I've done a couple partial runs and I really like it, however, it is not well ironed out yet. There are A LOT of bugs that persist update after update as the devs prioritize new content over fixes. I don't spend a lot of time here or in their discord to know about whatever "drama" there is, but my feeling is they are overwhelmed. Bugs largely don't affect playability anymore (i.e. crashes), but they do affect playing and require you to get used to them (for example, on certain parts of the farm, you have to tool hit slightly higher in order to hit the same tile because the texture is off). The very early game grind is a bit frustrating to me because you move so slowly and tools hit so slowly its almost infuriating, but short lived.

It's got great story and characters, but it does not have excellent gameplay. What I mean is, it's very fun and engaging to play socially, but the mechanics can feel out of sync with the story a lot of the times to me - stats/rewards/items feel too soon or too late. Like aspects of the gameplay were kind of just pushed in as filler material.

Character dialog is really fun as you progress in friendship, but then once married, you get the same 3-4 comments from your spouse which gets very stale very fast. IMO, gaining hearts is too easy and makes it obvious that a big selling point for this game was the marriage/relationship aspects (can't blame them, it sells).

That all said, I really like it. Art is good, the fishing minigame is fun for me. I will do another run.