I purchased this game as part of a bundle with Palworld and played a lot of Palworld prior so I can't refund this game even if i wanted to due to buying it as part of a bundle. I have a more budget ended gaming setup and have played other games on this rig like Palworld, Valheim, Kingdom Come deliverance, World War Z just fine with no graphical issues or lag. While running this game it was on Performance mode video settings.
Personally, I would strongly avoid this game due to optimization issues (at the time of posting this) the game is not optimized for Geforce Graphics cards so expect long wait for (shaders compiling) (mine ran on 9 threads) while sitting on a menu screen doing nothing else just waiting while placing a heavy load on your systems GPU and CPU. For me, after initial install it took 1 hour 30+ min to load those shaders to 100%. From a new player experience, this is unacceptable amount of time to have to wait to play a game especially based on Steams 2 hour Refund policy (had I bought this game alone; i would have refunded it within the first 5 minutes because of that). Yes I'm aware this is an early access build of the game but still its too much and is the main reason for this negative review.
Prior to buying this game as a somewhat tech savvy person, i checked the minimal requirements (which is a gtx 1060) and watched a video of benchmark game play with the same gtx 3050 TI as me and it was fine. Note* per benchmark websites a gtx 3050ti > gtx 1060. As well on the launcher, prior to playing the game it does warn me that my system is below the specs which i ignored because "i can't refund the game anyways may as well try it".
Note** Regarding the shaders compiling there are googled suggestions to disable the preload in the steam settings.. which i did. Skip the shader load entirely which when tried will crash the game when trying to load a world.. increasing the Nvidia cache size settings doesn't help much here either as your system hasn't loaded the game before. None of these changes had any differences in the speed at which the game processed the shaders..
Upon completion (1.5hrs wait time) of the shaders compiling. I managed to play around 4 hours. built a small base (1 house with a chimey for the blacksmith) per following the questline, recruited the blacksmith and cleared the 1st elixir boss, crafted the glider. Graphically there were no issues, lag etc.. while playing and was the same as expected per the Benchmark video. FPS felt like 60+ which is fine for a RPG game like this. During this 4 hour time period; i logged out once to test if the shaders would compile again.. they did not.. However the next day, when trying to log in again; well shaders started compiling again so, gg im out.. and (No i didn't update my graphics card and there were no in game build changes). sorry but i ain't sitting there again for that shaders compiling again.. nty.
Gameplay:
Building is voxel based similiar to Minecraft with a healthy amount of material options for customization, Decorations for lore and world/ story telling. In game its possible to visit player submitted maps from other player submitted designs .. some locations i noticed was from TLotR The Shire, Bilbo Baggins hobbit hole, and Rivendell. This sort of stuff the devs did well and the reason; i was interested in this game. But one thing that annoyed me about building; was having to craft the item manually (like a chair) from a workbench versus a menu where you just place it down providing you have the materials. Also there doesn't seem to be a way to recycle crafted building items so i foresee item management as a nightmare in the long term as there are tons of decorative items which do not stack.
Gathering: There are materials everywhere; buildings can be demolished, mountains can be carved out with explosives and the lands topography can be directly altered by mining. This is a good thing as if you want to sand box you can.
Combat: i was expecting something like Valheim or Darksouls but its more RPG like with auto aim for the ranged weapons like the bow and wands. There is shield parrying and blocking, dodge rolling mechanics but its much easier compared to those game. The bosses do special telegraphed AOE moves besides that its not very interesting.
Exploration: The shroud is what blocks the majority of exploration and I died multiple times due to the heavy shroud which i didn't even notice the first few times as it happens so quickly the warning isn't even noticable as it occurs so quickly. The environment looks good with a variety of desolated areas affected by the shroud and abandoned buildings in contrast to the forests and open fields.
Overall this game as i experienced it is right to be in Early access and should not leave that stage unless the pre loading shaders compiling is addressed. The graphical aspects of the game look fine but nothing special compared to other games in this genre.. Devs need to work with Nvidia and Radeon to get better optimization. Until Devs do this sorry this is a hard pass..
