Updated! I really wish there was a neutral recommendation.

The TL;DR: I still can't really suggest buying at the moment, but they're moving in the right direction on some things. Check up on it in 6mo to a year and see how it's coming or just wait for it to come out of EA. I love the concept, the setting isn't bad (decently made, just not my preference), I think it will eventually be worth buying, just not yet.

Alright, so life relented long enough to spend a little more time in-game and check out the last few weeks of updates. Here's the report:

First off, the dragon. Because who liked "flaming death from above every 3min" as a tutorial? I'm happy to report that he is no longer a spawn-camping ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I'm actually not sure how to get his attention now since he ignored me on the first and second island both. Tsunderagon? Thankfully, this means players have to chance to get established and figure out what they're doing.

They've added some new books laying around that discuss weapon and armor factors, though the books are somewhat widely scattered and don't address some of the missing information about weapons (range and speed, most notably). There are also a number of new loot items laying around near the starting area. An extra axe, some basic armor, and more flint help get things rolling; a compass and fur armor (which both require metals from the second island to make); and a tin battle axe rounds out the lot. Some of them are in odd locations, so I probably missed others. All together, this helps ease new players in (honestly, the Fur armor might be a bit much, but I can't complain), though it is still a good idea to start a character in a completely new world to pick things up before joining a friend's world for coop since the loot takes quite a while to respawn.

There's still a lot of other issues to note, though. Gathering anything mineral-related is still quite tedious. Maybe some people like it, but it strikes me as time padding. 12 hits with a tin hammer (the best you can get early) to get a 1 piece of copper ore (of which you need a dozen or so along with more tin and coal to make something useful). It adds up very quickly into lots of time standing around hitting rocks. Put another way, some people have found it worthwhile to devise farming runs for the nodes to reduce time spent gathering minerals. It just doesn't feel right here.

The crafting menu is still very annoying to use, especially when you aren't completely sure what something in the miscellaneous section is named (great example is when you go looking for nails because you see they are needed to repair a building, but they are actually named "Bag of Nails" in the rather long, alphabetized list). Not being able to scroll a list when the mouse is over an item is frustrating, likewise the same issue when you have an item picked up in the poor inventory system. Speaking of the inventory, I hate it. I get what the intent is, but the implementation is very clumsy and makes finding anything an unnecessary chore. Buildings/crafting stations are still all together in a 4-per-page list that would really be better served by a section in the crafting menu, though perhaps there is an issue with the coding (since they go to outline-placement mode instead of producing an item) preventing this.

Some bugs/design issues: It looks like they're in the middle of some terrain changes on the islands. Especially on the second island, there are a lot of rocks and other objects floating a few feet off the ground in many places.

With regards to the warmth mechanics, it still feels odd to me that it not only reduces your max health but also your actual health. I get that it's supposed to be another layer of the survival gameplay, but it's really annoying to need to bandage myself just because I went outside for a few minutes before coming back to warm up.

Combat is... dull, I suppose is the correct work. Yeah, your life is on the line with vicious monsters, but you just trudge around swinging mechanically. There's no real intensity to it. "Strafe around it in a circle while swinging" seems to be almost a one-size-fits-all tactic, and survival is more about whether you've farmed materials long enough to make the best available equipment than learning the enemies and playing well.

Overall, it seems like there is a desire to avoid out-of-character tutorial information, but I'm not sure whether that is appropriate to a game demanding you make survival choices. If the character has the know-how to make a leanto, it seems reasonable to inform players of how to do so within the system. Likewise with the fact that some mineral resources are found in discrete nodes while others are randomly generated by bashing any rock. If they want to keep it completely in-world, a few more books in the starter area mentioning the basics would be great for new players.

There needs to be a decision on which direction to focus on for the moment: Either improve the crafting side of things with better interface and more options (particularly with regards to structures) or emphasize the exploration and combat side with improved enemies (at the moment they seem mechanical, have 1 or 2 attacks that frequently have janky hit ranges, and depend mostly on huge health pools and damage compared to the player). Right now it feels like the game is trying to do too many things at once, but I think some focused attention in each area one at a time will really help. My personal preference would be the combat system since the game doesn't really fit the builder/crafter mold.

I still think this will eventually be a great game. While I'm about to have even less time available, I'll try to check in every month or two and see what's changed as long as the devs keep pushing steady updates.

Well im not sure how to start this since this is my first review of the game. I purchased this game prolly about a year ago with a few of my friends the game was fun and hard, like just finding enough food to stay alive hard. but it was very early in the games career. we played for a bit and then for whatever reason we stopped playing.

Last night we were having a hard time firguring out what game we wanted to play and came back accross this game and were curious to see how things have progressed. took us a few minutes to recapture our bearings on how the game works and before you can make your first bags and boxes inventory management is huge.

Day 1: We run around franticly trying to figure out how to build a shelter and such and start to realize we are not going to get one done before night falls. Night hits and we are huddled around a campfire trying not to freeze to death. get warm enough and tired of staying put so i figure i will go get some more stone to work on things. walk towards a rock and i hear them before i notice them. It's a pack of wolves, so i quickly retreat to the fire hoping like real wild animals they will want to stay away from the campfire. we also manage to encounter a few skelletons which we just dodge the easily choreographed moves and club them down.

Day 2: notice something about making some bigger bags, so i spend the day chasing down and clubbing boars for food and supplies. wandering around the woods i hear wierd noises i attribute to the pigs. Then i hear the flapping and realize as the trees around me burst into flame that it was not a simple boar after all. Panic sets in as i glance up at the sky trying to see what the heck is trying to burn me to a crisp. so i start running inbetween trees and rocks hoping to lose him. after what i assume to be a few more strafing runs looking for me he must have left cause the sounds vanished.

Day 3: By now we have got some decent supplies gathered and have learned how to fight the various beasts in the area: Boars, Wolves and Skeletons. We find a ruined town of sorts with a glowing red skeleton in the center of it. decide we are going to see what hes made of. i go in first to see if i can figure out his attack patter without being murdered. He lunges at me, I sidestep in what i feel is just in time and give him a smack with my stone sword and notice his heath bar barely moves. At that moment we knew we were in for a long fight of hit and run tactics. After what felt like was about 10 minutes we brought him down. Soon after we are making our way back to our base and i hear it again. this time the dragon has now set its sights on my friend. he uses a giant boulder to dodge the dragons 3 strafing runs before the beast appears to have lost interest with him and left.

That was our couple day experience in the game, needless to say we are going to be making another trip into the Savage Lands to see what other adventures we have in store.

Pros:
Dangerous enemies.
While some of the moves they have are somewhat easy to dodge. that one time you don't you will pay for it.
I have read some of the other reviews complaining about the dragon, as long as you stay out of the open and away from his tower he appears to leave you alone for the most part. but just that fear that settles in when hes coming after you is worth it every time.

Fairly In depth crafting system:
Me and my friend have only appeared to scratch the surface of it, but so far so good

Sense of Survival:
From the aspect of staying warm to starving to death, you do get that feeling like there is more than just monsters that threaten your life.

No gamebreaking bugs so far:
Yeah no bugs we have found so far have made the game unplayable.

Cons:

Sharp learning curve:
not sure if its a pro or a con, but the game is a little overwhelming at first if you are not very accustomed to survival games.

Not sure how well this game works solo:
As i stated i played this game with a friend, i can see the world and lack of inventory room at the begining very harsh for someone playing by themselves.

Conclusion:

Thumbs up!
It has enough going good for me to reccomend this game to others with what ive seen. It also has enough different with it to justify getting it with the large amount of survival games on the market at the moment. I would buy this game again just for the few experiences i have had with it. I look forward to seeing whats coming next from the devs. they seem to update this game pretty frequently.

At least 7/10 atm and will adjust as things change

This game seemed to have potential about 6 months ago when I first bought it with my friend. We got pretty far and it was fun. We decided to boot it up again and restart to check out all the new content. But for some reason you added a god damn super dragon that kills you every 5 minutes. We bled and cried and sweated our way to the next area through a portal after getting the key from lord kruul and thought we were rid of that accursed dragon, buy were we wrong. After dying about 10 more times from in an hour we were done and not happy. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING.

OH and be prepared to spend many hours mining because it is slow as balls.

My experience in Savage Lands:

Spawn in....

Craft an axe and hammer and chase down some pigs...

Chase my prey too far and gets cooked alive by a dragon...

Repawn...

Go to some small ruins and gets mauled by 3 skeletons...

Respawn again...

Take my time, build a crafting bench, and after a while of careful hunting, actually manage to obtain some armor....

Decide to pull a stupid move and head back to the ruins while it's still dark...

Sees the skeletons have metal armor and weapons...

Gets mauled by skeletons, again...

Respawn, again...

Has a friendly encounter with a pack of wolves located right at my spawnpoint....

Gets mauled by wolves...

Respawn....

Gets mauled by wolves...

Respawn....

Gets mauled by wolves...

Respawn....

Gets mauled by wolves...

11/10 Would get spawnkilled by wolves again...

Not a bad survival game. Got off the Humble Bundle. Well worth it so far.

Hard to get into it and first 30 minutes are slow but after you get the tin tools and learn the game it becomes really fun.
8/10

I have had this game for over a year..Played it for a bit and then, it slipped into the list of forgotten games in my steam library...

UNTIL TODAY... A friend asked if i knew anything about this game and he bought it on the humble bundle.... so we dove into it and unfortunately his PC wasnt up to snuff and he couldnt play. but I dove deeper than before and had a blast....

the crafting takes a bit of getting used too but once you have it down pat, your all set to build up and go exploring...

8/10 (only because it still needs a bit of polishing...)

worth a buy especially with the gumble bundle deal

This game is one of the few that captures almost everything I want in a survival-style game. I don't really see why people say it's SO difficult though. It's not easy, but it won't kick your ♥♥♥ if you play conservatively and don't run around in your underwear swinging a hatchet at a dragon. Focus on survival, and you'll find a rewarding game filled with crafting, building and exploration.

Also deserving a special mention is the amount of work the devs continue to put into this game. There is a counter on the main menu telling you when the next update is coming... There have been a huge number of updates since I've owned this game. It's not perfect, there are still some rough edges but it's getting better every day.

This is a really tough review to write because I'm torn between saying Savage Lands is good/fun and it is "bad"/not fun.

After doing some reading I see that the primary issue my husband and I were trying to work around, namely food scarcity/no spawns, is a recently introduced bug that is already being looked at. However it really soured our introduction to the game and our play experience. We spent the day scrambling around desperately trying not to starve to death due to a technical glitch. That's not fun.

Conversely we did actually have a lot of fun. Cooperating and coordinating our efforts to survive, explore, and get our bearings was hilarious and entertaining. We even had a surprise adventure or two with some other players on the multiplayer public servers.

This game has a *lot* of potenial- and even though it seems to be trying to squander that potential it can't quite snuff out the promise of a good game. There is a lot of work that needs to be done- bugs to be squashed, performance issues to be hammered into shape, and for the love of God could I please get a female avatar so I can stop playing Trognara the homely crossdresser.

After really considering my feelings I have to give this game a "more positive than negative" thumbs up.

This game may feel a bit clunky, or not interesting because of the looks, but it's a good game if you give it some time. It's nowhere as hard as some people say it is, or maybe I've been just lucky. Picked it up during Humble Bundle with a friend. It was fun playing.
I'd give it 7/10