It's played from a top down perspective. I feel like for a lot of people, the first few minutes of this game are going to dictate how they feel about it overall. It gives you very little direction, but if you've played this kind of game before you should know what to do. Dig yourself a nice hobbit hole in one of the walls, then gather resources to craft into gear until you're slightly less helpless than you were before. I like how the first boss randomly wanders around the opening area. It's big enough that you have plenty of room to work without running into him, but small enough that you have to make sure you don't accidentally cross paths with him while out scavenging. At first I was wondering why my controller kept periodically vibrating--turns out those were his footsteps!
For a game trying to combine the best aspects of two other great games, it has the basics down all right. The combat isn't quite as intuitive as Terraria, and the planting isn't quite as good as Stardew Valley's, but they get the job done just fine. It's a little annoying how you have to constantly be crafting new torches just to be able to see. Yeah, I know you're underground, but a little more natural light would have been welcome. Then again, I'm only about an hour in. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there was a solution to this farther in the game--hopefully sooner than later.
My biggest gripe is that there's no way to change the controls. Attacking with the shoulder buttons is fine in Dark Souls, but in a game like this, that's what the face buttons should be for, not opening menus! This is a miner (lol) gripe, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if they patch in the option soon. Even if they don't, the controls work well enough as is that playing the whole game like this wouldn't detract much.
I haven't played enough to really form an opinion yet, but from what I've seen, I'd say Core Keeper is shaping up to be a real winner!
