I was in absolute love with this game. Playing every single day. I put 46.5h in just 1 week, pretty much.
Still, I don't recommend it. Why? Because they have decided to suddenly add armor durability. Game has been released since 3 Dec 2021, NOW they decided to add this. To a game that is already extremely grindy to reach certain parts of the technology.
To me, it's just a very bad decision. We already have to craft and deal with a lot of stuff, it feels like a great survivability. Then suddenly, BAM, yet another thing to worry about. Requires resources to fix the armor as well, it isn't just "fix and be done with it" like in Valheim.
I like that they removed the time limits being based in real life, helps with the grindiness and rush you'd feel of having to hurry everything up but, still, it doesn't make sense.
I love that they release pretty much every week with new content. But this just misses the mark for me.
Every time you drop into a mission, you have to start from scratch, grind everything back up, no matter the mission. So the game in itself is already very grindy each mission to reach your technology level again. And now, deal with armor durability as well.
Now, to be fair, you don't need to reach max level technology every single mission, there are missions where just reaching Tech 2 is enough. But if you wanna farm exotics and what not? You WILL have to reach the last possible technology tree at least T3. So you will be forced to go into the "extreme" grind again. And now every time you get into combat, you'll have to fix your armor, which means you will have to go back to your base to do so, And the game has no means of transportation, so you will take FOREVER to do so and depending where you are, it's just a huge hassle.

I think the main issue is that the developers are putting more and more barriers for us and forcing us to have to grind stuff out but still haven't resolved the transportation problem. And the other problem is that transportation will probably be locked to the last tiers of technology, so you will be screwed either way Transportation can be unlocked at T2.

Also, this game should have NEVER been released as a supposedly full game. This was and still is, in Early Access. They are pumping a lot of content, which is good but it just feels deceitful. And they really have to fix the core issues before trying to add more grindy stuff that we have to worry about.

------------------ EDITED REVIEW after Mounts update ------------------
- Mounts are barely useful. The Moa is slower than you and the Buffalo is like a donkey but more annoying because you can't use shortcuts such as ladders to transverse mountains because the Buffalo will stay behind, meaning that you'll have to waste a lot of time going around stuff and EVERY single predator will try to attack it, even when you're busy in caves so your pet will die when you're doing other stuff.
- The grind on T3/T4 is incredibly frustrating. This game is, 100%, to be played with other people. Unfortunately, it sticks the middle finger to anyone doing it solo, such as myself. Imo, the game should have everything for solo and then just do a multiplier in resources required and other stuff, based on the amount of players in a session.
- I still can't recommend this game to anyone. I've tried selling the concept to a couple of friends but it's always a bust. The idea of just wasting your time on T3/T4 to then have it reset every single mission, is very off putting to most people. I know it's the whole concept of the game but maybe if the grind wasn't this big, it wouldn't be much of a hassle and this is even with things from the workshop.

My recommendations are:
- Fix the immense grind required (if you still want to keep this a "reset every mission").
- Have better / faster mounts. How can a single wolf or boar attack my Buffalo? That would never happen, stop with the incessant attacks, especially if I'm not around my mount and can't defend it.
- Have a way to reset the Tech tree, especially as you move on later in levels because you get stuff from the workshop and some points on the Tech tree are rendered useless.
- Have the Beacon much earlier in the tech tree, it's a huge complication to have to remember where everything is.


------------------ EDITED REVIEW after Open World update ------------------
I can now safely say that I recommend this game. After adding Open World, it's basically everything this game needed. I've played it and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
Yes, it lacks some content / purpose on the Open World but, it's 100% the way to go.
The Tech Tree was a MAJOR issue, having to grind to T3/T4 every single mission to farm Exotics was incredibly time consuming and not respectful of my time playing, at all.
Now with Open World and not losing bases, it's done :) None of my previous complaints are a problem now.
I now recommend this to everyone and have been pushing it to have more friends coming to play.

This is a difficult game to review for myself. I love base building games, difficulty, etc. I've bought it and refunded it many times but this time, I've actually gone through and tried it for more hours to see if I could finally set my mind on it because I really wanted to like it.

However, I don't. It might be because I'm extremely dumb but, the game is extremely convoluted. It's extremely hard to play and it just doesn't explain things even close to enough as it should.
I made many new attempts with different colonies, changing stuff up, etc but, at the end of the day, I always end up failing due to something. I tried to always learn something new with each diff colony so I wouldn't keep failing at the same thing.
My last playthrough that made me just scratch the game and write this review was one where my environment changed from Polluted Oxygen to Hydrogen(?) or whatever other gas that was extremely toxic. It was so bad that it suddenly spread throughout my entire colony and I lost the game in a couple of minutes.
I had almost no way to recover it. So it was a lot of hours wasted and it made me quite furious. Mostly due to the lack of visual info that I was going to get screwed. Suddenly you don't have enough algaes and all your oxygen making devices are gone, for example.

Again, this is a me problem. The game seems to resolve a lot around making smart decisions on where to dig, what to dig, etc. Personally, I like seeing my screen empty. So there was one playthrough that I just dug at everything. I'd already solved problems with polluted water, oxygen, etc but, even then, there was always something that would make my society die at the end.
I feel like this game lacks a way for you to recycle / reuse components. The gases are extremely difficult to understand and find a solution to, nothing is properly explained as to the range of certain things like the gas sucking device. There is no visual way to understand what type of gas I'm looking at. I can understand that after MANY hours, most of you can but, I'm a new player. It doesn't need to be this difficult. I've played many games that don't hold your hand but I think, mainly, the problem with this game is that it doesn't captivate me enough to go to external videos / guides to understand it. I've tried reading their in-game explanations and what not but, even those, still failed at explaining certain things to me that I just felt lost at the end.
I'd prefer a better UX.

I'll still probably try this game at a future date because I like getting spanked, I guess but, even then, my review won't change. I don't recommend it, at all, especially for "new" players.
If you're an extremely hard seasoned veteran that likes spending huge amount of hours learning a game: Go ahead and buy it.