The world map just appeared and the game basically tells you to go fuck yourself, which is fitting because that's exactly what the tentacles do. Tentacles Thrive. The name says it all really. I spent most of my time trying to figure out why Skitz and Red Lion wouldn't breed no matter what I did, until I actually read the diary. Bonding. Right. That thing buried in menus I clicked past because the encyclopedia had just been "reconstructed" and my brain was already full of resource nodes.

Speaking of which, the explore overhaul is actually kinda sick. You click around, find random shit, and sometimes your character just starts talking. In full voice. Short grunts and phrases, nothing fancy, but it caught me off guard the first time. There's this moment where you discover a fertile patch and she gasps and I won't lie, I replayed it. The nine mating scenes with voice sync are where the game stops pretending to be a strategy sim. Rough, wet, multiple limbs everywhere. Group scenes that feel genuinely chaotic. The audio desyncs on occasion though, and nothing kills the mood faster than a moan arriving two seconds late like a laggy Skype call from 2009.

The resource system spawns randomly per territory which means every run feels slightly different, but also means you can get screwed by RNG if you need something specific for breeding. And you will need things. So many things. The Humana race is apparently my responsibility now? I clicked through that dialogue thinking I was just here to collect tentacle species like Pokemon but with more bodily fluids. The real time battles exist, I guess. They're functional. I wish the Red Lion had voice work like the others because that scene feels incomplete now, just awkward silence while you're trying to... you know. Maybe they'll patch it. Probably not though. The intelligence toggle being always on now is a choice. It means the enemies actually try, which is great until you're just trying to farm resources and some tentacle beast decides today is the day it becomes Sun Tzu.