I feel like most people giving this a positive review have only played about 6 hours of the game. Unfortunately, after the credits roll and you realize there's nothing more to experience, I realized that this isn't just a downgrade from The Forest, but an unrecognizable game with a familiar name tacked on to it.

The animation and the physics look nice at first, but you slowly start to realize that they are buggy and poor optimized. Fighting the AI means learning their patterns after one encounter and just slowly dodging out of the way for a quick counter attack. The only times it gets challenging is when there are multiple enemies, but the later game items make them more of an inconvenience than a threat.

Thinking of AI; this game was touted as having advanced AI that would interact with you in unpredictable ways. But all I saw was levels of aggression either slowly increase if I avoided killing them or max out if I decided on killing everyone that came my way. Occasionally they would cower in fear, but for the most part they would be dead before they had the chance. Not to mention the Mutant AI that would have the same static attack patterns with no fear. The companion AI also has terrible path finding and would regularly get stuck in trees, cave walls, lakes, and be stuck there for the rest of the game.

When Kelvin wasn't stuck, he was incredibly helpful (except for his random breaks he would take or dropping stuff in the wrong place). I can see a Kelvin appearing in future survival crafting titles as a new standard for single player gaming.

The weapon selection is good, but you will find that there are obvious standouts and not want to deviate from your favorites. The weapon attachments are puzzling to put it simply. I have a feeling that whoever thought of putting a laser or flashlight on the top rail, blocking your only sights and your entire field of view hasn't played another FPS before.

Exploration is nice at first, but the map is very empty outside of the cave and other structures. And the building mechanics, which can seem like a big upgrade from the first game with its ability to freely place wherever and however you like, come off as restrictive due to the lack of recipes and ultimately, unnecessary, as a base is only as useful as its ability to save, something you can craft in the opening moments of the game with a Mylar sheet and a stick. I found myself thriving better looting caves and campsites for food and supplies, keeping on the move, than I ever did trying to build a base.

After only 8 hours in one play through living my nomadic lifestyle, I found myself watching the ending credits, with all but one item not collected. At this point I am going to discuss the ending of the story so...

*****HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD*********

The story is mostly nonsense, but I don't need a story to enjoy a survival crafting game, I just want to see how long I can survive. However Sons of the Forest forces you to live story beats as it ties essential weapon and tool unlocks to these caves and bunkers, promising a mystery that can be solved and hinting at a deeper lore and sinister mystery. Making you feel invested to finding out more as to why these bunkers are scattered throughout the island and what happened to the missing Puffton family you are tasked with tracking down (all of this is relayed to you with little to no dialogue). As you start to discover more clues you are lead to believe that the Mutants and the inhabitants of the island were created by this corporation possibly with the help of an ancient artifact known only as The Cube. On your search for The Cube at the heart of the island, more and more pieces of lore start hinting that The Cube is from hell and that the crucifix you found in your travels, that up to this point was a useless item in your backpack is actually the most over powered weapon in the game due to its ability to disable and kill the hardest enemies in the game. Okay, so it turns out that the Mutants were actually Demons and they fear a Christian god, the only canonically true god in this games universe, weird choice but I guess it goes along with the terrible rock music, the golden armor, and the dead babies that weren't baptized. As you literally make your way down into Hell fighting Demons (get it like his tattoo at the beginning of the game!) you finally find The Cube and a cut scene starts where you are teleported to another place (Planet? Realm? Dimension? Heaven?) and see an advanced city that is presumably the home of The Cube. So I guess its aliens now? Why do the aliens know of Jesus Christ? How are they harmed by a crucifix?

The ending really turned this game from "Its okay, there's got to be more stuff to do and things will be added in the early access period" to "This game is fundamentally flawed and there's no fixing this mess of a story"

I can see why this game was delayed so many times and to be honest it should have been delayed more, or even sold at a lower price with no story elements.

I would advise staying away from this game and maybe sticking with the original game, or finding a better survival horror crafting game, because this isn't it.

(+) Gun play is pretty good, but i wouldn't put it up next to something like Call of Duty or other dedicated FPS games.
(+) The story and the world building are top tier.
(+) Gorilla Hands
(+) Walking into a room and having everyone die because you're a crazy OP Technomancer
(+) Somehow loads a massive and dense open world in seconds on a high-speed SSD
(+) Weakest performance of the voice acting cast is Kenau if that says anything
(+) Don't just blow through the Main Story and expect a great game, the real fun comes from experiencing the world and all the side missions.
(~) There are as many glitches as your typical Bethesda release, but with as much stuff packed into a small area, it may be less on average.
(~) You'll need a decent PC to run it, and even then you may only get 30-50 fps in average areas without ray tracing. But Even then it looks amazing.
(~) Melee combat is cool as hell, but terrible hit scanning (You'll miss a swing you should have landed, enemies will land impossible punches [♥♥♥♥ you Razor!])
(-) Game breaking glitches will cause you to reload a save
(-) Enemy and NPC AI is absolute garbage, you can cheese it so easily to make it through a hard mission or they can borderline see you through walls with all cameras disabled
(-) Crime System is more of a annoyance than anything. Hit a civilian at low speed; one star. One star cops spawn at the same rate as higher levels, the only difference is the type of cops that get spawned (endlessly) all you have to do is run or drive a block away and they let you go with no repercussions

In short; it's a good game, maybe an amazing game if it had enough time in the oven or down the line with more patches, but I've played GOTY's with more bugs and generic game play, and I do think this game is getting far too much hate.
They should have delayed or canceled last gen versions if they knew it was going to perform so poorly, but the PC version your reading this review for is a damn fine game.