This game is very good. If you have played Minecraft and enjoyed it but wished it was more survival oriented, then you will enjoy this. Me and my group of friends have all played it together for a month or two each major update and have had a blast every time. Our experience is that the game is very stable if you run it on a stable release. Beta releases are beta releases and will have bugs and crashes, but stable releases are clearly marked. While the game is fun solo it really shines in groups, solo play can be a bit much as there are a lot of systems. For what its worth I bought my copy directly from their website and not through a 3rd party, humble also sells the game if you trust them more.
No problem. The devs are very passionate. You see it everywhere if you pay attention. For instance if you drop a maple tree seed it twirls as it falls like they do in real life. You can skip rocks across water. When baking bread it rises in the oven. Every time we play we find some small detail that we never noticed. Its not as fleshed out as modern Minecraft, and next update is still a few months out so there is no harm in waiting. Updates are about twice a year and are usually pretty sizeable and worth a restart on a fresh server. So perhaps try to get it for like Christmas break or something they should be rolling out betas for the new update by then.
Incase I'm overselling it, I will also list some criticisms. One this game is hard until you know what you are doing, then its pretty relaxing if not a bit boring. The late game is getting better, but once you make steel the game looses its difficulty and survival is more of a chore. The reason i say this game shines with friends is because in the early game there is a lot to do and the game does you no favors. Ore can be hard to find. Food rots so you need to gather, cook, and organize your food, and that can be a job in itself. Animal Husbandry will kill you unless you put a good deal of work into it and may not be worth it unless you like to roleplay a bit (I do). Alcohol is the same, its a lot of work for no real in game reward. Forging tools is a love it or hate it system, same with pottery, and you'll spend a lot of time doing both. There isn't much enemy variety right now, so I was actually excited to see them add bears. Wolves suck and you will forever hate them, they are this games creeper and a huge source of grief when exploring. Biomes can also get a bit stale. Mods can fix some of these, but I recommend going in vanilla at first.
HECK YEAH!!!!! minecraft holds your hand way to much in my opinion . Vintage Story makes you feel like you ACTUALLY did a thing because you had to go thru all that effort. because you have to do all of these things to get anywhere the payout feels WAY more rewarding when you get the fruits of your labor. that and i heard that the game has a 10 hour trial period before you can't refund. so you get a lot more time to try it and see if you REALLY want it.