Coral Island

I have tried the early access of this game, and played this since 1.0 and my gripe is that it only feels complete not on 1.0, but 1.2/1.3 and it takes so long until it finally feels complete, that me who plays since 1.0 is stuck with only little new contents here and there since i have completed most of the contents already. It feels like eating breadcrumbs in the endgame here. I am someone who enjoys a lot of contents like Coral Island. My next gripe is waiting for days just for little new contents in the endgame when everything but the new contents are barebones. Imagine waiting seasons after seasons (4 seasons) just to be able to date one of the merfolk. Really? As someone who plays since 1.0 and has been waiting to date the merfolk, this is really disappointing.

This is a nearly 1:1 copy of Stardew Valley. It's uncanny how closely it resembles its progenitor. You'll find similar, if not identical, progression of systems like being invited to join the combat guild, progressing the "caverns (mines)", raising the village economic standard, etc. There's even a corporate bogeyman in "Pufferfish," the oil conglomerate whose writing is a little too on-the-nose. Still, it's enjoyable to play Stardew in 3D, even if it's isometric. The setting is quite beautiful and charming, down to each decoration and detail. It does suffer with some twitchy coding in things like mining hitbox detection, and some needed tweaking to avoid performance issues like stuttering and FPS drops on even capable machines. I can't even attempt to raise the FPS limit above 60 without game-breaking FPS drops. The balance in places like the caverns and the diving areas feels quite tedious and grindy compared to Stardew. Where I might be on level 60 in the mines on Stardew, I'm only on level 35 in Coral Island's caverns. Diving feels quite repetitive as you're hacking up garbage piles to find progression items, so even though the system itself is new, it's nothing "new." I do appreciate that their base game does include features and systems like automation and active NPC mapping that would have to be historically or currently be modded in a game like Stardew. Their community team also seems to be highly responsive, with an active presence on the steam discussion boards. It's very playable at $30 with plenty of content, but you're likely all too familiar with it if you've touched Stardew for more than a dozen hours.

LOUD ASS INTRO, other then that good game

Please get Coral Island. I know this might seem counter-intuitive, seeing how I'm handing out a negative review, but it's honestly more of a "I want this to be better" than a "this game sucks". Usually when I review games, I try to do it once I've completed them as much as possible. This is not the case when it comes to my Coral Island review - arguably because the game isn't even finished yet. Despite releasing as 1.x versions, it often feels like early access. There are a lot of little bugs and oversights (none of which really bother me, but for the sake of clarity: Some characters have lines that miss punctuation or don't appear to be completely written out, items might duplicate and you might be stuck with them as you cannot sell them, or items may not be picked up from the ground at times) and the storyline is far from completed. In fact, one of the game's updates literally spoke about finishing the main storyline... post 1.0. I love this game. I love having an underwater farm, I love being able to play co-op, I love the characters and the world. What I don't love is that between updates, some things might change in ways you can't foresee. An example for this is the jealousy system that is honestly not great, and the romance system that lets you be poly... until you get married, which is when your other partners suddenly revert back to friends. Mind you, divorces and breakups will not be implemented in the game, so if you want to see more than one romance, you either have to play singleplayer and save scum, or you have to be willing to put 50+ hours into every romance, minimum. Because there are also romances that only unlock later in the game, and if you wanted to date any of them, you better be completely sure about who you are choosing. I get that a divorce system causes more issues than its worth, but why take away the poly relationships upon marriage? Fields of Mistria also restricts who the farmer can marry, and yet they allow the player to have multiple partners. And keep in mind that this game has 30(!) dateables, with new ones just having joined the cast (ish). All of which have interesting stories to tell and are bound to be someone's favourite. The fact that I can date multiple people and then have to choose a single one makes me feel like my farmer, whom I viewed as someone that is poly, is actually a serial cheater. Why change this later down the line? Even if you can't marry more than one, why not let people keep their dates? If this was reverted back to being able to marry one spouse and have multiple partners, I'd likely change my review to positive in spite of some issues that remain with the game. As is, my huge frustrations over this development (I feel like I can't take a spouse because again - I play Coral in co-op and can't just make a save to "check things out", nor would this have been an ideal solution in the first place) honestly keep me from singing the praises I want to sing. Frankly, aside from FoM, this is my favourite farming sim. But its minor bugs and some of its major bugs, like the game mostly crashing at the end of the day, are honestly just the cherry on top for me. To me, the game is much more charming than another (pixelated) farming game that it gets constantly compared to, and the fact that a singular artist is creating all the sprites (including upcoming children grow up sprites!) is honestly amazing. But why do bugs carry over from one version to the next, and why do they dangle romance systems (jealousy, polyamory) in front of you, only to implement them badly or remove them altogether? Please just let me love this game.

Este jogo é simplesmente.... ma-ra-vi-lho-so! ♥ É nítido que o fizeram com muito carinho. Já se tornou meu jogo favorito.

BUG很多，而且很多bug会导致进度卡死坏档，翻译明显感觉优化过，但是还是一股人机味，触发剧情的时候甚至会用NPCNAME和PLAYER替换名称，有的地方更是直接错的，有的触发剧情的任务地点名称根本不对。目前感觉唯一的好处就是优化了需要肝的地方，不需要很肝，稀有传说鱼和昆虫基本花一天就能搞定，但是也就这样了。节日做的还是挺好的不少小游戏挺有意思，但是人物特别是男的一股成都味儿，慎入。

Out of all of the Stardew-likes out there. This one ranks among the worst. Basically what would happen if you gave a soulless corporation the task of making a Stardew Valley clone. EVERYTHING is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slow. Walking speed, dialog text, cutscenes, tool animations. God the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tool animations. How can I even describe them? Janky? Stiff? It's like something you'd see in a first timers indie game. Like they took a free animation off the internet, cut half of it and sped it up. It's literally looks like your character is mentally retarded and has never used a axe before. Not to mention that it just feels HORRENDOUS. Genuinely I don't have the words to express how bad it feels to use the tools in this game. The world and characters are bland and boring. The game was built in unreal, yet everything is washed out and pastel like an old shirt that has been put through the wash too many times. I may have 37 hours in the game, but I have not gotten past summer in my first year. I always get bored, leave the game for a year or more, come back, start a new save, get bored again. They keep adding ♥♥♥♥, but the fundamentals are still garbage.

I bought the game today (a farming sim veteran and coral island premise seems promising enough) and yet I’ve restarted 4 times, both stopped and restarted for the mines. Though being able to reach level 5 each time it burns through the food I’ve saved up since day 1 from the start of respective saves, and out of all the levels combined only one floor has ores, and somehow it all coincidentally takes me breaking down to the very last rock to get a ladder down. Which is insanely punishing for the first week of spring. I live for mines in a farming sim, and this odds is too crazy that I really need to leave this game alone even though I just bought it today. Which is a shame cause I haven’t even gotten the chance to play it though from what I’ve read the games does have some nice qol features I really want to see in a farming sim. I’m just not quite sure if I should even give it a chance if this is the type of odds I’m dealing with on a very essential part of the game…. I assume a lot, if not all new players might be experiencing what I’m describing here. And it is jarring, because if you know the formula of a farming sim, mining is something you prioritise naturally. It is fine to have a boring mining experience if I can still get progression in a general play through, but why should I continue if it just stops it rather abruptly before the first week even ends? The suggestions we can get online isn’t particularly helpful too, we are new players, those bombs and staircases suggestions really becomes the “hen first or egg first” type of question… If you can see it devs, please respond to all the plea and have some form of hot fixes, I do with to give the game another chance if it’s not downright stifling, but I do need to know if there’s a promise if a save is even playable in that sense.