Mist has been an unexpectedly good experience. I've never been a big fan of visual novels and usually find myself skimming through lines of dialogue that, to me, don't matter that much. This, however, never happened with this game, it always kept me hungry for more. I am very lucky to have discovered it after its completion, otherwise I would have had a tough time waiting for the updates.
The game has a carefully crafted atmosphere, a great story and even greater characters to whom I've grown attached over the course of the game. It's pretty long, though arguably made longer by a couple of "grindy" mechanics.
The grind is mostly for "stats" and, a bit further in the story, for materials. Materials are used just a couple of times throughout the story and are requested alongside other tasks which will take more or less the time it takes the other npcs to gather said materials. Stats naturally level up going on expeditions, you just need to remember to switch your focus from time to time.
The last grind and ever present grind is the one for food. For full clarity I played my playthough on "FEAST", meaning I had pretty much unlimited food from the start, but I took notice of how the numbers went up and down. As long as you spend some stamina foraging in your expeditions and take care to harvest your crops (once you have the garden running) it should never be a problem.
One of the minor details that really struck me was the fact that the whole story is told seamlessly, not once I was able to say to myself "here starts another chapter or update", which is something that usually happens with these kinds of project.
I am by no means an expert in VNs so I'll just say that the dialogue is enjoyable and actually feels real. Characters are few, but that's by design. You gradually encounter more characters as you go along with the story but there are only about 6 of them, counting the main character. In my opinion the small cast is perfect, not only for the atmosphere and how it plays into the feeling of solitude of the first couple of hours, but also for the fact that each of them has a distinct personality. I do want to point out that, as already said by others, all the girls pretty much melt into one archetype as soon as the sex scene starts except for a couple of times. This didn't bother me that much to be honest, but I do see the point that sex scenes could have had more diverse dialogue and dynamics: something that is way more present in the start of the game with the first two girls.
All in all, Mist is a great game and a great Visual Novel. Would be a disservice to rank it anything below 5/5. Try it, play it and stay on the lookout for now projects by 395 Games.