I bought this game 8 years ago, played it until my first victory, and then promptly forgot about it until yesterday.
And despite this, I can guarantee you that this game has no replayability whatsoever. In fact, completing it a second time has been a chore.

Let me explain.

This is not a management game. Nor is it a "political sim" or a survival game. This is a puzzle game. You have a finite amount of resources, shuffled randomly with each playthrough, and if you don't play your cards well, you lose. Whether that's your god punishing you or one of the houses rebelling is merely cosmetic.

As with another "difficult" game in the same "we're so doomed" city management genre, Frostpunk, this means your first few attempts will likely result in failure, as there is only very little margin for error. That is, until you "solve" the order in which to pursue objectives, at which point you're coasting as long as you stick to that plan.

The difference is that Frostpunk offers different scenarios to shake up the formula. The Shrouded Isle doesn't. Sure, the families will have different members with shuffled virtues and vices each playthrough, but the same "algorithm" still applies. Judging by my playtime you may need up to 10 hours to reach the point after which you're no longer making plans and reacting to events, but rather solve Sudoku.

Clunky UX
And this is where the user experience comes in. The detailed month-by-month breakdown is in large parts unskippable, and where it isn't you require extensive clicking to get through each advisors's effects slowly fading in one-by-one. The overview of your standing with the various houses also happens three times each season, with each individual indicator slowly crawling across the screen one-by-one.

Time wise, a second playthrough is spend 20% comparing stats, 10% making decisions, and 70% clicking away pop-up notifications. What is this? An online recipe book?

Even more questionable UX: having to click a button labeled with an action and then the thing to perform that action on, like in an ancient point&click adventure. The pre-season planning is frankly just exhausting once you seen all the moody flavour text.

Achievements
Urgh. I'll pass on 100%ing this one, that's for sure. Most of them are uninspiredly grindy ("Fail the final Fervour Challenge", "Fail the final Obedience Challenge", etc.) if not outright RNG based, because oh boy, let me tell you something:

The Sunken Sins "DLC" (actually just a free update) made one of the 'cheevos nigh impossible to get. Discovering every virtue and vice is actually quite doable, but the spiritual contagions added will randomly overwrite the virtues of a select few citizens. And they each take a season to cure... so you better hope you get very lucky with RNG to not receive a single new one at the start of the final season, because it's impossible to cure in time. Fun.

TL;DR
This one of those cases of "buy in a discount, buy knowing what to expect". I definitely had my fun for a couple hours back when the latest coronavirus epidemic from china was SARS, but knowing what I do now, I don't really think I'd buy this game again.

I'll start this review by saying, I can't recommend this game. Honestly, when I first saw the images and videos, it seemed like a beautiful game, with cool aesthetic choices and some kind of fun management story type game. And it was, at first...

Well, I booted up the game and happily enjoyed those nice graphics and illustrations, the deep green with yellow looked just right. And god, great work by the artist ok? Well done! It stays consistent through the whole game and it's very very good. And well... the game starts with lots of information, and it is interesting for a while, with loads of characters, some different mechanics, and yea, you'll get entertained for the first hour and so, but come on. That's it. Once you learn everything, you still have at least half the game ahead, and it doesn't change much. The pace stays the same, you have to manage some numbers, you will get bored, and there's not much more development, just get to the end and watch the 30 sec animation. This game has a lack of deepness to it, as it doesn't explore the universe theyve created... just purge all those characters to get to the end of it and never open the game again. Oh! Also, the UX of this game is not the most friendly I've seen, so you'll click loads to get to the purge time.

With all of that in mind, this is a game of 2017, and it seems so far, but we had games that were so much better then. That it's not an excuse to be an aesthetic simulator, oops, sorry! Anyway, we had Cuphead, Doki Doki, Danganronpa V3, Nier, Divinity Original Sin 2, Football Manager 2018, idk, Just Dance 2018, and you still prefer spending your hard earned money on this? Well, at least try getting it the cheaper you can find then, because it's really not worth it.