i personally don't like the survival mode, it's too "video game" for me. i have the misfortune of living in america in the year 2025 as a trans person. sometimes i get so SICK of human beings and their petty self-centered hate and blind gullibility that i just want to be LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE. i just wanna waddle around and eat bushes and not have to care about who's president. i love that the arcade mode lets me do that and my character can actually progress just by existing. i don't have to go fight for exp, do silly quests, etc, no objectives, just exist as something else for a while.

not everything works 100% perfectly but the only glitch that really bothers me is the camera tends to completely freak out when i load a new game, i mean it goes completely INSANE for a couple minutes.

i only have to lower the graphics by 2 notches but it doesn't keep my settings and i have to set it again every time i load a game (switch between survival/arcade/roam, switch species, restart, etc), despite it asking me when i first launch from steam. the ultra graphics look very pretty and i love that the dinos get wet in the rain.

i can't comment on the sound design since my computer is always on mute, which makes the lazy "there is no such thing as hurry" ankle-saur look like he's yawning, lol.

i like that the corpses don't just magically vanish and have the toxicity/decomposition element. it's nice to have something for baby rex to eat so it doesn't starve while learning to fight, and adds a creepy horror element when you see members of your own species lying dead all around you as the baby trike.

the only thing i'd change about the game is why does arcade mode have only rex and trike? all the other species are already there, just shrink down their character model size and have all the herb's follow the trike skill path and all the carn's follow the rex skill path. i do like that they are all available right away in "roam" mode without having to unlock them first and don't have to play the survival mode if i don't want to. i get why sauropods are not there but where is stegosaurus?

i appreciate that they just bite and scratch and whap stuff with their tails, no magical nonsense or shockwaves or stuff like that. i like the "eat enough toxic plants and you're poisonous" bit because it gives you something to earn even if you don't want to focus on fighting, and it makes some bit of sense both for having immunity to plant toxins in your bloodstream (i think stuff irl does that?) as well as carnivores having toxic bacteria like komodo dragons.

overall i like it, because this is what i want to do. be lazy and eat bushes and wander around and just not have to be human for a while or even be in a world where humans and their ignorant cruelty even exist. i think it will bore kids and people who need more mental stimulation as opposed to being mentally over-stimulated and needing to calm down/relax. i like that i don't have to hunt or constantly fight fight fight, but the element of danger is still there and when i get randomly attacked for doing absolutely nothing but minding my own freaking business and not affecting anyone else's life in any way whatsoever, i can turn around and beat the living daylights out of them.