TLDR; was surprised to be reminded that this game is out of early access. It shouldn't be. Extremely unbalanced 4/10

The Good
[ + ] great sound track
[ + ] decent graphics, game looks (mostly) nice
[ + ] base building system that allows you to bring your build to another world, instead saving them to the character rather than the world/save
[ + ] building system is fun and (mostly) not a pain to use
[ + ] gear isn't dropped upon death


Worth Mentioning
[ -/+ ] That (mostly) fun building system is unfortunately coupled to a foundation system that can be a real headache, and likes to ignore the existence of pillars
[ -/+ ] Bad weather damages buildings that aren't covered by a roof, and said rooves like to be extremely finicky on what they are and aren't covering despite the roof beside them providing 100% coverage (doors were the biggest offender)
[ -/+ ] No voice acting


The Bad
[ - ] Combat & its animations feel very stiff and clunky in a very inconsistent/unreliable attack + parry system that can't seem to figure out where it wants hit boxes to be. Added bonus of a plethora of bugs including teleporting/falling through the floor enemies & the ever wonderful "I can hit you but you can't hit me"
[ - ] The entirety of the bug pet/tame system is gamebreaking levels of imbalanced, even at level 1. Smalland feels comfortably difficult when you start, before plummeting to an absolute breeze the moment you unlock the ability to tame bugs. I.E: The scorpion starts with 2k health and has base damage of 50-60 for its fast melee + 60-70 w/ a 30-40 poison heavy attack. At level 1. For context, my level 70ish character with 100 STR & Legendary weapons was doing far less than it was.
[ - ] Pets can and will consistently yeet you off of Great Tree elevators (the only way to get up or down them) thanks to the endless clipping issues this game suffers from
[ - ] Pets can and will decide their defense post on top of the Great Tree is actually along its sides, and not go back to their original location even when they slide all the way down to the base of the tree.
[ - ] The option to turn off Pets permanently kicking the bucket and not attacking each other/turning off Friendly Fire is Multiplayer only. Unfortunately, this also means stopping Pets from permanently dying every time they waddle into or fall off something into a river, is Multiplayer only.
[ - ] A bug where pets can still permanently die despite every setting to prevent it being on both exists, and is not uncommon.
[ - ] Pets will always be infinitely better than you no matter how much you sink into damage stats/gear.
[ - ] Pets will damage near-by buildings even with Friendly Fire off, as well as damaging & eventually destroying any traps they stand on top of (without taking any personal damage, at least). They will also hit each other and randomly begin fighting amongst both themselves & other players pets during combat.
[ - ] Game doesn't like to explain its own mechanics, and relies on third-party websites to do that instead.
[ - ] you NEED Intelligence to make (and repair, for even the smallest sliver of a repair) better gear, but you also don't need that gear. The % increase is nowhere near enough to make a difference when being compared to the wildly overpowered pets at your disposal. This only changes with the last weapon in the game, but that's solely because it's a 225-550ish (350-500ish Legendary) vs the 32-37 ballpark of its competitors.
[ - ] Player attributes do not scale equally to the rest of the game, making Constitution worthless and Dexterity a dump stat.
[ - ] Game disrespects your time overall; crafting takes too long, building takes too long, you need far too much wood (that also takes too long to gather) simply to exist, bad weather/winter forces you inside for far too long, repairing both buildings and equipment takes too many mats, events take too long for far too little reward, Great Tree lift takes too long, certain quests force you down very unnecessarily long paths... everything to do with time is bloated.
[ - ] Despite not having an overall lifeless world, exploration is boring and unrewarding. Points of interest are nothing more than reskins and barely unique arrangements of standard assets, every piece of lore is abandoned as quickly as its presented. Really doesn't help that you start paying attention to the copy+pasta assets everywhere, as there's not much to distract you from noticing.
[ - ] World settings are pretty bare bones, giving very limited control to the host over their experience, while also making the monster damage/health scale also apply to player pets.
[ - ] Cooking remains an entirely wasted mechanic that has no real benefits, outside of "woo I fufilled my survival game nom nom quota"
[ - ] There's very little to no guide on quests, to the extent of where it wouldn't be uncommon or even a difficult ask to completely miss the fact that there's a main story quest line. While I'm certainly not saying to add something over the top like a golden path, being unaware you're even on a quest to begin with is a testament to how weak the UI overall is. My group thought it was just part of the tutorial.

TLDR; was surprised to be reminded that this game is out of early access. It shouldn't be. Extremely unbalanced 4/10 [b] [u] The Good [/u] [/b] [ + ] great sound track [ + ] decent graphics, game looks (mostly) nice [ + ] base building system that allows you to bring your build to another world, instead saving them to the character rather than the world/save [ + ] building system is fun and (mostly) not a pain to use [ + ] gear isn't dropped upon death [b] [u] Worth Mentioning [/u] [/b] [ -/+ ] That (mostly) fun building system is unfortunately coupled to a foundation system that can be a real headache, and likes to ignore the existence of pillars [ -/+ ] Bad weather damages buildings that aren't covered by a roof, and said rooves like to be extremely finicky on what they are and aren't covering despite the roof beside them providing 100% coverage (doors were the biggest offender) [ -/+ ] No voice acting [b] [u] The Bad [/u] [/b] [ - ] Combat & its animations feel very stiff and clunky in a very inconsistent/unreliable attack + parry system that can't seem to figure out where it wants hit boxes to be. Added bonus of a plethora of bugs including teleporting/falling through the floor enemies & the ever wonderful "I can hit you but you can't hit me" [ - ] The entirety of the bug pet/tame system is gamebreaking levels of imbalanced, even at level 1. Smalland feels comfortably difficult when you start, before plummeting to an absolute breeze the moment you unlock the ability to tame bugs. I.E: The scorpion starts with 2k health and has base damage of 50-60 for its fast melee + 60-70 w/ a 30-40 poison heavy attack. At level 1. For context, my level 70ish character with 100 STR & Legendary weapons was doing far less than it was. [ - ] Pets can and will consistently yeet you off of Great Tree elevators (the only way to get up or down them) thanks to the endless clipping issues this game suffers from [ - ] Pets can and will decide their defense post on top of the Great Tree is actually along its sides, and not go back to their original location even when they slide all the way down to the base of the tree. [ - ] The option to turn off Pets permanently kicking the bucket and not attacking each other/turning off Friendly Fire is Multiplayer only. Unfortunately, this also means stopping Pets from permanently dying every time they waddle into or fall off something into a river, is Multiplayer only. [ - ] A bug where pets can still permanently die despite every setting to prevent it being on both exists, and is not uncommon. [ - ] Pets will always be infinitely better than you no matter how much you sink into damage stats/gear. [ - ] Pets will damage near-by buildings even with Friendly Fire off, as well as damaging & eventually destroying any traps they stand on top of (without taking any personal damage, at least). They will also hit each other and randomly begin fighting amongst both themselves & other players pets during combat. [ - ] Game doesn't like to explain its own mechanics, and relies on third-party websites to do that instead. [ - ] you NEED Intelligence to make (and repair, for even the smallest sliver of a repair) better gear, but you also don't need that gear. The % increase is nowhere near enough to make a difference when being compared to the wildly overpowered pets at your disposal. This only changes with the last weapon in the game, but that's solely because it's a 225-550ish (350-500ish Legendary) vs the 32-37 ballpark of its competitors. [ - ] Player attributes do not scale equally to the rest of the game, making Constitution worthless and Dexterity a dump stat. [ - ] Game disrespects your time overall; crafting takes too long, building takes too long, you need far too much wood (that also takes too long to gather) simply to exist, bad weather/winter forces you inside for far too long, repairing both buildings and equipment takes too many mats, events take too long for far too little reward, Great Tree lift takes too long, certain quests force you down very unnecessarily long paths... everything to do with time is bloated. [ - ] Despite not having an overall lifeless world, exploration is boring and unrewarding. Points of interest are nothing more than reskins and barely unique arrangements of standard assets, every piece of lore is abandoned as quickly as its presented. Really doesn't help that you start paying attention to the copy+pasta assets everywhere, as there's not much to distract you from noticing. [ - ] World settings are pretty bare bones, giving very limited control to the host over their experience, while also making the monster damage/health scale also apply to player pets. [ - ] Cooking remains an entirely wasted mechanic that has no real benefits, outside of "woo I fufilled my survival game nom nom quota" [ - ] There's very little to no guide on quests, to the extent of where it wouldn't be uncommon or even a difficult ask to completely miss the fact that there's a main story quest line. While I'm certainly not saying to add something over the top like a golden path, being unaware you're even on a quest to begin with is a testament to how weak the UI overall is. My group thought it was just part of the tutorial.