Sons of the Forest Critic Reviews

Sons of the Forest is an incredibly unique, immersive, and terrifying horror survival game that pits you against the mutated inhabitants of an island far away from civilization. The story is incredibly interesting and forces you out of your comfort zone as you delve deep underground and brave the horrors of the island while seeking answers.

Sons of the Forest takes everything its predecessor did well and does it a little bit better. And considering how much I enjoyed the original, I can easily recommend this strong follow-up. Exploring a huge, beautiful, deadly island through the changing seasons is a treat on its own. The new base building mechanics could entertain me for days without ever touching the main story. And to top it all off, we have smarter and more unsettling enemy behavior paired with thoughtfully improved combat. The technical polish and touched up story since its Early Access release round out what is easily one of my favorite open world survival crafting games ever.

Sons of the Forest is a great horror game and survival craft em up that balances a strong atmosphere and terrifying moments with player freedom. Whether you want to build a better tree house, or survive the story, there's something here for you.

After one year in Early Access the 1.0 version of Sons of the Forest is finally out. With a lot more gadgets and story content the survival game convinced us from the first seconds. The graphics are beautiful and the behave of the NPCs is absolutely stunning. It makes a lot of fun to explore the creepy island full of cannibals and mutants. Every survival fan should play the sequel of The Forest.

Great survival game with beautiful graphics, excellent crafting, and a tense, mysterious atmosphere. Sons of the Forest is also an accessible game that is not unfriendly to newcomers in the genre. Highly recommended.

Sons of the Forest does pretty much everything better than its already very successful predecessor The Forest: The game world is bigger and more beautiful, the enemies are more varied and act more flexibly, the crafting options have been massively expanded - all of which makes this survival horror game one of the best in its genre.

After this analysis of Sons of The Forest, we cannot do anything other than completely recommend this title to you. The story, survival and the feeling of being in constant danger make Sons of The Forest a must-have for lovers of survival and horror games, as it surpasses and improves everything seen in the previous title.

Immersive survival horror in a lively island idyll, whose half-baked story presentation doesn't keep up with its other qualities.

Sons of the Forest offers one of the most exciting, mysterious adventures of the year, perhaps thanks to the many challenges of surviving in the beautiful forest, the fact that you are regularly frustrated by technical limitations, the minimal narrative and the high difficulty level . Since it is also a lot of fun to play with friends and the survival aspect apart from the story missions is also entertaining, Sons of the Forest really offers you tons of janky fun.

Sons of the Forest can fumble with its narrative, but its survival crafting fundamentals and sandbox still warrant a look.

Sons of the Forest is exactly what a survival video game enthusiast would want to find along their way. A year on, the title developed by Endnight Games now offers much deeper gameplay, which becomes even more intriguing once you leave the surface of the island, the true protagonist of an experience with deeply unsettling tones that will hardly leave you indifferent.

Unfortunately, Sons of the Forest doesn’t quite manage to bring all of its elements together in a tidy package. While the building, crafting, and survival elements are neat, they’re not intertwined with the story, with both feeling like they’re completely separate ideas. Even the story seems unsure of what it wants to be, with odd pacing and poor audio design. I feel that fans of the original Forest game will relish the experience on offer here, but for everyone else, there are far better survival games out there.

Sons of the Forest is an utterly engrossing game, and in losing myself in it, hours went by as I explored. For me, the main concerns are in content density, lack of direction, and a lingering feeling of being unfinished which, to be fair, is totally understandable from an early-access title. The building is a little clunky. There are visual issues with certain animations. It’s also given way to many hilarious glitches, including a physics issue that launched my character into the sky while chopping down a tree. If you can tolerate these issues, it’s absolutely still worth playing.

There’s still some work to do, and I have a laundry list of things I want to see, but I have zero regrets about binging the whole thing over a single weekend.

It’s too early to say whether Sons of the Forest’s new flavors will be enough for the experience to stand out from its predecessor in the long run. So far, it’s less of a puzzle box I want to unravel, and more of a pit that I’ve fallen into. But I’m not desperately trying to crawl my way out just yet. I’m eager to continue learning more about this world. Even if it means losing a piece of my own humanity each time I abide by its rules.

Familiarity is the fear killer, and there are only so many caves you can crawl through before the monsters become obstacles to sprint past rather than terrors to flee from. If I’d been able to explore more naturally without the threat of excessive backtracking, maybe I’d have shifted to that mindset a little later on - though I still spent many hours quivering through the dark. Creating a Forest that can go toe to toe with Subanutica’s Ocean when it comes to dread is a huge accomplishment, even if the full package still has some leaks.

Despite the bugs and crashes, incomprehensible mechanics and the complete emptiness of the island, there is something to like in Sons Of The Forest. The best part of this game, as weird as it sounds, is the forest itself and what they did to the game's visuals.