izigame.me

TL;DR
I want to like this game, I really do, but there are so many QoL features missing that make me want to play other games that accomplish what Shapez.io is trying to do. Building your base is not fun at later stages due to in-game features that seem more like roadblocks than tools to help you progress.
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On it's own, Shapez is fun until the base and quantities start to get bigger. The motivation to keep going is to accomplish the goal of whatever shape is being asked of you.
That's a fine motivation for the first 10-12 shapez, but once you hit 17ish and have unlocked most of the buildings, it starts to become more of a chore than it is an actual game. Ultimately, you are limited to 16 belts of whatever is being asked because of the input capacity of the hub. Belt speed can be upgraded, but there is no reason to have more than 16 belts of a particular shape because it can't be delivered.
Put simply, building your base is not fun. I would hardly even call it a base because of how much changes from level to level. The game does not encourage you to use existing infrastructure to make a product. Everything must be catered to the shape being requested by the hub. It almost seems that this game should have been instanced in some sort of campaign with preset layouts on a restricted map for each level rather than being an open world resource production simulator.
After each level, you need to tear down and replace your base as needed manually or with copy/paste command that is unlocked later. I am going to avoid the word "Blueprint" because you never really have a blueprint to reference. It's just part of the base you made and are copying over. That's an important distinction because whatever you are looking to copy MUST be made in your base at least once in the save you are in before you can copy/paste. There is no library of copies, so pick one that is already in your base, make what you need in the moment, or put them far away with a way marker to compensate. The cost to copy is a nice touch and, in my opinion, mitigates any issues that a free blueprint library would bring, but the surrounding mechanics don't make it easy to take advantage of this.
A lot of small QoL features could make this game much more enjoyable and more engaging such as...
-being able to see belt direction when zoomed out along with I/O of buildings
-mirroring copied items (turns in belts are the greatest offender)
-the aforementioned library of patterns/copied items
-cutting stacked objects remaining small instead of returning to normal size
-some building improvements like a placable delivery hub, quad painter having it's own on/off buttons, or better transport than belts across the map.
-wires. I personally didn't get far enough to see a good use for them other than turning on the multi-painter, but a lot of it seems needlessly complicated.
The game has mod support which probably fixes a lot of these issues, but I question why they weren't added to the game to begin with. I see the similar issues starting to pop up in the dev log of shapez 2. Idk what the dev is going for, but I can think of 3 or 4 other games that does what shapez is trying to do better while keeping players motivated to progress. Not saying that shapez should be copying these other games, but if it expanded on what it already has and improved some of its existing features, I believe it could be something special. Best of luck with wherever this project goes.