I'm not an animal person, so I was initially worried about whether or not I'd like this game judging from the screenshots. Fortunately, the story of The First Tree makes it clear from the beginning that this game isn't about foxes. In fact, even the store page says so, too. So if you're like me and are not an animal person, don't worry about it.
[h1]An immersive story with not-so immersive gameplay[/h1]
The First Tree clearly has an identity problem. It wants to tell a story, and the areas are constructed in a way that supports as such: You won't have to worry about missing dialogue because the distance between each trigger point is long enough for the previous voice track to finish, and at least some game world events are timed with the dialogue.
But for some reason the developer decided that this game needed more game, and added a bunch of secrets and collectables. So now what happens is that while some important dialogue is going and you hear the music pick up, you've dug yourself into some rocks just in case there's something there, completely missing the beautiful sunrise or whatever. I did initially think that I could just not go for the collectables, but the game quickly shows that digging up items results to more dialogue. Therefore I should try to find everything, because otherwise I'd potentially miss out on story, perhaps even an extra ending.
Unfortunately, because the areas are so large, exploring them becomes very tedious very fast. It easily takes minutes to go from an edge to an edge, with nothing happening in-between. There are some platforming sections, but those have clearly not been polished: You can double jump, but only when you do it fast enough after the initial jump, so you can't jump while you're falling down to gain that extra distance.
Many platforms - usually large boulders - have round edges, but the game doesn't take that into account to make jumping easier. Instead, what often happens is that you try to jump from what you see as the edge, but what the game sees is that you are slightly in the air because of the roundness, meaning it won't register the jump action, making you fall down. And because of the game's graphical style, it can be difficult to see the proper edges. (Pardon the wording here, the word for this graphical style escapes me now :( )
Additionally, sometimes you have to go through some janky paths to get to some collectables. So you can't even tell if jankiness means a place is not intended to be explored. You just have to look at every nook and cranny [i]just in case[/i]. And it is not a fun experience.
[h1]Should've leaned harder into setting the atmosphere, honestly[/h1]
The graphics are mostly fine, but the environments could do with more things in it, whether it be grass, flowers, all that good stuff that forests tend to have. Hell, the first area had rabbits in it that you could chase; more of that, please!
Additionally, there was some graphical glitching: You could see trees loading up details into them as you were running into them, and it happened instantaneously, making it look a little jarring. There was an attempt at reproducing masses of grass waving in the wind. It's a beautiful sight in real life, but in this game the attempt looked unfinished, as grass was simply appearing and disappearing at a pattern. These are just two examples; I don't usually care to go too deep into a game's graphics, but because The First Tree is intended to be an immersive story experience, I feel like this is good to mention.
The male voice actor, while recalling events from his childhood and teenage years, sounds more like he's just complaining out of boredom when the dialogue suggests he was anything but. The discrepancy gets a little annoying at times.
[h1]The story is the thing that keeps this game afloat[/h1]
Still, the writing was good, so whenever dialogue was happening, I did want to hear what the characters had to say. I enjoyed the way plot points were revealed in a subdued way, almost as if mundane. This makes sense, as both characters already know what happened. This is reflected in the game world that it doesn't react too grandiosely to revelations that could be big for someone not in the know (the whole fox thing is a dream, after all). The game trusts that the player reacts to the given information by themselves, and I like it.
The First Tree's story is the kind that I believe all of us can relate to in some manner, although adults will certainly appreciate it more. I am 32 years old, and my parents are getting there in age. The story certainly hit home for me. There was a moment in the ending that served as a mirror, and it managed to make me tear up.
This is the core reason why I'm giving The First Tree a thumbs-up. It has a lot of flaws that could've been fixed by focusing harder on the atmosphere instead of the platforming and collecting, but despite the frustrations that these flaws brought, the story still managed to touch me. I imagine if the game had been any longer (it took me 2 hours to finish), this review would've turned into a thumbs-down.
I understand this thumbs-up isn't entirely objective. Honestly, it's hard to justify with all these flaws this game has. All I can say is that if you're interested in a story about the connection between a father and a son, then this can be a worthwhile experience.
