I'm having a great time with this game. This genre (open world, multiplayer, survival, crafting, building) is my jam, and Dune Awakening is a substantial addition to it. It does the Dune IP very well, and the sandworms, storms, and desert sun are all quite ominous. The progression is quite addictive and the pve content is voluminous. I adore the base building. It looks quite good and plays well. Animations can be a bit janky at times, but the game is good enough to be forgiving of it. Everything up until endgame is 99% pve, which is perfect for me as a pve player. My only worry at this point is that the big focus on pvp at endgame will be a bummer. Supposedly you can mostly work around it, but I have yet to get there...

Overall, I am really enjoying my time with Towers of Aghasba so far and am really looking forward to where it goes. They seem to have a solid roadmap in place. The start was a bit rough to get through, but as time went on I felt more and more attached to my growing biomes and to spreading them throughout the very large map. It is definitely in my wheelhouse, because I am very interested in games like this that try to incorporate restoration, and not just hacking and slashing your way through it. I am really glad to see games like this exist as they are important balance to all the ultra violence (which I enjoy too, lol). The review bombing was unfortunate, as I'd like to see this game succeed. From what I gathered, most of it was from people who didn't do their research and didn't understand what the game was or got frustrated with initial crashing that was addressed with a day one hotfix. For example, early preview content made it clear that multiplayer would be limited to the type of online coop where you visit each others worlds.

Pros: The world is beautifully rendered and the spreading biomes are beautifully dense and fantastical. There is a real sense of progression as you turn the wasteland into three different vibrant biome types. Using Amity as a resource to balance growth vs harvest is really interesting. I think this is a really ambitious start and they are well on their way to an amazing game.

Cons (things that need work):
- The onboarding is slower than it needs to be. Try more show don't tell. The dialogues with the npcs are slow, your responses are pointless, and they often repeat the same info from the cut scenes.
- The contrast of the Avatar type biome graphics with the more cartoony characters is a bit extreme. I'm getting used to it now that I expect it, but I'd much rather play Avatar than Pokemon and this game tries to mix both.
- The UI (on pc at least) is super clunky, has unecessary clicks, and many important keys are not rebindable. For instance dodging with left control is super awkward for me, but I can't change it.
- Gathering is a bit too grindy and inventory and storage is too minimal, at least in early game. Things generally only give one of their resource type, but this could easily be multiplied.
- There is punishing stamina only for running and climbing. Why? Just get rid of it.

Encountered a cyclops I could barely damage so I climbed it while it tried to fling me off and poked its eye out = 10/10
Ignore the haters, this game is awesome and clearly made with passion for the genre. I've encountered so much emergent gameplay already and the combat is really engaging and innovative. It doesn't handhold and throws high level stuff at you from the get.

People are downvoting for
1) "Microtransactions", meaning the extra pack on the steam page, but aren't playing enough to learn the everything you can buy is available in game in the first few hours. Yeah, it's a bit crass, but they are minor boosters at best and can be completely ignored. You don't have to pay to change your character appearance. I found the vendor who offers that in the first town. The camp skin is the only unique thing in it.
2) Performance. Yes, it chugs in the big towns, but the gameplay on the rest of the map is so compelling that I didn't find that deal breaking at all. Apparently it's a cpu bottleneck from all the npcs, not a graphical thing. They said they're working on it...
3) Only one character save at a time. Honestly that's just a design decision that was also the case in DD1. I knew that would be the case. If you don't like it, don't play it, but don't downvote it for that. It's like buying a roguelike and then downvoting it because it's a roguelike. I guess if you hadn't done your research like I did, it could surprise you. It would be good for them to make that clearer, however you can change your class and appearance pretty much at will, so you're not locked into anything. You can't delete the save in game, but all you have to do to restart fresh is turn off steam cloud save and delete the save file manually.

It's really a shame to see people dogpiling on it, largely due to false assumptions, cuz I assure you it's a gem. Alas, I guess it's destined to remain a cult classic like DD1, lol.

Sons of the Forest is a great addition to the open world survival/building/crafting genre. The world is beautifully done; probably one of the nicest looking maps of the genre. Even the inventory and crafting are realistically modeled and animated. The free building, although somewhat limited atm, allows lots of creativity and innovation, and you can make bases that give some utility and a sense of home on the map. You have to constantly defend your fort, which I enjoy the challenge of, but I do feel like they need to balance the damage the hostiles can do, because the brutes can one shot your logs. I've only been playing single player so far, and the game is brutal at first, but I'm at the point where I can thrive consistently with a bit of work and careful headshotting. The game is still early access, so there is clearly lots of content coming, but this is a really solid start. I have an nvidia 3090, ryzen 5900, and 32gb ram and with everything maxed on ultra 1440p, I get about 90fps. I love making my way in open worlds, but if you're the kind of person who needs a deep directed story and mission based structure this isn't the game for you--at least not yet. There are some glitches and crashes, but save frequently and you will be fine.

I think this game rocks, because it fits my gaming style in many ways. It won't work for lots of other gamers and that's fair. This is quite a niche game, and hopefully people can read reviews like mine and move on if it's not a fit for them.

I am a true lover of the sandbox survival base-building genre and I am happy to support any game that moves that genre forward, however imperfectly. I can chop trees and pick rocks for hours if it means I can build an awesome base and craft my way up to OPness, even if it would be way more practical to get by with less. I don't get bored easily and I mainly want a beautiful simulated world that's mine in which I can make my mark.

I understand creating a massive open world in which the player has this much agency is a big challenge for game development and it's hard to have the funding to take the time necessary to not release it with growing pains. Yes, the full release is closer to an early access in its quality, but these guys did it differently. They gave us eight sessions of beta game play for preorders in which you could return the game at any time even if you had played hundreds of hours. I prefer this model to early access in which you only get two hours to refund and have to trust a promise. Those of us who did the beta know what we are getting into. While it's still a diamond in the rough, the dev team have been extremely responsive and done a ton of work along the way.

My two favorite things about the approach this game is taking are the very reasons many players might hate it:

First, it is effing hard. You have to shelter from violent storms, but the weather will tear your thatch or wood shack to pieces if you can't run around with your repair hammer fast enough as pieces are torn from your building parts. It has the most beautiful fire mechanic I've seen and lightning storms take every opportunity to burn down everything you've achieved. Early game, the predators will wreck you and the spawn mechanics don't play fair. When you die, and you will die, you face a massive xp debt and any diseases and wounds, of which there are many types, will persist after death. If you are the type to rage quit, don't play this. I personally laugh at each disaster and love the challenge to overcome then. When I eventually prevail it gives it so much more meaning. So know who you are, be warned, and choose wisely.

Second, in the main game, you don't get to keep anything. It is "session based", meaning each time you drop down to the world you may have days or a month, but your gear, your base, and everything you've gathered will be wiped. It's basically a survival rogue-lite. You keep your levels and the rewards can provide some small upgrades for next time. For a hardcore survival gamer like me, early game is the best part and I relish being forced to do it over and over again. You may say what's the point and that probably means this isn't for you. But I always found a server gets a bit stale once I've finished my awesome base, besides the fact that they always get laggy after that, so wipes are inevitable eventually. This tears that bandaid off, and I'm ok with that since it's really the act of building and crafting that I love the most. It reminds me of the Dada art movement in which the destruction of the art was as much a part of the art as the artwork itself. (Btw, there are some small maps in which you can keep your builds forever)

I have a beast of a PC (3090, 5900x, 32GB). I can run this on epic with rtx global illumination at about 90fps and it looks gorgeous. Feedback from my friends who have played this makes it pretty clear that unless you have a 20 series card or above, performance won't be great. I think their recommended specs are pretty honest about this. That said there are some basic things people can do to help with their fps that the devs would do well to communicate better. For example turning your fov up to 100 from the default 80 can give you as much as 20fps more. Also there's a slider in the settings to turn up the vram usage to what your card can handle, which really helps with performance. I've heard people with 3080s complaining they couldn't get good performance, so better access to info like this could really help.

I know this is long, but one last bit that this game struggles with is communication of the lore. It has a very involved backstory which explains why it makes perfect sense that you are running around in a space suit in a forest. They've done some really good live acted docudramas on their youtube channel that explain it. However most people aren't aware of it and just think it doesn't make sense. It would behoove RocketWerkz to convey this better. The other part of the lore and the future promise of this game is that the forest is just the beginning. It was part of a failed terraforming to make the planet earthlike, but not all of it is like that. Each season of this game promises to get more formidably alien, moving well beyond the initial stone tools in the forest into futuristic gear in hostile otherworldy environments. There are so many crazy places they can take it and I'm down for the ride.

I'm not usually one for pvp games, but I can't stop playing this. The goal framework is basic, but there is lots of room for strategy, with a lot of it hinging on the outcome of each individual combat encounter and the layout of each map. Each match gets so intense and is even better when the teamwork is good. Yes, the combat can be janky and is not as intricate as some other games, but I feel like that is somewhat of an equalizer for people having different skill levels. The maps are beautiful crafted arenas full of intricacy and verticality. The game is well-optimized and runs at a solid 60fps. You could nitpick it for its faults, but you can also take it for what it is and have tons of fun.