I wouldn't say I'm a hardcore gamer but I'm not a casual gamer as well. I bought the game in the morning and played non-stop literally and finished it a little after dinner, without speed running and taking some time to customize my cafe. As a long time fan of the Sims franchise I love customization elements.
One thing I wished was that instead of finding blue prints the cafe made money, points, token of some sort to unlock cafe items. In a way I find that more rewarding than finding them out in the wild, perhaps they could have made some items purchased and some found. I do like some sort of grind but too much e.g. GTA online. Gives players some sort of flexing power to show for their grind playing the game. In addition, I had also hoped that some of the customizations would have some effect on gameplay for instance the more expensive furniture could give bonuses or buffs. The money earned could be spent on cosmetics or other things like food and supplies. It would give the game more replay value. Parties would also have been better if we could do the setup ourselves and also an auto function for casual players.
The world is great in terms of scenery, but the world itself feels empty without the ability to interact with anything. It would have been nice to be able to interact with at least some NPCs or merchant NPCs to spend money on potions.
What pushed me to really finish the game quickly was how the objectives kept popping up that a rift has opened. I cannot stand those things in games, so when I see an objective I would rush to complete it. I would have rather took my time max bonding with the critters I have before saving the next but in doing that the objective list kept piling up so I couldn't have that.
Critters also had little effect on gameplay besides the cosmetics. During service they don't do anything other than being present and that was sort of a let down. I wished that critters could follow your avatar and had some interactions with the world like maybe reacting to the world or NPCs in some ways.
To date I have played the game for 13 hours, these are just some of my honest opinions. I don't mean to put anyone down or badmouth the developers. I understand that this game was probably aimed at the casual gamers but I the the potential in what it could have been.
The game initially gave me a feeling of whimsy and wonder taking me back to feeling like Peter Pan as he grew up and went back to neverland not wanting to grow up and I love it. But I was a bit disappointed at the end. I had wished for more replay value, even without objectives at least give us the ability to sandbox. I hope to see improvements in updates to make the game feel refreshed and take me back to that initial feeling.
