Sons of the Forest: A Progress Report

One year has passed since my initial assessment of Sons of the Forest in Early Access, during which I discovered a profoundly eerie yet incredibly captivating survival game that substantially outperformed its predecessor in almost every aspect. After playing the now-final version for around ten hours since its 1.0 release this week, I've discovered that the game is essentially the same. As of this writing, I haven't finished reading this scary tale, but I have already noticed a ton of really welcome touch-ups and improvements. A lot of the new content is hidden away in the rear.

The first thing I noticed was how much more refined Sons of the Forest's technical aspects had gotten. The animations that used to occasionally stutter for a few seconds when switching between the outside world and caves are now perfectly smooth. The pop-in with clutter on the ground is a lot less distracting. All in all, my frame rates are significantly higher. I really used a 1080p display to review the Early Access edition. With my reliable RTX 3080, I'm playing at 4K now, and the only setting I had to adjust was lowering the DLSS from "Quality" to "Balanced." I've been able to keep up a very comfortable 30 frames per second in open environments and significantly faster in caverns thanks to this.

What we discussed at the early access launch of Sons of the Forest

Sons of the Forest improves upon all its predecessor accomplished to a slight degree. And given how much I loved the first one, I have no trouble recommending this excellent sequel. Discovering a vast, stunning, and lethal island as the seasons change is an adventure in and of itself. I could spend days playing with the new base construction mechanics without ever getting to the main plot. Finally, we have carefully enhanced combat combined with more astute and unnerving adversary conduct. It's still in Early Access, but it's already fantastic. It could be amazing with some well-balanced performance optimization and a polished yet unsatisfactory conclusion. - March 2, 2023, Leana Hafer 

Grade: 8

See the Sons of the Forest Early Access review in its entirety.

Even in the early parts of the story that I have done, there is a significant increase in richness and background. There are now more voice acting characters, more documents that explain the island's current state may be uncovered, and I've even discovered a few new surprises that weren't present previously. To be fair, one of my main complaints about the Early Access version was that the ending seemed hurried and incomplete, so I'm interested to see how they handled that as well. I can go in largely unspoiled because I haven't played through any of the late game story content that was introduced in a flurry of updates between the game's Early Access debut and now. These few hints are encouraging.

Additionally, I've noticed some improvements in cannibal behavior and spawning. On the default difficulty settings, they are more dangerous than before since they have better cooperation and more cunning battle strategies. Furthermore, they began to show up in bigger groups far sooner in my playthrough than I had grown accustomed to. While I thought defensive walls and traps were primarily optional in Early Access, it appears like they are now absolutely required if you want to build a successful base.

There is no changing Kelvin. Despite his inclination to either sleep through a base raid or frighten me by suddenly appearing in my peripheral vision during our nighttime hike through the woods, it's now more convenient to give him instructions. He is even more useful in keeping up with daily fundamental chores because there are more of them.

Everything I said in the Early Access review is still true, save from that. Stay tuned for more updates on my work and the final score I'll be awarding throughout the following week!