Writing this under the context that I'm going to continue playing this game, mostly because it's a gift from my partner so that we could play together.
I cannot recommend this game to people.
Going over the good first, the player controls actually quite well. It's responsive, what you input is what you see happening, the worlds and art design are quite beautiful in this game and the base itself is fun to traverse through having multiple levels to it. I did also quite like the intro as well. That being said, there's so much about this game that's utter crap.
First of all, for a game that forces you into online multiplayer, it is prolific in the amount of effort going into specifically blocking you from being able to actually play multiplayer at every single stage. No, you're not allowed to "join a player on a quest or expedition", why would you ever want to do that? You have to go and play solo up until you reach a cutscene, and THEN either fire an SOS, extract from the mission and start it again, or if you're lucky enough, tell them that you're available to be joined and wait for them to ready, join, and reach your location (that is of the game even lets other players join you). This is all ontop of not even being able to see your players in the very clearly multiplayer designed base, nor being able to even see who's in your party unless you open up a specific part of your menu. And I WISH that was everything about the MP.
Going out on an expedition to "investigate" a new monster is pointless tedium. The clues you need to investigate within the maps have zero logic or consistency to them and are placed wherever the hell the developers wanted to put them, so you're spent running around for 30 minutes just hoping you come across a segment of a track that maybe possibly does... something? You also have to hit a seemingly four foot trigger box placed in one singular particular spot in the entirety of a given map to watch the cutscene and progress the mission and if you're even inches away from it? no cutscene, no indication whatsoever, no progress, even if you passed right next to it several times.
Also, the armor and weapons crafting is straight up stupid. There's no reason to need several different menus to forge something new, then see what materials you need to upgrade it, then actually doing the upgrade. It's utter and total blabbering nonsense, and tedium for the sake of tedium. The performance is also god awful atrocious, constantly falling into a well below 30fps stuttery mess for seemingly no reason even while doing absolutely nothing.
And the final cardinal sin I want to mention, no matter what you're doing, whether you're in a fight or doing nothing at all, if the game wants you to see something it will grab your camera and force it towards whatever it wants you to look at. It would be fine if it's occasionally, but it's EVERY. SINGLE. MISSION. DO N O T DO THAT. There's more negative marks I could add but I honestly don't care to remember or write them down right now.
I really really want to love it, but community made QoL and performance improvement mods are required for this game if you want it to not feel like sandpaper. The gameplay is very fun and actually fighting the monsters is a total blast but all the tech surrounding that is a complete joke and an utter waste of my time.
