izigame.me

First of all, a couple things about my playthrough:
- Solo, with some tweaks to the server settings to make it less grindy (boosted gather rate, refinement rate, things like that).
- Reached Dunley Farmlands / Iron Gear so far.
- Dipped my toe into multiplayer, didn't bother with the official servers.
The Positives:

Great gothic art style.
PvE Combat is fun and challenging, especially with large groups of mobs.
Weapon fighting styles feel unique and lend themselves to different tactics.
Spells are fairly diverse.
Interior decorating.
Plethora of server setting options to customize the experience and lessen the grind for solo play, if so desired.
Castle layout changes are mostly fairly easy, especially when you set the resource return rate to 100% (because I'm gonna reorganize my castle design and NO, I will NOT grind for it!). Free movement of objects in your castle is a god-send.
Some bosses are thrilling, nail-biting affairs with near-misses and clutch moments abound. (Bright Archer, Bandit King)
The sense of humor.

The Negatives :

Otherwise smooth framerate punctuated by relatively long (~0.5-1 sec) periods of stuttering, even on Medium settings.
Castle layout changes get very fiddly in certain situations. Can't delete stray floors if they have a wall on top of them. As of Patch 0.5.42050, you can now delete floors even if there's a wall on top of them (with a few exceptions). There's still the lack of ease in switching the position of your Castle Heart, which I just thought of now, so I'll keep the general case in.
The grid feels a bit restrictive when building gravel paths.
Weirdly difficult to make a good looking garden.
Some bosses are a bit boring and too easy even for solo play. (That ice guard guy, the Shadow Priestess).
Server settings cannot be changed for an existing server easily, even if the server isn't running. It is technically possible to do it, but it requires fiddling with JSON files which may be intimidating for the casual user. Not so hard when you know what's up, but takes a bit too much research for what should be an easy adjustment in-game.
No apparent ability to customize servant mission lengths. Sure, I could leave my computer on overnight and plop my character in the coffin, but I really don't think that's ideal. Besides, the world's got enough computer heat output without me adding to it.
Can't pause during solo play. Should be an easy enough fix, since a similar game, Valheim, did that within the first few patches.
Solo servers should keep some world effects permanent (blowing up the Bandit Stronghold gates)

Overall, well worth the twenty bucks I spent. Very fun, even if I'm not playing multiplayer, which seems to be the primary game mode they're concerned with. The negatives were mostly minor annoyances that don't detract that much from the overall experience.
Now, for a wishlist of things I'd like them to expand upon. These are mostly big things that I'd never expect them to accomplish anytime soon.
Wishlist

Servants. For we lonesome solo players, some help in gathering local building materials would be welcome. We also should be able to tell them to do things around the castle -- feed the prisoners if food is available, kill any ghouls that pop up out of the tombs, gather materials from refinement stations and place them in a designated chest, personally fetch us some blood from the blood cabinet, etc. What else are they there for if not to make our decadent, immortal lives easier?
PvE castle sieges. The local bandits / militia / spiders should try and siege nearby castles on occasion. Should be toggleable, obviously, or limited to certain times like with PvP castle sieges.
More facial feature options. The game has an excellent variety of hairstyles, but the beard selection is paltry.
Separate eyebrow options from the face options, if possible.