As time flies when you're having fun, we reach the last few hours before the Final Beta Test ends. I'm here to share a few thoughts on how the beta was.
In general, really easy to get lost in doing stuff around the planet (bug catching, farming, flower breeding, fishing, material gathering, planet building/decorating etc) and sink a couple of hours in without realising. The stories behind each neighbour is written really well and reflects on different aspects of their personality. Beta definitely had areas that is rough around the edges (I fell into a never ending hole while walking along a beach on an islet, some chunks of text was all in Chinese, screen freezing when I approached a neighbour to chat, neighbours looping taking out and putting back action) but all in all I'd put it up there close to animal crossing. Its extremely familiar recipe but fleshed out character backgrounds and more lore to dig through makes it entertaining to keep returning everyday.
On paid features: Whilst this beta test didn't allow transactions, it did introduce a framework on what the system would look like. The wishing system is so far composed of unique outfits and furniture and does not effect your overall gameplay. I did enjoy the few outfit and furniture releases but wishing system felt a bit tedious until I discovered the skip button. The battle pass(? season pass) system has to do with certain unique items (clothing, furniture) that are from special release event neighbours.
You can still get a limited amount of items if you're F2P but you need to allocate resources accordingly between multiple neighbours. Seasonal (event?) neighbours are unlockable given enough time and decent luck when chancing them in the event islets (not locked behind a paywall thankfully).
AI features according to the game toggle is limited to 3 npcs that are not essential to the game (all on the plaza where you can interact with other players and not part of your planet). You can switch AI off and that means that you won't be able to interact with them. It feels like they are there just to interact to player dialogue (one's part of a game that engages players to tell stories with other players around a camp fire, one is running around to interview / guide players and one runs a cafe and functions as a chatbot).
Time currently syncs with the real world. As I was in the Asia server it sync with Beijing's time. The caveat with this is that I would mostly log on when I got home and mostly it would be late afternoon/night. I only got to enjoy daytime on a few occasions and I know probably there's a few critters I would miss during the day. So if your a collector type of player it might be a bit of a challenge.
Music and sound quality, both but especially sfx is top notch ASMR that you could just sit back and relax to. Not grand pieces like in genshin but just fun as bgms. There's one that sounds slightly electric out of sync and it's sending me whenever I hear it in the afternoon.
Weather system: Ok, this is the really fun part so of course there's seasons but the joy of seeing the change in the loading screen heralding a new season's arrival was so tantalizing and tickled some endorphins in my brain. Currently only experienced winter and spring in this test. You get different bugs and fish for different seasons. Realising you've caught a new creature is pretty fun bc you get a brief cutscene. Winter has snowy days and auroras(?) on top of your sunny days with trees and ground reflecting the season. Spring has a bit of rainy days? and there's certain trees that changes foliage which was a pleasant surprise.
The game also forces you to take it slow with certain quest time locked until the next day or certain dates (theses are event quests). I went a bit too hard at the start and had to slow down and realised it's ok to take it slow and just enjoy the fun and that you don't have to do everything all at once. It is a bit easy to feel a bit of FOMO when you see other players with their amazing architectural masterpieces and you are still there with just an extra tall fishing lake.
Social aspect is also geared towards a positive side (other players can only interact w neighbours/general store) and can only take 3 things from your world if you manually give them permission. They can leave you present which is a random generate gift and you can leave them gifts to pick up (it would be fun if the gifts could also be randomly generated). If they help water plants you get higher chance of getting hybrids/good quality crops. The more you interact the more your friendship level grows and you get a special ceremony when graduating to close friends status.
Areas of improvement I think is getting an auto eat toggle as it's extremely easy to run out of energy and not being able to perform an action (catching critters, catching shooting stars etc). A lot of the neighbours lines are unvoiced (cough Mors cough) which I assume will be fixed by the official release. Watering bucket needs to be upgraded otherwise it takes at least 15 mins just to water my fields of crops and flowers.
For me the most enjoyable part is my hybrid flower experimentation fields. It was like opening a blind box each day. (Thank you CN testers for publishing the combos).
Re: not very organised experimentation fields on flower hybrids
Official release date is in winter 2026 (my bet is around december holiday season), see you all then and thank you for coming to my ted talk.
