It's a significant time investment - and yeah, frustrating at times. Dying can be an ordeal, and baddies coming in and wrecking your stuff sucks.

Building options are amazing compared to most survive-em-ups, and you can come up with some pretty amazing forts/houses, but the actual building process can be pretty frustrating (particularly when you first start, since enemies will constantly interrupt you).

Rain rots wood, buildings can fill with smoke, structures need proper support, campfires can set walls on fire, etc. - there are some interesting architectural challenges, and they give you the tools and creative freedom to deal with that. It's rewarding, though placement is frustrating.

The raids really force you into a defensive layout, no cozy villages unless surrounded by a big-ass wall - and that can be time consuming..

The game also forces you to travel a lot - there are portals you can build, but many high-end mats can't be taken through them (pretty much any metal, for example), so you spend a lot of time at sea hauling stuff in a boat. There's wind, and you've got a sailboat, so sometimes this is slow and tedious, other times it's just a relaxing ride.

It's sleepy and slow at times, annoying at times, and entirely awesome at times.