I think Skyforge can be best summarized as being Phantasy Star Online 3. The game's setting is very similar in tone and visuals, and the way areas are divided lends heavily from PSO1. There is plenty of instances, but also small-scale open world areas more akin to the usual MMO. It's a great game from a gameplay and technical point of view. Classes are fun to play, instances can rock your bottom and offer rewards that change every hour, giving incentive to play all of them in rotation, greatly reducing the monotony of the typical grind.
Then there's the bad (from back when I played in 2016).
-They limit your daily progress, meaning you gain a certain amount of exp and stop levelling for the day. Everything you earn beyond that goes into another in-game currency. The exp cap for one day is reached quickly, and thus that can be incredibly discouraging. You want to play more, but don't really get anything out of it.
-Next, the gating of events behind high levels. While they are advertised as a server effort, large-scale events are accessible to high-level players only, meaning you will miss out if you don't match the criteria. And since leveling per day is capped as mentioned, catching up is an excercise in futility.
-And the other effect of the exp cap is, well, you will want to spend money. You will want to progress but the game won't let you, except it still can if you pay up. There is a follower system, a glorified subsystem granting you stat buffs that can be accelerated with money. I'll just say I spent on it and regret.
The exp cap is a huge deal. If they changed that since, someone please speak up, because that is/was really were the majority of problems of the game stem from.