izigame.me

Typical gamers, jump on a negative review bandwagon because the FOV slider is missing. Let's not review a single thing about the actual freaking game, I'm going to spend 12 minutes in it and then leave a negative because muh PC master race option is missing.
This is a highly niche game built by a small studio and releasing on multiple platforms. Frankly I'm amazed at the quality they've managed to put out here. In terms of gameplay bugs, for me so far it honestly seems better than COTW despite that game having so many years to fix its issues. That itself seems like quite the achievement.
Speaking of COTW, some people seem to have completely forgotten what COTW is like without spending a pile of money on DLC (or what it was like before years of post-release development). I think WOTH is already better as a base game, and it's only going to improve as new content is released.
So, on to some points about the game.
Lets start with performance. This is an open world game built in Unreal. Unreal is heavy. Open world is heavy. Neither Nvidia nor AMD have released drivers with optimisations for this game. Suffice to say, this game is going to be tough to run for those with more affordable hardware. Hopefully we'll see some driver optimisations soon, which will help, but they won't perform miracles. Keep that in mind when you see people complain about the graphics being worse than COTW. My expectation is that gamers who didn't upgrade their GPUs this gen will not be able to run higher quality settings, which is going to affect their opinion on that.
To put a number on it, on a 6700 XT at 1440p using a mix of high and very high settings (which the game chose automatically), the game spends most of its time between 60 and 70 fps. I've seen as high as 90 in areas that are easier to render. There are occasional frame drops as I traverse the map in the Jeep, I assume due to asset load-in. Those are the only times I've seen less than 60 fps.
Both graphically and in terms of visual style, I'm of the opinion that this game looks better than COTW. I've always felt that COTW was missing something, like it was lacking character. It didn't take long for the maps to just feel like arenas in which you shoot animals. I hardly ever remembered areas in COTW, I just placed markers down, fast traveled, and went where the marker pointed. WOTH doesn't feel like that to me. After only a few hours I can recognise where I am in most of the places I've been, and navigate around without using the map far more than I ever could in COTW.
Transitioning from visuals to gameplay, this game leans more into "sim" territory than COTW. The ground is not going to be lit up like a christmas tree with tracks. You cannot outline animals with a supernatural glow. You can get tracks, need zones and blood trails to be highlighted by using the hunter sense, but it has a fairly limited range. In the beginning it also only works if you are standing still. After unlocking a perk by finding 30 unique animal trails, the hunter sense can be used while walking. By the time I had unlocked it, I had learned to spot need zones without it. Being that this game is intended to be a more realistic experience, I'm fine with that and will probably continue to spend most of my time not using the hunter sense.
Tracking animals you have shot is not as hard as some have made out. If you've made a good shot there will be tons of blood. The droplet pattern points you in the direction the animal went just as surely as a big glowing "go this way" marker. And the hunter sense will make the blood trail light up like an airport runway. You can also place a seemingly infinite number of tracking markers, which you can do through your scope as the animal runs away, and then on each blood patch you find as you track it. If you do this you will never get disoriented and lose the trail, because you can just go to your last tracking marker and continue from there. One thing I will criticise is that I don't remember the game ever telling me about the tracking markers - if it did, it didn't do a very good job of it. I only knew about them from a commenter on a Flinter stream, and I worked out how to use them from the control screen. You hold the button used for the exploration marker (X) to place one. But honestly, even without the markers if you've made a good shot I think the tracking is sometimes a little bit too easy. Only in thicker forest have I really found the hunter sense to be necessary at all.
The animal harvest screen is fantastic, the internals of the animal are modelled in great detail (for example, you can damage arteries and this will also affect how fast the animal drops) and additional aspects of the impact of the bullet are simulated. For example, on top of being able to follow the path of the bullet through the animal you can also see the zone in which expansion occurred, and you can track the shot energy over its course. Because expansion is simulated, you also cause damage to organs that were in the expansion zone but not in the direct path of the bullet. Good stuff.
The weapon handling is fine. I like that you aren't moving all over the place when scoped in like your arms are made of jelly like in COTW. You still move of course, but it's much more manageable. The ballistics are good. You get realistic zeroing options that aren't locked behind an arbitrary perk. I'd rate the shot sounds about the same as COTW, but I don't shoot these guns in real life so that's probably a fairly meaningless opinion. The guns feel a bit lacking in recoil and general "character" but I'd say much the same for vanilla COTW, and again I don't shoot them IRL so take that with a grain of salt. They just don't give me that impression of "punch".
I've seen people complain about the time to switch your weapon. Again, WOTH is leaning more into "sim" territory - it's meant to represent actually getting the rifle off your back. And if the extra couple of seconds that takes wrecks your hunt, well I think your playstyle needs to adjust. That or perhaps you should accept that the game isn't for you, and COTW is more your speed.
There are some great details in the game, like how the animals react when shot or when they get an initial inkling of your presence, that really elevate the experience of the hunt. There is also a herd management aspect, where the quality of your trophy bucks in the long term will be affected by which genes you are removing from the gene pool. It will take a lot more gameplay time to see how this actually pans out though.
All in all, I thoroughly recommend this game if you are interested in hunting games with realistic elements. It really scratches the itch. For those who are less "sim" inclined, well perhaps COTW will remain your game of choice. Though I should also mention that there are four difficulty options. One lower than default may give a more COTW-like experience, while there are also two levels higher than default if you want to go even deeper into the realism aspect.
I look forward to seeing this game evolve over time, and for me it's already replaced COTW as my hunting game of choice.