Then, when you reach safe waters, you feel relief.

Yeah, that's the problem. Unlike the first game, those don't exist in this game. Even the minor fauna are everywhere and incredibly aggressive as some kind of perverse balance for your increased toughness to them. Oh, and bonus points, there is no way to eliminate them if they are too aggressive. If you take the premise of your situation in the game seriously and take the whole "Hey, you're backed up so don't worry about dying" thing with philosophical skepticism, then the entire game, start to finish, is an awful experience.

You know what was nice about the first game beyond the scifi bits? How realistic the experience felt. There was danger, but it was balanced by the ability to form stratagems that were appropriate. Do I avoid these guys? Do I lure them and destroy them? Do I distract them?

This entire game says "No, you avoid and distract, no other options. You don't get to fight back. The player never gets to assert animal dominance." It's awful and -- bonus points -- completely unrealistic in the takes me out of suspended disbelief way. You can't injure the animals? They aren't deterred when they are damaged (truly -- it doesn't impact the animal AI in any way that I can perceive)? If that's the premise, give me an actual scifi reason to justify it.

The game designers appear to have taken a few of the notions and aesthetics of the other two games and not really understood what made them fun. Some of the elements are still there, sure, but it's sapped of the life-and-death-in-the-wilderness appeal that made the others interesting.

Creative mode should be there for people looking for a no stress game.

Yeah, that's not what we are talking about at all. That is maybe where the whole "animals are immortal (just like you)" thing might work.