I thought this one was passable to begin with, and found it grow on me as I continued playing.
Lots of great features considering it is a single player crafting / exploration / relaxing game, or so they say.
First, the good things. Time plays a big role in collectables, especially the cats, but even applies to some fish and a sprite. HOURS in game fly by in the space of a minute, and all four seasons are crammed into 4 months. And as every 120 days go by, it will keep track of how many years have gone by in game. Crazy!
As such, not only are there different biomes all around the map, but different weather and conditions as well. The usual bread-and-butter weather includes sunny, overcast, rain, and storms. Each season is typically heralded by different particles blowing in the air - e.g. snow, red leaves.
The game's story revolves around collecting sprites to enhance their dispelling capability against a purple mist that bars your path, called Murk. Eventually you go somewhere and find out some answers, but you can keep playing to mop up trophies.
Environment-wise, the toons are ugly, there's just no other word for it. I didn't even care about costumes apart from some achievement. I mostly found it to be inventory clutter. The highlight for me was the sky, especially after clearing the Murk everywhere, as the clouds, sky, your unlocked constellations, moon and special effects from the story device really bring it to life, and make it worth maxxing out your settings. As for the world features... some of it, like the forests, especially with the purple/pink leaves was very nice, but far too much of the map was boring shades of green and big empty spaces.
To make these open spaces worse... is the fact there is no enemies anywhere. There's no combat. The worst thing to worry about is likely the toon's poor jumping skills and falling into water like a brick. No, actually, the worse part is the fast travel system. Ironically, I found it to be really slow, and the positions kind of confusing too, as you have to go by the face-cave artwork, and there's no guide saying where you'll come out till you test it. Fair point the ice ones and desert are obvious, but there are like 3-4 different grassy cave teleporters and it did my head in tbh. Even after using them you end up running around a LOT.
Thankfully, a better fast travel system exists in the form of an item you can craft and use to instantly teleport you, but it'll only take you to any farms you've built.
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The real problem with this game is mopping up leftover trophies. If you aren't a perfectionist, then this won't worry you, but if you miss your window for a time-sensitive pickup you will be really annoyed. I had the added problem of not realising a sprite is only available on the first day of each month (you would never figure this out without looking it up). Add to that the seasonal cats, some cats only around at dawn and dusk or midnight, a fish you'll tear your hair out over as, even if it appears, you'll never catch due to other little fish beating it to the lure, additional pointless board missions that can take a long time to do, not to mention enslaving every different type of animal...
Just like a fish out of water, it flops around a lot longer than it should.
So even though most of the game is a lot of fun, it can be a bigger time sink than you might think.
