As it's early access, I don't think it fair to give it a star rating. My feedback on my short playthrough is that this could be the exact sort of game I'm looking for, except it just doesn't quite get there for me personally.
The one thing that really hits is the exploration and the feeling that you're in the world. The emergent gameplay of creating your own path is delightful. I started somewhere, a river or shore I think, and headed north to the tea house by the tree as recommended by a random. I talked to the manager there who said that I must be heading to a certain place. I didn't take a note of the place, but figured I'd find it and recalled rough directions. It seemed to me like my emergent story was to head to that place; that was my role-playing element; that's what my character would do. I couldn't find the place, alas, and kept hitting roadblocks. I'd spoken to the tea shop manager to try and get him to repeat what he said, but it didn't work.
So I was at a bit of a dead-end as to where my story would take me, at which point I lost the immersion and started to think whether the feel/vibe of the game was enough for me to spend another 20 mins or so walking back to the tea house. I opted not to continue. I wasn't interested in side-quests at this point, I don't like the art style and certainly don't like the character design, the music was not drawing me either, and the landscape felt more magic realism than fantasy (which is fine, just not what I wanted). So I reluctantly called it quits and refunded.
It is interesting, to me at least, that it captured the exploration elements better than something like Skyrim (not to criticise it, but journey moments in Skyrim were more retrospective than active). The fast travel between sections of the map were annoying as were the limitations on where you could go in a particular scene, but the journey was ever-present and palpable.
The one thing that really hits is the exploration and the feeling that you're in the world. The emergent gameplay of creating your own path is delightful. I started somewhere, a river or shore I think, and headed north to the tea house by the tree as recommended by a random. I talked to the manager there who said that I must be heading to a certain place. I didn't take a note of the place, but figured I'd find it and recalled rough directions. It seemed to me like my emergent story was to head to that place; that was my role-playing element; that's what my character would do. I couldn't find the place, alas, and kept hitting roadblocks. I'd spoken to the tea shop manager to try and get him to repeat what he said, but it didn't work.
So I was at a bit of a dead-end as to where my story would take me, at which point I lost the immersion and started to think whether the feel/vibe of the game was enough for me to spend another 20 mins or so walking back to the tea house. I opted not to continue. I wasn't interested in side-quests at this point, I don't like the art style and certainly don't like the character design, the music was not drawing me either, and the landscape felt more magic realism than fantasy (which is fine, just not what I wanted). So I reluctantly called it quits and refunded.
It is interesting, to me at least, that it captured the exploration elements better than something like Skyrim (not to criticise it, but journey moments in Skyrim were more retrospective than active). The fast travel between sections of the map were annoying as were the limitations on where you could go in a particular scene, but the journey was ever-present and palpable.