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The Forest in depth Review

(THIS IS MEANT TO BE A LENGTHY IN-DEPTH REVIEW, NOT SOME LAZY TROLL REVIEW)
Gameplay
☑ Hands couldn't stay away from the mouse & keyboard
☐ Average
☐ Underwhelming
Music
☐ Fantastic sounds and/ or tracks
☑ Impressive
☐ Average
☐ Better to just put on music.
PC Required
☐ A potato will suffice!
☑ Entry Level Gaming PC
☐ Mid to High level Gaming PC
Story
☐ Barely explained / Minimal
☐ Generic and predictable
☑ Better than I expected (Only flaw is the terrible pacing driven by items and collectibles that the player discovers before entering the Sahara Labs)
☐ Really sucks you into the lore!
Difficulty
☐ Game Journalist friendly
☐ A fair challenge/ average for the genre
☑ Difficult
☐ Book anger therapy in advance
Appropriate Pricing
☐ N/A
☑ Worth the full price!
☐ Wait for a sale
☐ Don't waste your hard earned cash!
Bugs
☐ Very polished! (Little to no bugs encountered)
☑ Minor bugs, tolerable
☐ Bugs hinder immersion and overall enjoyment
☐ Ultimately a broken experience

Overall Rating: 8/10

A Fantastic and gritty survival game that it made much better by playing with at least 2 others.
Highlights of the game for me were the following:
- Defending our base from Cannibal Raids during a full moon
- Reading through all of the strange lore with my coop partners
- Hunting Animals at night time with a compound Bow
- Creating Traps out of Leaves, Wood and rope and setting them for animals and enemies alike.
- Chainsawing trees that subsequently fall on our base and cause arguments.
- Slowly dying of starvation while my hunting partner munches blueberries in front of me
Pro’s:

Tense Cave exploration with very sound effects and ambience.
Great Crafting system that I havent seen before in a survival game.
Coop support! UP TO 8 PLAYERS!!
Amazing base building mechanics. Very polished mechanic, however there simply isnt enough unique buildings!
enemy patrols roam around the map randomly and keep you on your toes. as the ingame time ticks on, harder and scarier enemies start showing up, some of them are even mutated..
hunting mechanic is very polished and rewarding. All Pelts have a usage and the stealth system is basic but works well.
Many collectibles to uncover the strange lore of the game. While spelunking you will find weapons, tools, notes, cassete tapes and strangely even parts of a kid's toy.
No mini-map, xray vision, Micro-Transactions, crosshair, obnoxious tutorials or braindead enemy ai.
Storage capacity is more believable than most survival games and you have to craft new bags, sacks and quivers in order to store more item types. Creating all of these upgrades is very satisfying and helps a lot when farming items or shooting arrows/bolts at enemies. You will be able to farm resources for longer and its a great help!
Defending your base from night time enemy patrols is terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. Slashing at cannibals while you hear your base walls around you getting pummeled is intense!
Great map (The world is known as the "Peninsula") with Snow to the North, beaches to the south and a large forest in the middle (Obviously). Exploring above ground during the day time is not only safer than nightime/caving, but also shows off many unique environments such as Cannibal Camps, Plane Crash Sites, Cave entrances, Lakes, Creeks and even a giant gaping Chasm in the centre of the map!

Con’s:

I found the story to be very strange and disjointed. You basically progress the story by collecting items and eventually entering an endgame area with a keycard. However the rate and order in which players discover quest items and complete objectives is very subjective and affects the overall pacing of the story. You might enter a cave and find end game quest items and have no idea what they are for rather than finding it at the "correct" time. Hopefully that makes sense
The final boss is OP and ridiculous. Its attacks have such a wide radius that its very hard to dodge and even harder to get in close to slash at them. I found myself just spamming bombs and molotovs which didnt make for an intense fight.
Cannibal AI is wildy inconsistent. Some groups will attack on sight, others will be wary and keep their distance, like others will simply avoid the player. Im not sure what this is supposed to teach the player in terms of learning about the cannibal's behaviour as you can never predict what they will do. If this is an intended feature, then I hate it.
repairing damaged buildings is very clunky and often wont register. Ive had to get a friend to repair a wall for me as I simply couldnt see the repair Icon
Some weapons are terrible for the effort needed to obtain them. For example the Flintlock pistol requires you to visit 6 Dig sites across the entire map and recover a piece of the gun. When you finally obtain all the parts and create the gun, it is garbage! The damage is terrible for the fire rate and ammo is extremely scarce. Another example is the crossbow
No fishing :(
No option to drop specific arrow types.
No way to fight Sharks while underwater. Why not?
The "Vegan" and "Pacifist" achievement both require playstyles that most players will not enjoy. Vegan requires you to not eat or kill animals for the entire length of the game. Imo, unless you are a vegan irl (Lol), this is silly as Meat is the best kind of food in the game hands down. The achievement itself doesnt make players play in a way that is fresh, exciting or satisfying. Not a fan of random handicaps.
The Pacifist Achievement requires you to avoid killing cannibals for more than 10 days in a row. This is an incredibly stupid achievement as cannibals will sometimes show up at night in parties of 3 to 7 and ATTACK YOUR BASE. How tf am I supposed to defend myself from them destroying my hard work when I cant kill them? I understand why this achievement was implemented into the game, but it is very impractical once you reach a few caves that are FILLED with cannibals or need to defend your base. Thats my rant over lol
Caves are very dark, extremely dark in some places. I get that its supposed to be tense and atmospheric when you are exploring caves but honestly, many times it was more frustrating than atmospheric when I was exploring caves. The light that your default lighter gives off is garbage which is understandable, however, once you obtain the battery torch, the light beam that it shines is so small and focused that it really slows down the rate at which you can perceive the environment around you. When I am being attacked by mutants and/ or cannibals balls deep in a cave, I want to SEE WHERE THEY F*CKING ARE. There really should have been a lantern or Torch upgrade because as it stands, navigation and combat while inside caves is often times rage inducing. At times, following a coop partner's white lit name was a better navigation guide than the paper cave map itself!