What critics said
Nintendo Life60As far as the core game goes, there's nothing truly terrible about Starsand Island, but there's not a lot unique either. The gameplay loop is pleasant, picking your own path is nice, and the menus were extremely helpful. It's a decent length at over 60 hours minimum – though with the slow load times and delays it can be much longer. In fact, the ubiquitous bugs and performance issues weigh the entire experience down.If you take away all the bugs, the game is reasonably fun. It's just hard to justify picking this one when there's a sandstorm of cute cosy farm sims on the eShop. Still, if the anime art style and gameplay loop grab you, I'd suggest waiting until the bugs get patched, or seeking it out on another platform.
Gamersky70Starsand Island presents an idyllic island retreat. Its profession system provides a steady path of progression, while the highly flexible building system leaves plenty of room for experimentation in the mid to late game. However, most of its mechanics remain fairly basic, crafting becomes increasingly cumbersome later on, and NPCs lack sufficiently lively reactions. The game is constantly giving players different things to do, but few of those activities truly stand out enough to set it apart from similar titles.
NintendoBoy50If I could make one wish, it would be for Starsand Island to have spent a little more time in the oven. I was initially excited for the patches, as I really wanted to play a polished version of the game. After a few crashes forced me to replay entire days, boredom set in, and the title will have a hard time winning back my goodwill.
