Ok, so after having played through the game and completed it (without DLCs) here's my two cents.

TL;DR - fun game that is severely flawed and undercooked. I was very excited in the beginning of the game, a bit exhausted in the middle, and disappointed at the end.

THE GOOD:
- Art style
- Satisfying core gameplay loop - there's always something to strive for, and you keep chasing new goals. Dopamine hits hard.

THE MEH:
- Story, characters and writing in general

THE BAD:
- Game is unplayable without wiki or outside tutorials: some things in game are VERY poorly explained or not explained whatsoever. But the worst part is that in some cases the game straight up lies to you about certain mechanics (like how advertising will boost your sales)
- Unbalanced arc of the game (pacing) - in the beginning you're overwhelmed with too many tasks and possibilities, while in endgame you're just idling waiting for good roll on RNG to get the item you need, drowning in resources that you do not need any more.
- Economy is completely unbalanced - the only real way to make money you will need is thought the merchant quest line. And other quests require items where you might be tempted (or required!) to set up whole production chains to craft an item that is useful for that one quest and then you will never look at it again as profits are nothing compared to what merchant brings, and the effort is MUCH higher. (I've heard that DLCs balance it out, but frankly I'm not spending more money on this game)
- Not setting expectations right - Nothing stops you from wasting what little money you have on start, and yet that money is SUPER important as most activities you assume will earn you money are actually money drains until mid-game (such as farming). Quest givers will give you quests early in game that seem basic but are actually completely locked out behind other quests or far-up the tech tree.
- Some items or crafting stations that would we useful in early game or mid-game are locked behind tech-tree progress or quests that come so late in the game that after obtaining them the items are completely useless (looking at you specifically, wheat mill)
- The whole alchemy part of the game. There are so many ingredients and possible combinations that discovering the recipes on your own is completely tedious and implausible. Some ingredients are quite rare and difficult to find, yet used in several important recipes. Even if they kept to just the basic 8 elements for crafting that are in the game there'd be 336 or so combinations to try out, but no they introduced 10 additional ingredients. Sometimes the color of the thing you want to make is the clue on one of the ingredients - great that narrows it down to 168 possible combinations, IF it doesn't use one of the other special ingredients. But sometimes the color isn't the clue at all, so you can;t count on it. And often there is no sense to it - add toxic solution to create flavor enhances? Really? The amount of game hours and grinding for rare ingredients you'd need to do is crazy.
- Randomness - SOME materials are super rare and depend on very low chances of being dropped, apart from a bit you're guaranteed to get in dungeon. If you waste gold for example on crafting nice windows, good luck mining for hours of real-life time for a chance for gold nugget to drop. I haven't gotten a single gold nugget from mining in my whole 50h of gameplay.
- Stupidity - some things are just plain stupid and not thought out or feel unfinished. The only way to get onion rings recipe is if you by chance go to the tavern with onions in your inventory. BUT only bronze quality onions. If you have better ones, the dialogue won't trigger. You also can end up whit super high-level stuff that you can't sell. Some graveyard recipes call for silver-star marble carvings. If you get "unlucky" and produce gold-star ones, you might as well destroy them. Apart from 3 that you need for the quest, the rest are completely useless as no one will buy them.
- Inconsistency - some crafting stations can be upgraded to a higher level, while others can not.

Anyway, I really wish that they put more thought into polishing the gameplay of the core game before they pumped out bunch of DLCs that somewhat fix the flaws

I like the crafty aspect of this game, it certainly has a learning curve in the end. It is certainly rough around the edges, and the developers left a few bits that should have been removed from the build, but hey, I played it for over 130 hours, so it was entertaining enough.

Don't forget that when the game character shows that he's sleepy, it's not about your energy level, it's the way the game tells you to sleep (save) before it crashes, and, considering the amount of work you put in in the beginning, you'll want to do that often to avoid having to do the whole day over.

If you're a new player, get the teleportation stone from the tavern as soon as you can to avoid walking between the graveyard and the village.

The best source of energy is honey in the early game, so it's worth it to get the bees from the beekeeper, some sticks, and paper early on to build the hives. When you need more points, don't forget to use the honey, fruits, and pastry dough to make the cake, it will be useful to get those precious extra tech points when you begin.

Collect blood, skulls, and skin often in the early game, store them somewhere, you'll thank me later.

When you have coins, speed potions from the witch, after you start walking faster, you won't wan't to come back.

In the mid game, try your best to write a gold quality book to make a split prayer, that will give you tons of faith points.

Anyway, lots of small details I could go on and on. The ending of the game is underwhelming, and you'll play this feeling like it could be so much more. But it is certainly fun.

Tried this game after friend recommended it, i liked the game and its theme at first but the game got too grindy and confusing later on , it was clear to me what i was supposed to do but i had no idea how , i wanted to play this game without opening any guides so i tried exploring everything else that was available to me after i got locked out of those things as well i tried looking up guides on what to do next ... well just knowing what lies ahead of me i thought it was better to just quit the game.