I don’t see how people can say this isn’t a Shelter game. Sure, it doesn’t have the same circle-of-life motif as the other mainline titles, but it really doesn’t need it, and every other piece of the equation is there; it combines the point-a to point-b pathing of Shelter 1 and Paws with the open world of Shelter 2 and Meadow, all while keeping the maternal survival gameplay of the mainline series. The achievements are the most manageable they’ve ever been outside of the original game, which didn’t have any, and it has more content than any other game in the series, although you need multiple playthroughs to see it all. Many of the bugs and performance issues from the previous games have also been fixed, although I did notice a few small frame drops throughout the course of my playthrough.

The main issue with this game is that it’s extremely slow. Your herd’s hunger bar is shared with the stamina bar, so in order to keep all of your elephants alive, you’re gonna be walking a lot more often than you will be running, especially if you go the desert route like I did. Most predators can’t be deterred so much as avoided, as far as I can tell, and many of the mechanics aren’t particularly well explained, which resulted in half of my herd dying before I even reached the first landmark on my initial attempt. Aside from those few issues, and the once again quite steep price point, it’s a pretty good game. Far better than Shelter 2, which I still don’t understand the hype for.

I don’t see how people can say this isn’t a Shelter game. Sure, it doesn’t have the same circle-of-life motif as the other mainline titles, but it really doesn’t need it, and every other piece of the equation is there; it combines the point-a to point-b pathing of Shelter 1 and Paws with the open world of Shelter 2 and Meadow, all while keeping the maternal survival gameplay of the mainline series. The achievements are the most manageable they’ve ever been outside of the original game, which didn’t have any, and it has more content than any other game in the series, although you need multiple playthroughs to see it all. Many of the bugs and performance issues from the previous games have also been fixed, although I did notice a few small frame drops throughout the course of my playthrough. The main issue with this game is that it’s extremely slow. Your herd’s hunger bar is shared with the stamina bar, so in order to keep all of your elephants alive, you’re gonna be walking a lot more often than you will be running, especially if you go the desert route like I did. Most predators can’t be deterred so much as avoided, as far as I can tell, and many of the mechanics aren’t particularly well explained, which resulted in half of my herd dying before I even reached the first landmark on my initial attempt. Aside from those few issues, and the once again quite steep price point, it’s a pretty good game. Far better than Shelter 2, which I still don’t understand the hype for.