Recent reviews by Xenara

Start feels like everything is super slugish and slow, but then I notice that roadcondition and the free "rusty" vehicles are making it feel that way, once having built a road and driving on it with a bought vehicle changes that.

The game feels really good, I think it could have some more missions / side missions on the maps (2. Map for example).

Transforming the default map ground feels awful and hard actually transform, that's why my roads always end up with some bumps at best.

Laying pavement is easy, but I can get stuck to nothing sometimes.

Pressing the pavement down leaves weird little holes of not pressed pavement behind, sometimes.

I wish there was more Vehicles overall, more options and size increases for hefty prices, but it is just released and might get more over time.

It's a good game, but could use some fixing up at certain areas like the ones mentioned above.

Games seems to be dead, no recent updates. Never left Early Access, was a cool idea of a game.

+ Animal Taming
+ Ark basebuilding
+ Big ships
+ Big map at launch 15x15 grid with a total of 225 servers (1 per map), ressources were found in different areas on the big grid, you had to haul them to your homebase.
+ Big grid map had biome zones, desert / rainforest / boss islands / frost regions with different ressources/animals and difficulties.

- I remember that people were able to sink your ship (in pve) when climing on it or hanging on the ladder with causing the ship to be overweight, this lead to it taking damage over time and ending up sinking, big ships taking days to build alone.
- Game was / is pretty buggy and crashes happen
- The big grid can be played alone but it got shrunk to 11x11, I wish I could host a game with 11x11 or 15x15 on one server with a few friends, but I doubt the server coding is able to do it, nor it will ever get done.
- Other reviews talk about that the game got patched worse over the time it used to be updated and having seasons.

Bad priorities.
Pushing DLCs out while game is not running without bugs/crashes.
My savefile with a decent amount of citizens crashing constantly.

I stopped to wait, but reviews are only worse and people disappointed.

CBA to even get back in. Please fix the game and get priorities right!

Really solid game.

Es heisst nicht ohne Grund Cracktorio

+ Free to play
+ Seasonal Wipes, but the most important unlocks are kept also you get to transfer items over
+ Big Map
+ No Pay2Win
+ Game is not too grindy, you can use pets like in Palworld to do many different things in your base, even when offline. (Farming, Mining, Logging, cooking, planting etc.)
+ You can relocate the base with no costs with a 10min cooldown
+ Many different builds you can go for with your gear
+ So much content for a game that just released
+ Many different genres in one that I like (Survival, Base Building, Gear progression, Farming/Fishing, Dungeons, Puzzles, Bosses, Clans, PvE / PvPvE / PvP World Events+
+ You can spawn your vehicle anywhere with a button press
+ Fast Travel to base from anywhere, fast travel to many World Events
+ You can have your own clan (Hives) and join with the clan into a guild with other clans (Hives)
+ Many rewards for learning the game

- Monsters feel too easy if you get an Epic/Legendary Weapon before level 20 areas
- sometimes a bit of latency when interacting with stuff
- Sad to see dead bases in your neighbourhood

Good game.

Becomes repetitive after a while.

Sony almost ruined the game

Recently I got back to the game after not enjoying my time in 2023. Here is my updated Review on the current state of the game.

The gamedevs are promising improving performance with the planned may 2025 update to Unreal Engine 5.5. Right now you need a 2080 or newer GPU to get above 60fps averages.

Releases of ASE Maps take till 2027 to fully all release, this means that items like Egg incubator are not here yet, also no net projectile. You'd have to add a mod for it or look for a server cluster that has replacing mods like Cyber Structures.

PvP has relevant P2W DLC Dinos and for PvE you really need to look into the bobs tell tales dlc which is crazy how much op stuff is included. If you plan to buy this game you need to optimally plan in additional purchases.

I do not play PvP in Ark, I heard it to be toxic to the core with bug/mesh/cheat abuse on top of the offline raids and ruthless nature of players.

There are many good mods and server clusters that are fully free to play on.
There is now also paid mods that they call premium or freemium.. but you can avoid them.

DLC Dinos are spawning even if you don't have them, you can't tame or ride them. Even if a friend has the dlc, you cannot ride them, with the exception of the Oasisaur.

Currently there is The Island, Scorched Earth, The Center, Aberration, Extinction and if they can keep the already post-poned release of Ragnarok on June 2nd 2025. All of them are included in the base game.
Astreos dlc map is their first new dlc map abd pretty expensive.
Lost Colony dlc will release later this year with more story and map, Dinos etc., hope it is worth buying.

This game still has a while to go, but it looks so good and immersive. It is Ark after all. The maps and dinos that are now back in pretty, are what brought me back and it offers much more than when this released in 2023.

+ Free
+ Many Character choices
+ Cool animations

- I wish there were more maps

Controller Aimassist ist viel zu OP auf closerange, es macht null bock mehr wenn man um die Ecke pusht und selbst mit unvorhersehbarem Movement einfach weggelasert wird. Einfach nur in die richtige Richtung aimen und schiessen, hat nix mit Skill mehr zu tun, leider..