Crafting and combat are the core elements of the game. It's basically Minecraft with a more serious combat element. However, many of the building materials like Stone are "locked" behind combat progression points. For instance you need to beat the first boss to even be able to mine materials/stone, then progress through swamps (arguably a pretty significant step up) to acquire iron just to be able to use stone to build.

One potential issue is that there is no difficulty selection for the game but gear does scale well and the combat system is quite forgiving once you get the hang of it, especially teaming up. It is a gorgeous game world to explore and build in, but it does have a distinct danger element to it, but you are fully free to take that at your own speed. If I had to pick a similar game I'd say something like The Forest, though no real story to follow, just make your own like Minecraft.