Well, this might be controversial for some — the hours played are just a cover of the book

After having played this game for that many hours I hope I'm qualified to share my honest opinion on this one. Starting off with the good things and one of those is surely the gameplay; it's very consuming and addicting, especially for someone artistic and creative in nature — you'll have plenty a room to showcase it. It's not a sandbox per se but a huge focal point was moved towards the customization and settlement management which comes with them various options. But once you proper your village to a high standard, the money you'll be getting will have little to no purpose since all that you can buy you can make yourself and be well off.

I'll mention the quests. Side quests fall under the seasonal category and they expire once the season changes and you can set up at which rate they'll do. Pacing of the game will heavily depend on the settings you launch at the start or midgame. Main quests along with the storyline have a slightly bigger wiggle room and give you time to return to them later. I'm not commenting on the quality of the said storyline though, the checkbox is marked and all's well.

This could go on with the describing of how addictive and well built the gameplay is if it wasn't for the bugs and other points I need to make. And bugs there are! I do get the notion that the developers are a small amateur team albeit with the luxurious backing but the work done does not correlate with the pricetag hung upon it. Now read it again as it's the main takeaway here. For the amount of bugs that it has, be it a silly, clanky animation or constant clipping into objects, failing scripts or terrible movement altogether this shouldn't be costing half as much. With such a greedy approach and seeming attempts to continue the trend (look up Sengoku Dynasty and other atrocities with this game still being in the state it's in), I obviously do not recommend this game a tiny bit. Surely not for the pricetag they offer it up with. The absolute maximum this, project, should be costing is 75% off the price it currently has, no other way near it.

If you catch it on the discount like I did — go for it, otherwise don't you even dare. Don't entertain the idea of buying it for the full price, don't agree to the terms the lazy rookie devs had the audacity to put out. Yes, the gameplay is nice and if you're that kind of person you'll be all but consumed and yes, the prospects of coop do be very tempting but look at a broader picture, this will continue and not far off the day your budget is squeezed to the last quarter for some questionable content. But yes, oh yes, the gameplay is nice and achievements are the sole reason I stayed for as long as I did. The possibility to build a manufacture and set it up right to rather quickly become a very succesful village leader is a cool way about it.

But you think for yourself, you gotta be a grownup. It's not a matter of low-life complaints, I got money, it's a matter of principle. They shouldn't be getting away with this and set up a manufacture of their own with these low quality products. If it was a few notches better and really thought out — it's alright by me here's the cash, but the thing they created doesn't cost nearly as much and oh boy, am I mad.

This game doesn't really have a goal, if you are playing it, the primary game loop is just making your village bigger and more self sufficient while you do manual labor, there isn't any win condition, and things move very slowly, but I found it enjoyable

On the second map the small single abandoned buildings that restrict areas make it unplayable as they make any decent sized village impossible or extremely awkward to build.
Other than that, the game is filled with extreme repetition, sure you can get your villagers to make things theoretically but at snail like speeds.
Take logging for example, doing by hand even with a stone axe it is no problem getting 150+ logs a day on your own, to get this out of the villagers you would need about 7 or 8 of them, but you also need to feed the villagers and make tools for the villagers. So in reality to get 150 logs a day out of you villagers you would need about 20 of them (not exact math as I never bothered to automate some things like hunting, as villagers are hilariously inefficient in it).
On top of the challenge of needing to find the 20 people with 3 points in a skill that you require, this game feels like it's wasting your time 90% of the time.