I have played through the game thrice, twice in the alpha releases before there was an ending, and once now in which I have yet to complete it. That being said, it feels worse than in the Alpha with how you unlock and progress through the game.
I think the issue that caused this was that it suffered from Cube World Syndrome. If you don't know, Cube World is a game that was made around the time Minecraft was super popular, perhaps not at its peak, but pretty close. However, the developer went completely silent when he updated the game leading to years of no updates until the final update came out and it fully released.
That game fell on is face, and similarly to this own game, people will swear by the alpha due to the changes. Similarly, this game faced the same problems of the dev going silent- now, from what I hear, they may have been active on discord, I don't know one way or the other, but I am sure that this game didn't have many Q&A testers, unfortunately. While there are few bugs, the gameplay itself is a backstep from the Alpha and has failed to really be a satisfying update to what the alpha was.
Its very unfortunate, the basis here is great, I loved the alpha (seeing as I completed it twice). It very much feels like the developer of the game very much wanted to make things wider, but didn't think about player experience because it seemed interesting or cool.
There are ways to fix it, but I doubt the developer will be able to do it, as it would require a huge rework to several systems. I haven't gotten to the point where many have had complaints, but just the few I would immediately bring up:
- Randomized spell acquisition. Unlike the Alpha, this game's spells are random for when you will get them. you can no longer have a for-sure method for a good set of spells. Originally, the spell system was a lot more of a linear, tightly-balanced experience. While the randomness of the spells DOES theoretically allow for more replayability, it ultimately takes away from the better experience that the alpha delivered- a linear, tight experience that always gave you a good way forward. How could this be fixed? Simple, remove the randomization, give you two options, both viable for the next stage of the game, and once you pick one, the next spell you choose will be the one you didn't choose the first time.
- Druidity needs to be scrapped almost as a whole. That entire stage feels terrible and is very much a time-gate, rather than an interesting mechanic. Alchemy is an interesting idea, and I could see it simply overtaking the time-gating of the original druidity has a whole. Time-gating is not a fun mechanic, having to wait real world minutes to wait more time to eventually hit a button for a few materials only to repeat the waiting process of doing nothing doesn't feel great. Scrap the mechanic as a whole. Argomancy needs to go, or be severely reduced in its time-gating if you want you make this part of the game not feel bad.
- Bulk-crafting. It is way too punishing to make bulk goods, when a lot of the things you will be making is a pre-requisite for other upgrades- once you get to a point where you need to be crafting hundreds of thousands of papers, its ridiculous to expect you to craft them by hand, so you are expected to bulk-craft, but doing that incurs a penalty that can seemingly get as high as an 80-85% tax on the things you are making. Are you kidding? Thats such a dumb mechanic. Why am I suddenly losing so many resources just because I am bulk crafting? Despite it being an incredibly poor mechanic that's only here to slow your progress, if you lower the debuff, it may be fine. I would just get rid of it, but I know that the game is balanced around ensuring you just lose materials at random for bulk-crafting.
- Overall balancing. With several changes needing to be made, there needs to be more balancing overall. If you want a similar playtime without all the time-gates in the game, you need to either add more stages, or increase the point values of certain upgrades.
