Core keeper is a game that will get you easily hooked in its first 5 hours. The survival game loop, combined with concepts like automation and a formula that resembles terraria might set you up to expect interesting progression. Unfortunately, after sinking another 10 hours in the game, I can say that no such thing happened for me.

My main issue with core keeper is that the progression of combat and the player character feels so incredibly shallow that I felt like I had played with the same simplistic combat since the very first minute of the game. There are "skill trees" but they level up very passively, and offer dull upgrades that don't affect how the game is played, but rather serve as slow boosts that reward you for doing the same thing over and over again. A milestone-based progression system in which you perhaps achieve certain feats to unlock these points could've made for a more engaging system, but even that would fall short due to the simplicity of the upgrades being offered. There is armor in this game, but I never felt excited to find a new armor. You would get a higher hp value, a higher armor value, maybe a slight damage increase and occasionally it would be a 2-3-4item set that was often not even worth using. I would often find weapons and armor that were clearly a massive jump in player strength, but only in a numbers sense. This is all to say, the weapon and armor progression feels too disjointed and is not something that I looked forward to due to the boring nature of these "upgrades".

The survival game genre often relies on repetition to pad out game time. You find a copper pickaxe to mine iron, tin pickaxe to mine iron, iron pickaxe to mine [the next best thing] and so on. Core keeper does the same, and while I wouldn't criticize it for just doing this, it's something I have to mention given that none of the other progressions feel meaningful either. A large reason for why terraria works is that when you come across a chest with an item, that item will likely modify how you play the game mechanically. Bigger jumps, no gravity, faster running, a dash, a grappling hook, unique weapons etc. Even when these items don't offer a mechanical change, they often combine with other items that do, leading to a more enjoyable exploration and feeling of progression. It is this sense of progression that makes up for the fact that it has a similar mining system to core keeper's. But no such equivalent exists for core keeper, and it is disappointing to unlock the next tier of pickaxe when the only thing you're looking forward to is .... the next tier of pickaxe.

I only did the first 3 bosses, which anyone who has played the game will know that that is a fairly small part of the game, and the defeat of the third boss unlocks a good chunk of the game. The first 2 bosses were a breeze, which we were able to defeat within the first try. They would unlock useful NPCs when killed, but their loot was often not altering the game in a meaningful way, a couple more inventory slots is all I can remember. The third boss is a ridiculous jump in difficulty, though after crafting some life, defensive and offensive potions, he went down easily as well. None of these bosses felt particularly interesting to fight, rewarding to beat, or worth refighting (the game allows you to for additional loot, but i found the loot to not be worth the time spent).

TL;DR: Core keeper is a game with potential, but with very shallow progression systems that can make it feel repetitive very quickly. The combat could use some love, as well as the loot that drops from these combat encounters. Armour and weapons should feel more interesting to find, and the balance needs a fair bit of work to not feel jarring.

Played this game once on normal difficulty and got 100%, and I must admit that this game is really well made for a 1.0 version, but getting the 100% made me realise that there are some massive flaws in this game that should be adressed, because they reduce the joy of playing the game by quite a bit.

1. Combat exp gain - It works the same as in Skyrim, so each hit gives 1 exp, and this system was flowed in that game as it is in this game. The game punishes the player for playing with slower weapons that deal more damage, and also punishes them for just getting stronger, which is bizzare. This system also makes some classes way less enjoyable to play than others, where Ranged can easily get to max level as they get massive amounts of exp from souls and just their weapons being quite fast, meanwhile a class like Magic is absolutely shafted as they have very slow attacks that deal a lot of damage, while also requiring the use of mana to even be able to deal the damage. There needs to be a reward for either killing enemies, or a multiplier of exp based on the damage the player deals, because this is just painful to play with, especially if you ever want to switch your class in the middle of a world, as you no longer enjoy what you were playing before. This system also encourages the player to attack enemies that take 0 dmg, which like, why? That shouldnt reward the player at all, and yet that's how I was farming my Melee exp.

2. There are basically 2 classes in this game at this point, Melee and Ranged, because Magic and Summoner are barely playable - Magic is not the worst, but they can only get 1 weapon crafted, from what I've seen. Where every other weapon is an RNG drop, and makes it really difficult to get them as you wont be able to get stronger with easy to get gear. Summoner is absolutely painful to play as a class. They have to farm their gear from mobs, they have to play with the worst AI of any minion I've seen in my life, they only have 3 weapons in the game, where only 1 of them is actually usable because it doesnt have any AI. And they also have some weird synergy with Magic, but this synergy only works if you have magic at around lvl 75, which idk how would you even get to that level in a normal playthrough tbh, especially if you want to play with mostly Summon dmg.

3. RNG - While RNG isnt the worst on Melee or Ranged, because you can get items from crafting, the fact that you cannot do the same for Magic or Summon, makes for a really painful expierience. There needs to be a crafting bench for magic classes, just to reduce the absolute grind that players who choose to play that dmg type would have to suffer through. I defeated one boss like 10 times in the early game, only to discover that they dropped a Magic weapon, when I decided to kill them once more at the end. I cant even imagine the expierience of having to play a Magic class, and actually having to redo a boss so many times with a sub-optimal setup, only to get 1 upgreade.

4. Anti-Melee boss design - A lot of the bosses in this game just feel like they were designed to be played with a Ranged weapon, which is fine, but why not give the option to a Melee class to also be able to deal damage from range. This isnt the biggest problem in the early game, its annoying, but its fine. In the endgame though, its a completely different expieirence, where a lot of the bosses are basically a walking wall of death, that kills the player instantly after touching them. Melee also have a lot of "HP on hit" items, which just feels like pure cheese to play with, tbh.

I really liked playing this game, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I would go mad if I have to play it with a Magic dmg or Summon class, or if I didnt change to Ranged with the endgame bosses.

First - don't let the hrs on record be an indicator of the grind involved. About 2/3's of my played time has been OCD related developing/changing my base, acquiring EVERY item in the game to display on pedestals, etc. etc. That is not to say there is not countless hours worth of content to experience just playing the main content. I picked this up shortly after their first EA update a few years ago and have been hooked every since. A great example of a game where the devs have a continued passion to make a great product and iterate/update on it, listen to community feedback and (because I feel it needs to be said given the state of much of gaming) don't feel the need to push an agenda and then complain when their game fails. The volume of content released during EA has been nothing short of remarkable, consistently updating their living roadmap and I look forward to all Post 1.0 content.