Okay. First off, I think this game is very good at what it does. It's got a ton of material-gathering, crafting, monster-fighting, exploring, etc... Lots of stuff to find, build and do, and for this reason alone, it merits more than one good play-through. It may have the most comprehensive crafting system I've ever seen, which is saying something. However, after a couple weeks of playing this game, I realized that I, in particular, was not having very much fun, because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. There's no obvious, in-game goal to achieve. Sure, you can beat new bosses and unlock new things, but the game has neither a story nor an end goal, and without those things, I'm afraid it comes across as more of an art canvas than a game to me. That said, for an art canvas, there sure are a lot of hard enemies, and they don't become much easier. You can use certain items to permanently upgrade your HP and MP, but beyond that, all of the strength-increases that you experience in the game come from your equipment. Remove it, and you're no stronger after 80 hours of playing than you were after 1. I'm the kind of gamer who isn't crazy about futility or time-wasting in video games, and this is definitely the sort of game where you can waste 20 minutes tunneling, monster-fighting and exploring, then get killed by a hidden enemy and it was all for nothing. You're no stronger, you have less money, etc... Those are 20 minutes you can't get back. The crafting system is basic; open the crafting window near the required bench/anvil/etc and select what you want to make. Not very involving, as crafting goes. At night, zombies attack, and you need to hide inside until it's over, but there's no way to speed up time, like in the sims, so you have to waste another 12 minutes of your real life, waiting for the night to end. Given all I'd heard people had done with this game, I was hoping for more. It does a lot of things well, but not what I'm after.
