YMMV / Sons of the Forest

• Adorkable: Kelvin has the personality of a loyal (if dim-witted) dog, and has endeared himself to much of the playerbase as a result.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The feral cannibals that run on all fours. They're Lightning Bruisers who hunt in packs of three or more, are nigh impossible to hit with ranged weapons, can often be seen wearing improvised armor, and move through the forest almost completely silently when hunting (save the occasional war cry). And the island is absolutely infested with them. If a pack attacks you at night, even the most well-equipped players will likely have to Run or Die before too long.
  • Cave Mutants are the feral cannibals on steroids — blind and mostly harmless on their own, but deadly in large groups, particularly when a bunch of them swarm you with zero warning. No matter how carefully you've been hoarding shotgun ammo, you'll likely expend quite a bit of it just to keep these guys away from your home base.
    • There's also a special variant that looks nearly identical to the rest (except for a very subtle blue glow) but has five times the durability and damage-dealing. They can easily one-shot you if you're not careful.
  • The caterpillar mutant is notorious for clipping right through players' walls directly into their base, where they'll likely damage or destroy it from the inside out by the time you put them down or lure them back outside. They're also absurdly durable and surprisingly nimble for their size.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Fans of Eric Leblanc from the first game tend to overlook his shooting down an airliner and killing hundreds of innocent people in favor of focusing on his Cool Old Guy shtick.
• Fan Nickname: "Slinky" and "CatDog" for the caterpillar mutant.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Jianyu Zhang wears a reflective silver jacket for some reason, which looks strange and sometimes silly among the black tactical clothing worn by his fellow mercenaries.
• Goddamned Bats: Mutant babies, as in the previous game, are small, mobile threats that come in swarms, leap at you to inflict damage, and go down in one hit. They're noticeably faster and more aggressive in Sons than in the previous game, which makes them both more dangerous and more annoying to fight.
• Not the Intended Use: The gold cart is a great way to get around the map, provided you stick to the roads, but it's also amazing at killing cannibals and mutants by simply running them over at speed.
• Player Punch: Kelvin or Virginia getting Killed Off for Real can be pretty damn brutal, given how long you've likely spent with them by the time it happens. It's especially haunting if you accidentally killed them with a careless swing of your weapon while trying to save them from a cannibal or mutant.
• That One Component: Rope is now a necessary ingredient for making Bone Armor, which means you'll need a lot of it to survive in the long term. At the same time, it can't be directly crafted from cloth anymore, so you'll have to raid cannibal villages (risking the armor you already have) or stumble upon the occasional abandoned campsite to get it.
• That One Level: Getting the shovel (which is necessary to complete the story) requires you to fully explore three separate caves, each of which is packed with enemies and qualifies as a Marathon Level in its own right.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some players were disappointed that Sons took the Actionized Sequel approach rather than double down on the Survival Horror of the first game.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Jianyu Zhang has a somewhat androgynous appearance, leading many players to question whether he's a man or a woman. (He's referred to with male pronouns in-game.)
• The Woobie: Both of the player's companions.
  • Kelvin sustained brain damage in the helicopter crash, leaving him mute, deaf, and completely incapable of defending himself from the horrors of the island. Even if he escapes the island with the player at the end of the game, his condition may prove irreversible given the amount of time that has likely passed since his injuries.
  • Virginia has been surviving on her own on the island for several months prior to the events of the game, and while she wears it well, it's likely she'll need a lot of therapy when she returns to the outside world. This on top of her mutations, which — on top of likely being painful and uncomfortable in their own right — will make it extremely difficult to integrate back into human society.
  • Somewhat subverted in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, Kelvin's brain damage has reduced him to a child-like mentality, the player visiting him and clearly still caring for his wellbeing, Virginia has surgery to remove the extra limbs, which were apparently the only mutations she suffered along with becoming mute, being that her and the player have had a Relationship Upgrade, as she is heavily pregnant with, assumedly, the players child and the player is taking her and Kelvin on a road trip at the end of the epilogue.

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