Overall a nice novelty: even for Stardew players! TL;DR: A fair starting point for Early Access, with great potential for a cozy game, but hopefully it will become more well-rounded. For now, I'm kind of on the fence about whether you should buy it, mainly due to the fairly significant lack of guidance for the player and the lackluster progression of the city and the NPCs. Firstly, everything I liked: - I love the look of the town. A lot of thought and work has gone into making the market as charming as it is. The details of the buildings and the different levels connected via stairs are chef's kiss. You definitely get excited about this new world, exploring it and its people. - The minigames for cooking (initially). You actually feel like you improve and get into a rhythm with the same two minigames you have to do (to get a decent score for your dish) in the beginning. You get the auto-cook option, but I refrained from using it due to it negatively affecting the dish grade, so I only used it when my cooking level had sufficiently increased (which I think(?) is the reason auto-cook no longer gives a bad grade). - The improvement of the restaurant is something you very quickly become interested in. The new recipes, hiring more staff, increasing profits, and improving the city were all things I was very excited about. - That you could date Aylin. She's so charming. The cons: - Minor issues that are easily solved: NPCs phasing through buildings if you talk to them on their way to a shop; the recipe-development overview icons don't all have descriptions, and the same goes for some of the skill icons; sometimes you're unable to do a minigame for a recipe improvement or character event (the protein shake or birthday cake). Likewise some clipping of dishes when chefs put them down on a table and characters "floating" in the bathhouse. All minor issues that can easily be fixed, so I'm sure they won't be a problem later. Especially the untoggled running of the PC after every single time you interact with anything, which is super bothersome. - Likewise, all the character dialogue is the same, so I've started skipping through a lot of it, which is too bad, but I don't feel like they're saying anything new or that I'm learning anything about them. Likewise, the letters all contain the same "I want to visit" text, without even any gifts or things like that, so I don't see the purpose of them at all. - All the different mechanics are very poorly explained; for example, that cooking in your own kitchen is the main way to get recipes instead of trying to get them from shops. I also didn't realize that you had the option of developing a recipe without using a cooking utensil (because there was a box that hadn't been checked!). - The city upgrades are so lackluster: the most exciting thing was a copper mine. (There comes a barber shop, which is indeed cute, but it offers the same haircuts as in the initial character creation, or a new furniture store, which has about a dozen new items, making it a total letdown compared to the one already existing in the city.) - There is seemingly no increase in NPC shops for clothing, whether through shops or crafting, which is too bad. - Likewise, I need a lot more furniture, floor and also wall options. I think the current options are so limited and boring. - The dating aspect is very boring, for now, and doesn't bring anything to the gameplay as is. - There's no change in ingredients during the seasons, so I don't know if I feel like there's really any reason for them, besides looks. It would be fun to have different ingredients be accessible throughout the year, to also have to accommodate this in a changing menu. And also for example to have specific ingredients or temperatures be "trendy", as it is in real life - very few people want warm soup on a hot summer day for lunch - or have a celebrity write about a certain dish to make it more popular. - You're able to have ingredients sent to your restaurant, but you're left with very little to do to get more. So the late-game daily routine is just to go to the shops every morning to get the expensive ingredients that can't be shipped. - Things aren't highlighted, and you aren't told how to gather them, so collecting Waterleaf or Wild Rice in the swamp is something I only discovered in the last 10 hours of gameplay. - That changing your research stations costs so much! Eg. If you unlock a dish in another cuisine type, you have to spend so many resources changing the kitchen to just upgrade that one dish. Some heavier issues: I feel like I have sort of already finished the game(?). I have endless hours in Stardew, but the lack of character events, the monotone festivals (especially the Spring Festival minigame, which is several rounds of the same boring bet-or-bluff minigame), and the automation of the restaurant make the game feel shallow. It would be great to have more fleshed-out elements. - While automation is, of course, somewhat a goal for the restaurant—from auto-cook to hiring plenty of staff—I now feel useless in my restaurant. I wish the game gave you new problems to tackle, either through staff or customers (e.g., a picky customer who wants a dish cooked only by you), or gave you the option to run service without having to be there yourself (which I doubt is the solution). Minor spoilers incoming regarding later acts: - There is a general lack of guidance regarding what goals you should work toward to progress. Several times I've found myself without a clear direction for advancing the main story, and I still don't know what catapulted me from one act to another or how to initiate the bathhouse story. - Speaking of the bathhouse story, I don't quite see the point of it as it currently stands. I thought it would be different from the restaurant that I already have... but it's the same? - There end up being SOOOO many different minigames, which seemingly don't have a purpose. In Act 2(?) you get a bath bomb minigame... I don't understand at all why it's there, as I still don't know when or how this mechanic is incorporated into the game. - I hoped the bathhouse story would include new furniture, clothes for the PC and staff, maybe the potential geisha performance on a platform, or that the customers desire specific things, just anything to make the space unique. So while written out it might seem like a game I wouldn't recommend, but I've played it a lot so the new-ness has worn off a bit. But I AM super excited for what's to come, and I can tell a lot of love has gone into the game initially, so I just hope it carries into the future <3