I have been playing ASE since my cousing bought it on the 360 back in high school. We put hundreds of hours into split screening it when Island was the only map and Redwoods didnt exist yet. We played it on the XB1, and i bought it on PC to keep playing it after we went our seperate ways. So trust me when i say i was among the loudest of hype train conductors for ASA, and when i tell you to buy ASE instead of ASA.

Wildcard took 3 steps forward and two large steps back while making ASA, and the scales have unfortunately tipped more in the favor of ASE despite ASE's own flaws. Despite no longer having developer support, many modders jumping ship completely, and its long present issues, ASE is the better choice right now, and i will explain:
ASA is GORGEOUS. The problems arise when a brand new 4090 in a beast of a build literally cannot run the game on ultra, and most systems are chugging in the caves at only 1x spawn rates. Ive been playing ASE on an RX580 for nearly a decade, and now have a 6900XT and even if i overhauled my entire build to maximize the efficiency of that Devil card, it wouldnt be able to run ASA on medium settings. So looking great is entirely dismissable when such a minute percentage of players can experience that noticable upgrade in textures. Ultimately, you will run ASA on low, even minimal, and the only difference to ASE will be a few close up textures, and long distance textures/rendering.

Gameplay. ASA tried to improve in many areas, making many mods like Structures+ and ARK Additions base game inclusions. The issue is that they kept making mistakes. Most of the "new" dinos were not technically made by wildcard, but copied from various mods in ASE, though admittedly most have confirmed to have given permission or even sold the models to Wildcard. The problem is nearly all these new dinos are in a paywalled DLC that costs just as much as ASE does when not on sale ($30), BUT if you dont buy the DLC, then these dinos are still wandering around your ARKs with a giant bubble over them telling you "Please purchase DLC to tame this dino". Worse still is theyve also added an AIRSHIP to Abberation, the map literally DESIGNED from SQUARE ONE to not allow flyers in any way.
And you've likely heard the pyromane memes, the TLDR is that for $5 you were given a SUPER OP dino that destroyed PvP balance and once sales dipped, it was nerfed to be less useful than its base game counterpart the Shadowmane.

Wildcard has also seen fit to meddle with player choices by removing several features from the menus, including the OPTION to allow flyer speed levelling, and have made many pvp and/or pve centric features non-toggleable. Add on that many sandbox options such as force allowing flyers into caves, and buildings inside POIs, are also gone, and certain items have also been left out of the remake, such as cryo pods, which i cannot stress enough some boss terminals are extremely difficult to guide 20 boss fighters to even in small groups, and even with ASA's improved AI and pathfinding. Oh, all those options also are no longer able to be tweaked directly in the .ini file and they dont give them to you in singleplayer either, so by the way i hope you enjoyed those single digit levels on The Island because they're here to stay unless someone can make a mod to bypass the dev's """patch""" to """level spawn manipulation"""

And ultimately, the most prominent issue in ASA is the complete lack of care from Wildcard. Day 1 bugs are still present, the game has not been made more stable by any metric, with many creators outright refusing quite publicly to make ASA content BECAUSE the game truly does crash THAT MUCH.
How bad is the game? ♥♥♥ is selling gifts for $60 and global keys for $80. There arent even more than 10 people selling copies of this game because nobody wants it.

Do yourself a favor, buy ASE and hope that Wildcard doesnt pull a Bethesda and nuke the mods and ruin the game's core code over a year after ending developer support. Or pull ASE from shops like Oldrim to force people to buy the re-re-re-re-re-re-re-release.

I have been playing ASE since my cousing bought it on the 360 back in high school. We put hundreds of hours into split screening it when Island was the only map and Redwoods didnt exist yet. We played it on the XB1, and i bought it on PC to keep playing it after we went our seperate ways. So trust me when i say i was among the loudest of hype train conductors for ASA, and when i tell you to buy ASE instead of ASA. Wildcard took 3 steps forward and two large steps back while making ASA, and the scales have unfortunately tipped more in the favor of ASE despite ASE's own flaws. Despite no longer having developer support, many modders jumping ship completely, and its long present issues, ASE is the better choice right now, and i will explain: ASA is GORGEOUS. The problems arise when a brand new 4090 in a beast of a build literally cannot run the game on ultra, and most systems are chugging in the caves at only 1x spawn rates. Ive been playing ASE on an RX580 for nearly a decade, and now have a 6900XT and even if i overhauled my entire build to maximize the efficiency of that Devil card, it wouldnt be able to run ASA on medium settings. So looking great is entirely dismissable when such a minute percentage of players can experience that noticable upgrade in textures. Ultimately, you will run ASA on low, even minimal, and the only difference to ASE will be a few close up textures, and long distance textures/rendering. Gameplay. ASA tried to improve in many areas, making many mods like Structures+ and ARK Additions base game inclusions. The issue is that they kept making mistakes. Most of the "new" dinos were not technically made by wildcard, but copied from various mods in ASE, though admittedly most have confirmed to have given permission or even sold the models to Wildcard. The problem is nearly all these new dinos are in a paywalled DLC that costs just as much as ASE does when not on sale ($30), BUT if you dont buy the DLC, then these dinos are still wandering around your ARKs with a giant bubble over them telling you "Please purchase DLC to tame this dino". Worse still is theyve also added an AIRSHIP to Abberation, the map literally DESIGNED from SQUARE ONE to not allow flyers in any way. And you've likely heard the pyromane memes, the TLDR is that for $5 you were given a SUPER OP dino that destroyed PvP balance and once sales dipped, it was nerfed to be less useful than its base game counterpart the Shadowmane. Wildcard has also seen fit to meddle with player choices by removing several features from the menus, including the OPTION to allow flyer speed levelling, and have made many pvp and/or pve centric features non-toggleable. Add on that many sandbox options such as force allowing flyers into caves, and buildings inside POIs, are also gone, and certain items have also been left out of the remake, such as cryo pods, which i cannot stress enough some boss terminals are extremely difficult to guide 20 boss fighters to even in small groups, and even with ASA's improved AI and pathfinding. Oh, all those options also are no longer able to be tweaked directly in the .ini file and they dont give them to you in singleplayer either, so by the way i hope you enjoyed those single digit levels on The Island because they're here to stay unless someone can make a mod to bypass the dev's """patch""" to """level spawn manipulation""" And ultimately, the most prominent issue in ASA is the complete lack of care from Wildcard. Day 1 bugs are still present, the game has not been made more stable by any metric, with many creators outright refusing quite publicly to make ASA content BECAUSE the game truly does crash THAT MUCH. How bad is the game? G2A is selling gifts for $60 and global keys for $80. There arent even more than 10 people selling copies of this game because nobody wants it. Do yourself a favor, buy ASE and hope that Wildcard doesnt pull a Bethesda and nuke the mods and ruin the game's core code over a year after ending developer support. Or pull ASE from shops like Oldrim to force people to buy the re-re-re-re-re-re-re-release.