I really should have paid more attention to the reviews that complained about what a grind fest this game is cause oh boy. It's worse than that even, because there's not much else other than the grind. People compare it to a gothic Stardew Valley but that's way off except at the most surface level, where in Stardew there are a lot of really interesting decisions to make about what to build, buy, how to use space, how to use time, in this game there's really nothing like that, you just kinda build what you need to build, the only challenge really is dealing with their poor explanation of what you need to do and lack of basic quality of life game features. The game feels like early survival crafters, where there are way way too many unnecessary intermediary steps to everything, and a seperate workbench for every single thing you need to do, and it lacks very basic things like questlogs.

Often times you research a technology only to find the workbench to build that item is a whole separate branch of the tech tree and it requires intermediary components that are entirely separate unlocks as well, and you can't tell that when you're building towards it. You'll often be given quests to build something that requires you going through that maze of a tech tree, only to find out, on top of everything, that those secondary components require resources you haven't unlocked yet and can't for some time, and when you find out how, hopefully you don't end up having to take a break from the game for a day or two because there's no questlog, so you better just memorize that you need to meet that guy on a tuesday at the sawmill because if you can't remember or you remember some detail of it wrong you're just stuck.

I honestly don't understand how so many people positively review it, what they get out of games that such a thing appeals to them. It lacks the aesthetic creative building elements of Stardew, lacks it's interesting investment decisions, the characters are generic and the dialog is slow and uninteresting. I guess a lot of people can't tell the difference between challenging and bad game design. Annoying and poorly explained is not the kind of challenge I'm looking to overcome in a game.

The game isn't great. I've played all 3 DLCs and 99% of the way there to 100%
In 2024 after releasing 3 DLCs they still haven't patched the base game (or the dlcs) of bugs, almost all the mechanics in the game are not explained very well. more often than not, you'll have to look up guides to finish the game.

- you can still get hard locked in the base game on one of the storyline quests

- there's a memory leak somewhere in the code so the longer you play, the more laggy it'll get. so you'll need to exit and reenter the game

- some cinematics were broken for me, where the npc was just missing and I was only getting 1 side of the conversation.

- some quests are logged, some are not. If you can't remember what you were supposed to be doing, you'll have to look it up on a wiki.

- visually there will be a lot of stuttering, even if you're just walking around and not doing anything taxing.

- the story of the game is pretty meh

on the upside, the pixel art of the game is amazing and the easter eggs inside the quests were funny to see.

yes