You wrote your comment as though it's not ok, while you can play it offline in single player just fine.
But there's optional Cross-Platform save sync (independent of the steam one) and multiplayer.
Anyway, as a person who bounced off of the previous entries of this genre I'm really enjoying this one, and I'm very happy for the success the studio is having - they deserve it!
You all forget about all the telemetry, which most decent games from the last 5 years have. It is fact of life that they collect all kinds of data to understand better their user base and game usage for future improvements.
But there's optional Cross-Platform save sync (independent of the steam one) and multiplayer.
Anyway, as a person who bounced off of the previous entries of this genre I'm really enjoying this one, and I'm very happy for the success the studio is having - they deserve it!