In theory Against the Storm should be an easy recommendation - it's a well-structured rogue-like with an interesting world and systems and is backed up by a solid soundtrack and graphics. Those are all pretty big positives and shouldn't be ignored.
However, your enjoyment of AtS is likely to come down to your enjoyment of the main thing it claims to be - is it a good city builder? My answer to that is: I don't actually think so. Certainly, if you were coming into this as a fan of the Impressions series or even a more modern take like Tropico or Frostpunk, AtS is absolutely not that.
Instead AtS asks you to construct multiple settlements expanding across the map to a final seal map, starting afresh each time and all needing to be done within a set period of ingame years that is shared from settlement to settlement. Winning on the easiest seal challenge asks you to complete all of your settlements before the final one within 40 years. The second-easiest within 48 years. The third within 56 years, etc., etc. At the same time, you are gated from going in too much of a straight line to end objective settlement by needing to have a certain number of seal fragments before you get there, which can be obtained by completing settlements and certain optional challenges and events. Broadly, the game isn't so much about building a city as it is railroading you into building the minimum possible to just win a map as fast as you can and then repeat that multiple times in a row. You can spend the extra time building an interesting or expansive city, it's just almost never optimal and the game disincentivises you doing so.
I don't feel that the rogue-like aspect actually helps that. The way you win a map is by accruing a certain number of points, which mostly come from making your population happy or completing side objectives. There are a huge number of possible variations on the buildings you can be offered to enable that objective, but there are so many that you may never see a particular one on a given map and some of the options are going to be useless (e.g. a type of farm on a map that has no farming) so after a while you're again getting railroaded into similar tactics each time if you want to win (e.g. take the first applicable service building that makes your population happy and just build towards that) and, despite that possible depth in variation, it somehow ends up feeling repetitive after a while.
With all of that said, if you're looking at this as a fan of rogue-like games and that's what's interesting to you, I think there's plenty of game to run at for its price before it will start to get stale. If you like the idea of starting completely fresh with a settlement each time and having to do the same thing slightly differently over and over, there's a lot to like here. It's just not that fun if you're looking at it as the thing it's being advertised as first and foremost - a city builder.
