All the reviews talk about the anime

[九芫一]

but I've never heard of it. What games is this like? Is it a roguelite? Is it like the underground parts of all of those farming games from a few years back? I need a comparison I can actually use a metric to guess if I might like it.

[I am Bibbly.]

It is a hardcore survival JRPG. Hunting, gathering, tons of UI and inventory management. Unrelenting difficulty after the tutorial and fairly accurate to the show.

Honestly the ugh... hardcore aspects and the survival aspects are so ... extreme its difficult to relate to any other game. The hunger and stamina meter mater. Skills mater. Just... a lot matters and has literal weight.

The first ten hours is absolutely intense.
Think like Demon Souls and Monster Hunter mixed together or something.
It is very... very difficult.. I have found.

[Eoun]

it would be unlike going underground in farming games (very light dungeon crawl), feels a lot like oldschool tabletop roleplaying game (classic unfair dungeon crawl) to me (but action-input rather than taking turns in combat) with a lot of wacky mechanics that make or break player's enjoyment of the adventure, something high stakes, high reward in my opinion (getting to come back alive is a pretty big deal, specially in this story, people often take safety and assurances for granted), but that doesn't apply to quests and tasks, which are totally optional since their actual completion rewards are either severely lacking or missing altogether (no bonus for clearing everything, etc outside of main story stuff), for game comparisons I agree with Bibbly although I personally didn't enjoy either souls or monster hunter franchises, really liked Made in Abyss, it's not like Made in Abyss is better, most gamers will agree it's actually far worse and stuff, but everyone's got their opinion about everything and the following was a real news maybe felt like a backhand slap to people complaining about the difficulty, straight from the devs 'Nominate MADE IN ABYSS: BINARY STAR FALLING INTO DARKNESS for the Best Game You Suck At Award in the 2022 Steam Awards during the Autumn Sale': https://steamcommunity.com/games/1324340/announcements/detail/3458229997610626963
more on the game:
pros and cons:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1324340/discussions/0/5595187488996503924/

not a roguelite:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1324340/discussions/0/3825299364579817046/

disturbing:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1324340/discussions/0/3825299364579705015/

suggestion to consider binging episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of the first season of the anime in that order as they set the tone for the rest of the story and give insight to what the franchise is all about, btw people have been talking about this game's salt item over the years, so I ended up making this thing I can point them to and may or may not be a metric for you to gauge the game, that'll be up to you https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995604236