difficult, but it invites you to cheese it as well – reload a save and (some? all?) containers near you will have respawned their contents.
I am sure this would be loads better with at least one co-op partner. It looks pretty good, too.