Just got to the second Pomeranian chapter (not including the Tutorial) and... yeah. Jesus christ. Don't want to anger the spoiler zealots, but shit gets fucking real.

That said, I still can't escape the feeling that this is some weird tutorial or tack-on bit. Like they built up this survival mode with all its wonky procedurality and randomness and then were like "wait, how do we story?" and then just folded it in with the animal unlock system or something.

I'm going through it because I hear it gets bat shit crazy at the end but man I'm just on chapter 2 and it's already bat shit crazy.

Here and there, it's really slow though and having to unlock chapters in survival is a serious misstep.

I did but the fat cat slaughtered me, and decided to play some Survival instead.

There's an inaccessible "Underground Lab" at the end of the Sewers, maybe that has something to do with the craziness.

I'm about 5 chapters in and it's already getting crazy!

It's a shame that the story is locked from the start because it serves as a wider much more thorough tutorial then the actual one. Although it's really easy to unlock new chapters.

It feels like Story was made as an after-thought. They made a quick arcadey rogue-like and had to add to it. Wish it could have been handled a bit better with some of the dumb things reviews have marked this game all the way down for.

The sewer level is a smoldering pile of shit and easily the worst sewer level since the Valley of Defilement in Demon's Souls.

The story is pretty great in its own right, it's obviously not the main attraction. But it's well worth playing all the way through. About half way through the story I found myself eagerly anticipating the next chapter.

Finished the story, it was decent. It's more of a tutorial than anything, teaches you a lot of mechanics and how to play properly. Forcing you into fights with much bigger and stronger animals really makes you work on your combat.

It also gets real crazy at the end. If you've only done the first few acts, you don't even have a clue what's coming. Also, half the stuff seems to be disney references. So much Lion King.

Like six tries on that guy..

I hope the game can get patched, scripting desynchronized and made AI paths way more difficult for me, and then collision/bounding boxes are often way off, as is stealth detection.

They also need to patch away respawning you half a map away in this mission.

Screw Story chapter/act 11 and I am thankful I managed to complete it. So much BS. No problems at all in the overworld.

I kinda wish i didn't do so badly in the game. ^_^ My first ever attempt with the little Pome ended 3 seconds in when a dog came up to me and 2 shotted me. Nature is a cruel place :( *sniffle*

I'm about halfway through, Chapter 9, I think, where you do some dirty work for the Bear Chief. The way they personify some of the animals is pretty funny, Bear Chief has a great pose with his arms crossed.

Story is obviously not the main attraction, but I do want to see it through to the end. I've been finding these glimpses into the animals' lives pretty interesting, and I do like that you get to play both sides of the conflicts present in story. Plus, as was mentioned, I want to see how crazy it gets toward the end.

@beard_of_zeus said:

I'm about halfway through, Chapter 9, I think, where you do some dirty work for the Bear Chief. The way they personify some of the animals is pretty funny, Bear Chief has a great pose with his arms crossed.

Story is obviously not the main attraction, but I do want to see it through to the end. I've been finding these glimpses into the animals' lives pretty interesting, and I do like that you get to play both sides of the conflicts present in story. Plus, as was mentioned, I want to see how crazy it gets toward the end.

I think the bear is the high point, as that chapter is relatively playable and fun; the same can not be said for chapters 11 and 12. 13 and 14 are interesting but not enough to make up for the other two.

I finished the stories and man there is some nasty game-design going on. At least I'm a god at stealth and combat thanks to it. Just wish I knew like what happened afterwards in the story because the findings in the Archive paint a dark and mysterious image that I could see adapted, JJ Abrams could have made something like it.

@SomeJerk: Spoilers abound in this post.

My assumption at least is that modern man is extinct, the humans in the present are transported to the future where they die, the humans from the future remain there and die. Survival mode clearly takes place after the story considering you can find the robot dog dead underground, and 100 years into survival mode most animals are replaced by hominids. So I would assume that whatever machine is transporting people through time, grabbed a bunch of peking men from the past and swapped them with many of the animals in the present. So man inherits the earth again, and builds on the remnants of our society.

DAT TRUE ENDING! ;_;

I pretended the robot dog was Wappy Dog and it made it even better!

I wish there was more of the bear. He was frickin' bawse! Man, I gotta manage to survive 100 years in Survival mode to see these hominids. Apparently one of the DLC characters in Japan is Salaryman. Curious how that works.