izigame.me

Probably the most adorable game I've played so far. It brought me so much joy it easily became my 4th perfect game, but I also understand the negative feedback. It's definitely not a 40€ game, it actually feels like an Early Access Indie, which I don't mind too much because I'm used to playing those. I bought it (and later the DLCs) on sale though and would advise to do the same.
I'll make a list of the different aspects of the game, beginning with the bad ones:
NPCs / Social
The main reason why this feels like Early Access. The social aspect feels extremely barebone. NPCs have like 3 different lines each they rotate through, they still greet you like a stranger after regularly talking to them for a year, keep mentioning the thorns you cleared a year ago before saving the entire island, the romance options each have 1 personality trait and 1 interest their entire being revolves around, birthdays do literally nothing, marriage does nothing except that your spouse hangs out in your main home and "old flames" that get dumped by your marriage act like nothing ever happened. I'm not a very social person and don't care too much about it but if socializing is important to you it would probably be better to look into other games.
Bugs
There are a few, from visual ones over Interfaces sometimes messing up to really annoying ones, like field watering and flower growth stages getting messed up or your wedding not happening at all. I forwarded the wedding bug to the devs and they seem to be interested in solving the problem so l have hope there will be fixes.
Bad Design Choices
I got the impression that certain things were done without thinking about them too much. These being:
Side "Quests". They are just "bring me item x" and you get nothing in return. I think it doesnt even progress the relationship but can't really check. Not that this would change much xD
Festivals have a weird timing with what they give you. Like, each season Festival gives you an outfit for the respective season although they are at the very last day of that season. So you gotta run around in your autumn outfit the entire winter until you can buy the winter outfit on the very last day with spring starting the next morning. Thats even worse if you consider that you play through the entire storyline in less than a year and be done with the game before year 2 starts.
Some festival rewards also have impossible requirements like the vibrant purple color palette that is only buyable on Fae Festival Day in winter requiring 10 purple tulips. You can't breed them that fast because flower breeding is horribly slow, so I basically waited through another year with nothing to do to get collectibles I couldn't really use anymore because I'm done with the game.
There is no Potion effect stacking. You can have 1 environmental effect (like heat resistance) plus another more short timed one and if you drink another potion it will overwrite the effect. Means you can't have both invisibility and movement speed for example and if you permanently use speed but wanna use a little whirlwind to gather crops inbetween you have to renew the speed pot afterwards.
Job quests orders aren't really well thought through. For example the magic job line wants you to combat and complete dungeons and usually goes through them in chronological order. But after the "use spell X" quest for the spell you get for finishing the dungeon, it gives you a "dispatch 30 jumbles" quest for that same dungeon, so sending you back after already completing it. Or the third alchemy quest wants you to craft a potion that you need a late game ingredient for. And other things like that.
Cozy Furniture is an interesting system but it restricts you a lot in how you can furnish your house because you want all of them to get the passive effects and they take a lot of space. You also need to have that house as your main home to get the effects which makes it worse. I basically just puzzle the Cozys into the upstairs room and only actively use the downstairs rooms.
Teleporter and Well Placement could be better. Having the wells next to the animal homes on the first 2 farms is "unfortunate" because you wanna have your crop fields close to the well but dont want your animals running around your fields. That being said, animals interfere with you trying to interact with anything else which is very annoying.
Prices seem very random sometimes. For example, most of the alchemy potions are worth less than what you would get for the ingredients but a few are quite profitable and there is no pattern. Like, small and medium zoom potions for example give you a profit, the large ones a loss, others are the other way round and several kinds are losses in all sizes. Cooking also isn't profitable, basically just making jewels is (which I dont mind because I love shinies <3)
Combat
The staff is the one weapon you can use against enemies and (sadly) works like a close combat blunt weapon. You learn spells as you progress the story which can also be used for certain things outside of combat, but they use too much mana to be effectively used for combat. Personally I'm the avoid-combat-type of person and I like that this is absolutely doable because enemies are only in the dungeons and you can use invisibility pots to sneak past them. They also don't drop any key items so fighting is only required for the magic job quests. The fighting mechanic itself is ok I guess? The only annoying thing I noticed is that some animations (like mining or using a potion) take quite long and make you immobile so you often get hit by enemy attacks without being able to dodge.
Other Game Mechanics
What is rather unique I think and very handy is that your tools (pickaxe, axe, water can, sickle, shovel) are selected automatically depending an what you target, so you just have the fishing rod, critter net and staff (and conch if you have the DLC) seperate and can rotate through them rather fast. In dungeons you even only have the staff and tool to switch around. They also don't take any inventory slots.
Furniture is nearly exclusively built, not bought and will transform back into the ingredient materials if you disassemble them. Generally nice, certain furnishings that you need in quantity like fences and rugs use a LOT of material though. Furniture placement is restricted to a grid system and the 4 cardinal directions, like in Animal Crossing. What I really like is that you can dye most of the furniture (and clothes) freely with your unlocked palettes, what I dislike is that this excludes wall items and that those can only be put on the back walls of your house.
Ethics
This game is very LGBTQ and poc friendly and mostly cruelty free (All enemies are animated objects, you can't kill farm animals). Fishing (a very cruel way to kill something) still being included is a weird exception of that rule but apparently every game needs to have this horribly boring mechanic ^^' Sadly you even need it to progress the storyline.
Theres a bit of disability representation too, all social interactions are wholesome and in general the FF world is a nearly perfect fairytale utopia. For everyone except fishes.
Things I like
General aesthetics and theme, cuteness, customization options, magic, lack of cruelty and pace of progression and discoveries tick all the right boxes for me. I was looking for a peaceful, pretty world to build up a cozy life in and got exactly that. The only wishes it leaves me with is fixing some of the mentioned problems and more content ^-^
Beginner Tips
Sell! No need to hoard anything except materials and flowers. Look up requirements for festival purchases early though, dont wanna wait a year because you're missing 1 item.
Breed flowers and farm animals asap. Its free and you will need the progression.
Have fun :)