Bittersweet and Beautiful, thats how I'd describe this game.

I want to be honest here: I mostly picked it up the moment I saw it, because I might be slightly biased towards well drawn anthromorphic characters, and the spiritual/mystic style made me curious.

And after finishing today I have to say: I do not regret buying it.
Concerning the gameplay, the game is mostly a crafter. Get materials and build stuff which enables you to gather new materials for new stuff. You also have various well made jump 'n run minigames, where you have to jump and run around on those buildings you build to catch some special ressources.
Your base is mobile and on a ship (inspired by Suikoden 4, perhaps). The world is unexplored in the beginning and you are constantly plotting the course to visit new islands which are revealed to you by quests or you just explore freely into the unexplored territory. The ship moves in real time, and while you are waiting, for it to arrive at the destination, you can do various things to pass the time. You could do the aforementioned crafting for example. Cook, tend the Fields, build new buildings, and so on. Or you might interact with the other passengers on your ship.
Here the game is especialy beautifuly made. During the game you find more and more characters, which have fluid movements allthough being 2D, with many sweet details in those movements. For example: It is a very likeable aspect of this game, how the act of giving someone a reinforcing hug is animated heartwarmingly well.
So .. you have those authentic anthromorphic characters, which you get to know more and more. And no, they are not just NPCing around either. They move around your ship, get hungry, need the occasional hug, get annoyed about each other and might as well help you in your various tasks on the ship if they are in a good mood.
And then the game pulls that bitter move on you.
You see: In the backgroundstory those people are in a limbo between life and dead and the protagonist Stella (and her cat Daffodil) are guides who have to bring them to the afterlife when they are ready.
So at some point, sooner or later, they will ask you to do the above mentioned job. A last walk (or rather: boat-trip) to the boundary starts, where the character will talk some more about his life in a monologue, before he joins the stars.
For all its beautiful artstyle, that is a very saddening experience if you built some empathy to those characters. But I think thats also what makes this game beautiful. It is a game about beginnging and endings. About living and dying. About getting to know others and about farewells. And as such it is very touching.

Beautiful and Bittersweet.

Sadly I too think I should not recommend this game.
I really would have wanted to like it, since the first few levels sure made a good first impression. The game has cute charm, the humor is delightful and, since I personaly enjoy randomness, I really liked the card-based approach to rooms/items/etc and also enjoy the graduation system.

However, I share the opinion that the game has a good foundation but falls short on the long run.
At first I too tried to manage smart. I decided which students to take and sometimes didnt accept some into my school, so the rooms wont be exhausted. I was trying to get a feeling for how many students I can host at a given time and tried to do some good managment with the random ressources I get.
However, beginning with mission 4 I got that bad feeling that the best approach might be good old "whatever" - "wherever". And much to my (negative) surprise it worked quite well. The thing is: There is little punishment for doing that approach. Students, when their needs arent fulfilled, will just leave the school for a moment, throw a little tantrum and then slink right back in. They wont leave, they wont die, they will just be less efficient. So hey, just spamming (taking in any student and just expand as fast as possible) worked fairly well on the hardest difficulty (Archmage) with the Darkness Challenge enabled ... in the last few missions I only wanted to get the missions done, so I had finished at least one whole campaign playthrough. I knew all the rooms, I knew all the items, and the missions just got a repetitive chore where I would spam most magic disciplines anyways.
The only mission that was slightly interesting again was the very last mission which added a bit more of a challenge and was actualy a very close call in my playthrough. But at that point the game had already lost me.

So ... if you are looking for a relaxing casual experience with charm and humor you might still enjoy the game. Give it a try, maybe its for you. It does have that good kind of student humor and magical shenanigans. But if you are looking for something where your choices have a deep impact for overcoming challenges... eh, better look somewhere else.