This feels like one of the better polished Unreal Engine games out there.
However, the game pace feels very slow and contrived.
Distances are just too big for the sake of being big, very annoying in a game that revolves around daily routine. (stores have a limited amount of money every day, so you need to travel to town to sell to them over multiple days) I remember I laughed when I saw the game had a Year counter, but you will probably see that go up.
In my first playthrough I remember I did not have the right fluid to give to a certain type of Nephelym. Very annoying when you're right there and realize you don't have the right item. Too much travel to fix one mistake, even with the portal.
The home portal seems just too far away. Reminds me of World of Warcraft points of interest always being placed in inconvenient locations in a hub just for the sake of "having the player experience the entirety of the area".
I understand that if everything is conveniently placed, the game just becomes no different from a visual novel. I just want to spend less time running.
Don't get me wrong, the sceneries are beautiful. I've tried this game a couple years ago, but my hardware back then could barely get it running at minimum settings. I now have a high end setup and was able to run everything on max. Landscapes are quite beautiful and not your usual UE copy-pasted assets. The problem is, it's a vast sea of nothing. Not enough interaction to justify wasting 80% of my time running from point A to point B.
Also just my opinion, but the sex positions vendor comes way too late in the game. You are stuck with one boring animation until the point when you're almost done with the game. (both in terms of story progression and breeding grind+upgrades).
It's good that there is an established Wiki with info/guides on everything, it frees up development time from having to work on new player experience and allows to instead focus on new content. However, it was also due to the Wiki that I became aware how slow of a grind this game is and ended up cheating my way to experience its features.
I do not want to downplay the developer's work. This looks like a high quality project compared to all the UE garbage that ends up abandoned nowadays. It's entirely possible that they already have plans to address some of the issues I've highlighted, it might just happen to not be a priority on their roadmap. It's also possible that I'm the only one who sees these as issues and this just ain't the game for me.