It's often the case that you only get out what you put into an experience. This goes double for The First Tree.

When you're focused on the adorable fox trotting around dreamy landscapes and swaying to the melancholy soundtrack, the game's stories strike a cord and are affecting. But the second your mind drifts from the emotion at hand, it gets pretty difficult to ignore just how out of sync the two narratives are and how barren the levels you've been traveling through have become. At that point, The First Tree has lost you and won't be getting you back under its spell by its own power.

The game is clearly heartfelt. You can sense an earnest, single set of hands on the whole thing. But in the end, it simply expresses grief and stops there with nothing new to say about it.

Not Recommended

It wasn't emotional story. it wasn't a sad story. it wasn't a sweet story. I really tried to have fun but it was just a random guy trying to be a therapist in the background in a cringe way NO THANKS . It's just overrated.

I can't say I really would recommend this games unless you're going through grief yourself.

If you're looking for a game where you play as a fox and do fox things, turn back now. On the other hand, if you're the type that like hearing people talk about themselves on a deeper emotional level, then this is for you.

It wasn't for me.

Still I got myself to finish the story but I can't bring myself to 100% it due to how slow the characters felt in the large world.

To be honest, I dont understand why people love this game so much. From all the reviews I read, I thought this was gonna be the best and most heartfelt story ever, but it kinda dissapointed me. Sure the story was nice but nothing else. The story with the fox was also really lack luster. I wish they would have done something more with the story of what happened to the fox cubs, or atleast expand more on the wolf that occasionally showed up.

The gameplay was mid too, the whole running around and finding the stars was kinda annoying and finding the treasures was also kinda boring.

In my oppinion, get the game if you like story games or you dont mind gameplay or graphics.

So this is basically the end result of an Engine Tutorial of how to make a 3D platformer with collectibles.

The story is trying to be deep but actually isn't too deep, trying to add emotional weight by pulling in a random fox that only serves to add instant emotional weight out of thin air while talking about loss.

Same as the story the gameplay isn't really deep, the world gets increasingly worse looking as you progress.
You basically just walk around all game and go back and forth a bunch. It's a visual novel forced into a world it doesn't properly populate.
From about the second area onward it was apparently too much to check if all the trees are correctly planted in the ground.

Quite boring honestly

I don't mind artistic games, but this is amateur. The environments are bland, the animations (other than the straight run/walk) are janky, the jumping is laughable, the gameplay is mind-numbing and the narrative is fine but goes nowhere.

Just check out the screenshots because they're all better than actually playing the game. Only worth the price of a coffee in my opinion and even then you should probably go with something that has more flavor.

It's very rare that I leave a negative review. I can find the appeal in almost any genre or any gameplay. But this game...broke me. The gameplay and story feel completely misaligned. The puzzles require an absurd amount of tedious backtracking. The levels transition from one area to another with little to no warning, thrusting you into the next scene even if you weren't done exploring (with seemingly no way to return to previous areas). I didn't understand the fox, the tree, and most importantly why I the player should be emotionally invested. Did I, arguably, care too much? Should I have instead just muted the narration and enjoyed wandering around as a fox? I feel like I would be more sane if that were the case. Overall the game is...fine. There's nothing outright wrong with it, it just feels incredibly lacking in certain areas by ignoring the player's desires in favor of the plot. Which would be fine if the plot was incredible, but it's not. It feels confusing and self-important and vague in world building when it doesn't need to be. It's not a theory game, it's a linear story. It feels like it needs to explain itself with the amount of exposition the narrators are providing, but then it doesn't give detail to the most important questions. Why the fox? Why the tree? Who is Rachel? Hence my frustration

I really took a lot of effort to enjoy this game.. but this was ultimately hard. After a while I started to yawn every few minutes because of the boredom. I only completed the game because it was quite short (and I am patient I guess)

• The story maybe would be interesing but the bad voice acting, lack of emotions doesn't help at all. It sounds like you bought quality mic and recorded the dialogues on discord call or something. It just feels so flat. You can't make the story intersting only by playing piano music and saying some sad lines.
  
• Terrible controls and walking mechanics. The dev even admitted in commentary mode he doesn't have the skills to make it right.
  
• The visuals are... just ok. Sure you can screenshot some nice views. But you can also notice: stretched and repetetive textures, copy-paste trees, trees are doing weird flips as you move away from them.
  
• The environment can be stunning sometimes but overall... is pretty dull. There's a lot of empty space. Totally not enjoyable for a walking simulator game.

As a lot of people mentioned - the game feels like it's a school project.

I completely do not recommend to buy this game at full price. Do it only on sale AND if you don't have any better games to play.