izigame.me

Sadly this has to be a thumbs down currently.
Now updated after some additional hours of playing.
I hadn't purchased prior to the 1.0 release so as not to spoil anything but had followed development and while I've played it for over 60 hours and have enjoyed it so far I just can't give it a thumbs up because so many systems seem under developed in every area. Feels like funds dried up and it was released 2/3 of the way through what would have been a contender to the likes of Stardew Valley.
Just a few examples, occasionally backed by dev posts:
1. All shops may or may not work as intended, impossible to tell as worker stats don't update plus the specialisations and their associated perks don't appear to necessarily be properly implemented or useful ingame on occasion, e.g the double production perk with things like weaponsmith doesn't appear to affect staff and is pretty useless for yourself as you can get a Fairweather item that does the same for ALL smithing which doesn't stack with the perk. Also stats aren't properly explained i.e Blacksmith manual you're given makes no mention to strength which is actually important... or maybe it's not.. who the hell knows.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/758870/discussions/0/3717188878658708887/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/758870/discussions/0/3717188878656318473/
2. Animals, they need feeding, but they don't because they just get sick and need some healing. They don't breed and I can't say I've honestly noticed the stats given during auctions making any difference. I haven't fed the cow for 2 years but it still gives milk every day. Animals do age and die as I've found out so I'm happy to admit being wrong about this.
3. Family are useless, takes less than an hour to gather/water everything on your limited farm space but with 6 hours dedicated to it your spouse will do about 1/3 to 1/2 even with decent speed.
4. No home customisation, for a game with such a focus on building a dynasty it feels natural that your homestead would be part of that, but from what I've seen there is no customisation, hell there isn't even a double bed so you and your spouse sleep in separate beds in different parts of the house once the first child comes.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/758870/discussions/0/3717188878648597116/
5. Such limited character customisation, at the start you pick clothes colour and hair style/colour and that's it, there's no clothes or anything for you to change despite the fact that in 50 hours I've only aged about 6 years so I'm going to be looking like this for a while.
6. Automation, for a game that encourages you to own multiple shops eventually there's no way to automate purchasing of basic resources like ores or ingredients once they reach a certain level or prioritise what your employees will craft.
7. Fishing is just god damn annoying and I dare anyone to say otherwise.
8. I'm pretty sure doing a kidney transplant has more forgiving timing than cooking a stew.
9. Your children don't look like you or a mix of you and your spouse, I've seen some answers given that this is because your child is delivered by stork etc... but that's rubbish as every NPC family has a resemblance between parents and children.
10. The time skipping mechanic is poorly implemented and clearly not how it was originally intended to happen. Currently it's not that you just increase in age, it's done as though time has passed and you simply vanish so your children and everyone else in the world ages and you suddenly pop back into existence x amount of years later.... However, your businesses don't continue running or anything. I imagine this is because the game would have been painfully slow if not done this way but you can see remnants still in the game that this is how it was originally meant to be played, for instance having your children study to increase their stats is clearly still set out as though you'd be playing this way, with the Fairweather item to increase child learning int and them devoting 2 slots a day to studying they gain 32xp a week and need 500xp to gain a level, so a little under 2 years for 1 stat point and intelligence is one of the quicker ones to do as it gives more xp. I'd be interested to see if the learning occurs during time skips but I haven't had the chance to try this.
Lastly and probably most importantly is I'm currently struggling to see the need for the games primary mechanic of the Kynseed. I intentionally haven't numbered this as I haven't played enough and could be completely wrong but on my original character I'm currently age 25 or 26 after playing for 2 years, buying a couple of items and dying a couple of times but I've already visited just about every area on the world map and beaten 1 of the 3 dungeons on the hardest difficulty so I'm kinda having a hard time seeing what use the additional stats from later generations will even have unless I'm missing some major content storywise.
Since writing this I'm now 2/3 dungeons cleared on highest difficulty still with the original character.
I'll concede I could be wrong on the last point but the others still stand, while devs may have said this will be fixed/added in future patches for some things mentioned the fact is it shouldn't have been touted as 1.0 release without this fully fleshed out.
And all of that aside I've still enjoyed my time with it, the sole reason for the thumbs down is that this is yet another game given the 1.0 when it clearly isn't.