I absolutely love this game, but I cannot recommend it to anyone because of its selling point.

tldr: Complexity helps with the game's charm, but the game doesn't appeal to new audiences because it doesn't value the player's time properly.

You have an entire world in your hands that you can walk around, explore, climb, dig, mine, farm, kill. Which I do give props because it's a massive technical feat, but the design around it is painful and will make you depressed if you think too much about it.

You can build a tiny house, a town, a castle, a fighting arena, a mining expedition, and that takes time. Your time is the main currency of this game, it can be very relaxing at times. Until you realize that unless you're paying for a deed, everything you build will decay and all that remains are the floor tiles. I feel like building should at least have a "rotting" state that lasts for a very long time before they disappear (with cheaper than build-from-scratch repair costs), because if your "lasting mark" that took at least 200 hours to build will be destroyed by time itself. Why would I wanna build it if I can just play something that actually keeps this progress, like RuneScape.

I won't lie, I really liked playing the game, there are many details, it feels very immersive and allows you to do many crazy things like taming rats. But it can't survive in a world where players expect progression, not regression.

Also, mining sucks, it's unintuitive, its TAKING TOO LONG to break a single block compared to every other element in the game. "oh, but it gets better once you get proper gear". How can I explain to a new player that breaking a single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ block takes about 30 minutes and expect them to like it? It's not relaxing, it's literally a job.

Phew, now I can go back to writing my college essay.

A game for patient people.

This game is great, bit too much of a pay to win for my liking, and can be boring at times, but other than that, great game.