7 Days to Die is fucking terrible. Graphics are pretty dated, but I thought if the crafting mechanics and zombie fighting are good I can get over that. Both are terrible.
Combat is ridiculous, you have to smash a zombie like 20 times to kill them. You can knock them down and finish them off, but when their on the ground and you strike there is no movement in the animation in the body, the zombie is just frozen until he decides to get back up. I'm sure when you level up combat is better, but a 1v1 encounter is sure to get hit a few times and 2v1 is a death sentence.
Crafting was okay at first. Gathering resources to make simple tools/weapons and reinforce a little house close to where I started as a base camp. Then to move from stone equipment to iron stuff I needed a forge, okay need to craft some stuff to build, no problem. See I need to craft a bellows to make the bellows, seems simple enough. See I need 20 animal skins, gotcha, time to go hunting. There are no god damn animals walking around in the desert I started in. After like 90 minutes looking for skins and looting random shit I had 2 skins. Fuck this, time to explore.
Wonder around for an hour, finding nothing useful, dying a few times, find more crap. Finally I stumble across some sort of hotel. Die a few times clearing out the zombies around the entrance, but finally clear it out and make my way inside. Look around and the place is completely empty, room after room of beds and no loot. Getting ready to leave when I notice the office door near the entrance and check it out and find a wall safe. I have no key, so I smash at it with my stone axe and widdle the duribiity down. Each strike knocks off around 5 durability, and after about 10 mintutes and 5 hand axes I get it down to like 300 durability when I hear a zombie dog attacking the entrance. He breaks in and I kill him, but I still die because I'm bleeding. Make my way back and finally open the safe to find some paper and some sun glasses. AAAnnnnnnddddd I'm done.
Also, something that pissed me off was finding you gear after you died. When you looted your backpack it would't put everything back in your hot bar the way you set it up, and it would strip off all of your armor so you had to re-equip it from you back pack. So glad this was a rental.