This game seems to have a lot of controversy behind the scenes, but honestly, the game itself is fine in my experience.
I would say the strongest point is the building system, which is on par to "The Sims" series level of customization and freedom. It really lets you get creative with building what you want, allowing fine-tuning so you can get details to be more precise. I am sure that if they release more furniture sets and themes, or allowed customizing furniture color, it would make it among the best games for home design.
Player character customization is another strong point that I like. It's not on the extreme level of PSO2 or The Sims, but the face customization still does has more options than the typical cozy game, and you do unlock more things in-game as you progress, and can freely modify your appearance at any time. I really love that we can use color sliders for hair, eyes, makeup, and even skin.
Sadly the clothing at this moment is not dyable, but they are pretty cute and stylish clothing. I play as female, and I will say that most of the female outfits are typical anime and Chinese MMO fashions, mostly a mix of casual, traditional Chinese, and fantasy dresses. There are a few pants (which honestly is more than I'd expect from any anime-style game).
I think the progression of unlocking new things is done well, because it doesn't feel too fast or too slow. I do wish the time speed could be adjusted to be a little faster or slower as an option, but there are mods out there for that. At first, time feels too fast because of being limited to running on foot, but later you do get many different ways to travel faster like the skateboard, rollerblades, and their upgrades.
There's a little combat with simple boss monsters in one map (let's call it a dungeon for simplicity sake), but it's not deep at all, it's just there to be there and gatekeep your progress through the map. At first it's really fun to explore the dungeon while they're still new and have a questline for it, but after you've finished exploring the whole place, it kind of only exists to be the place where you gather resources for crafting. I don't mind this so much, since I did not join the game for combat at all, and it's more interesting than some other cozy games' equivalent (such as boring mines). This place is very pretty if nothing else.
The character design and story are what I consider to be the weak point. Honestly I would recommend that you go into this with the mindset of "This game has no story and the characters are just there to be there", and you should be fine as long as that wasn't what you were most wanting out of a cozy game. Aside from the lack of story/personality of characters, an issue that I have is that the appearance of some NPCs is too similar and lacking diversity, which makes you wonder if they were all just anime OCs designed by different people with no consideration to making some of them look unique. For example there's 3 or 4 NPCs all with the same hair color and general color palette, combined with chibi anime styled faces means they lack a unique appearance and can be easily mistaken for each other.
Overall, I would recommend it if you just want a new cozy game to explore, love building stuff in games, and don't mind lacking NPC character design and combat.
