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tldr: This is by far the best reserve on offer and a tremendous amount of fun. You get seven antlered deer species, feral goats, four dangerous animals with the banteng, feral hog, and the two show stoppers the kangaroo and saltwater crocodile, along with two birds and fox to round out an amazing roster in what is undoubtedly the most beautiful map since Medved. If you could only get a single reserve, pick this up.
That said, there are a few issues with the content, some major and some minor. This review is likely going to come off negative because I have much more to say about the bad than the good, but make no mistake that this is the best dlc content this game has ever had (except for the trophy lodge system, but that felt more like a neccesity). These devs have shown time and time again that they are among the most considerate, hard working, and importantly caring dev teams I know of. Most of why I write this review is in the hopes that devs from the team see this and take some of the issues with this otherwise perfect dlc and iron them out to make it live up to that perfect potential it is so close to reaching.
The Good
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- Amazing Animal Roster
- Enjoyable 'Side Cast' of characters in story missions
- Excellent music and soundwork
- Beautiful map design
- High amount of animal spawns (Highest in any reserve I have seen, you are literally drowning in feral goats especially)
- Wide selection of dangerous game
And now for some of the problems with the map...
#1. The Saltwater crocodile rework is better than the existing alligator systems, but it still needs some more love. Crocodiles being aggressive is much needed but they only do a 10th of your health bar which turns them from a threat into a mild inconvenience. In addition, the crocodiles are extremely noisy. You will know they are in the area long before you see them and you will know they are aggressive long before you see them coming. Most frustratingly, the game has a system where the crocodile can dive underwater to hide or when shot, but they don't seem to use this to launch ambush attacks on the player. In short, the crocs should do significantly more damage (preferably 1-shot, but 50% or 40% would work fine as well), be a bit faster (It's understandable that they shouldn't be running too fast, but anything to help them be more of a threat), be much much quieter (Perhaps the only noise they can make is when fleeing into water and when doing mating call instead of the constant growling when near a player and when attacking?), and to utilize the diving deep mechanic to ambush players. With the exception of the latter mechanic, the others should be relatively easy to alter with tuning as opposed to programming new mechanics. The lions are by far the most fun animals to hunt, followed by the wolves. This is because of the genuine danger they pose to the player and, in the lion case, the terror they instill. While I had fun hunting crocs, I never felt afraid. Changes here are the most desperately needed and would really push this from being the best map to a truly perfect map.
#2. The Kangaroo aggression similarly needs help, but less from a tuning standpoint and more a bug standpoint. Right now when aggressive the kangaroo seems to randomly target a point within 200 feet of you, stop, go to another random point, stop, and then run away. In the rare case it does manage to get an attack landed, it does virtually no damage and usually just misses, then runs away. I understand that the kangaroo doesn't need to be the murderous beast a lion is, and them being aggressive at all is a happy surprise, but as before with the crocodile if the animal is not actually threatening then making them aggressive doesn't do much other than make it easier to shoot them. Outside of fixing the bugs with their targeting I think just having them hop to and away from the player much faster would fix it up. They don't have to be killing you constantly but just harassing suddenly and giving you a jolt, then running off would do the trick nicely. Given that they tend to hop away fairly slowly in general when scared it might also feel more immersive to see them hop faster in general, but especially when attacking.
#3. Finally, the Sambar deer doesn't really look much like a sambar deer. It is noticabley too small, and the coloration, fur styling, and facial proportions seem more in like with a darker chocolate red deer or elk than a Sambar deer should. Given the amazing reworks to 4 base game animals (Axis Deer, Fallow Deer, Red Deer, Feral Goat) and all the other amazing content in this update it's hard to get too upset about a single animal on the roster being weak but I hope that someday the Sambar gets a resize and a visual improvement as well.
Outside of these three larger issues this map is functionally perfect, I have had more fun playing on this map in one day than I have had in multiple other maps combined over months. That's not to say those maps were bad or boring, it's just to show how incredible this map is even with the issues I mentioned present. If even one or two the issues above get fixed I think it will be nearly impossible to top this map in the future.