Is this a neverending sandbox experience?

[tomchynsky]

Or not? Can i play in this game thousands hours?

[JAC_K]

You can play it for as long as you want. There is a story but you don't have to do it.

[BlackD]

not really.
if u do nothing else then progress until the end u could finish the game in around 24 hours (way faster if u know where to find stuff and look up the wiki).

but instead of ending the game u could of course just build bases. or a massive one. or multiple vehicles. but alone. plus at some point u will run out of materials because they dont respawn

[margalus]

Yes it is. You can play forever as long as you don't get bored before forever arrives.

[Playnday]

If you want to just play around and ignore the story you could use the creative mode. It is without the survival element of the game and has all the blue prints unlocked from the start.

[BlackD]

Originally posted by Playnday:

If you want to just play around and ignore the story you could use the creative mode. It is without the survival element of the game and has all the blue prints unlocked from the start.

or this^^

[Nyello]

That really depends on you and your playstyle.

[Big]

Long story short, it’s a large map that feels infinite but it’s not. It has a semi decent story and is really a good combination of exploration and strategy along with survival

[FoxFritter]

Originally posted by Cynical Syndicate:

Long story short, it’s a large map that feels infinite but it’s not. It has a semi decent story and is really a good combination of exploration and strategy along with survival

Not to mention that everywhere you go...everything is beautiful and provokes wonder.

[ImHelping]

The upshot of the relativly small hand made map is that it has way more detail than a procedural one.

The downside is it makes it that much more awkward they spam ghost levis in the void to try and keep people from looking at the "We didn't make anything else" edge of the map.

It's got an ACTUAL PLOT which you can for reals complte, which puts it above a lot of sandboxes in that regard and is why I bought it way back even though I don't normally like "sandbox survival" games. You are actually working something more than a pat on the back an being spat back out into staring at the woods and your hunger meter.

But at the same time, replays become super fast due to your foreknowledge. You know the route, you know how to swim from your spawn point to the few islands in the game and bypass half the tech progression, etc. Which has influence a lot of the balancing over the course of the development by bored vets (It still leaves it overall one of the easiest survival games, much of the difficulty is RNG based on certain unlockables and materials)

So it's an interesting mix of "This is the highest quality of that sort ever, holy ****" and "Well, that's incredibly limited/they still haven't polished that even for launch?"

If you are willing to deal with some rough optimizations and pop in for one of the most beautiful casual surivival experiences ever, get it.

If you were hoping for a robust crafting system with more than one type of room than "it's an oval. that's your room. which you had to unlock" which isn't a dedicated utility object, not so much.