Recent reviews by Chaonic

At first I want to say that I absolutely believe in supporting indie devs and don't feel bad having paid what I did. However, for what my experience was, I think it was too much and there are issues with the gameplay I can't tolerate.

The gameplay consists of you buying plants, growing them big and selling them to people who request those specifically. You also have to water/fertilize your plant and wait. The bigger a plant is, the more passive income you get. So much so that selling a grown plant, unless it's to fill a request, is a waste.

Requests are random but the key to making progress. Requests will come in for specific plants of specific growth stages. This is my biggest problem with the game. I'd rather go into a catalogue of requests so I can make long term plans to progress at whatever speed I'm comfortable at than.. to be honest, what I've been doing. I've felt compelled to plant a LOT OF plants all at once in order to get ahead of requests so I could make progress more consistently and unlock more stuff.

What you unlock is random, and you're not guaranteed to make progress in areas you're interested in. In the beginning, you're guaranteed to unlock certain things like new plants, decorations and upgrades, but fairly quickly it's just random and you might spend a long time playing before you get to see another new plant.

Decorations don't actually do anything other than making your screen prettier. I'm not saying I don't like to decorate, but if I have to choose between space I can use to grow more plants and stuff that's expensive and doesn't give me much benefit, I just prefer to grow more. I know. But I'm a minmaxer, I need a game to incentivize taking it easy in order to take it easy.

When a plant reaches lv4, you can propagate it. Essentially it means to cut a piece off, put it in soil and voila, you have two plants. I was taken aback when I did that and my mother plant turned from lv4 to lv1 and got sick. As like when you don't water or fertilize your plant sick and it has a chance of dying. I'm not saying games HAVE TO mimick real life, but in real life, this sort of thing comes usually very cheap to the plant you're taking the cutting from. Sometimes it's even completely free, if the plant sprouts a second small one or a leaf falls off you can plop into some soil. Even basic maintenance in form of cutting your plant down a little gives you a lot of potential baby plants. A new plant in the game costs~ 200$. With how much bigger plants produce in passive income, this is almost nothing. But in order to propagate a plant, you need to buy an extra pot. Which costs 100$. I think there isn't really a point in propagating plants in the game. It takes significantly more effort and wastes your time and reduces your passive income.

One thing that I've grown to dislike quite a bit was interacting with your plants. Everything you want to do with a plant like watering/fertilizing or placing it somewhere else requires you to click on the plant first. This may not sound like a big problem, but I don't see why I shouldn't be able to simply press Q while hovering over my plant to water it. Clicking on the plant to get a little menu showing the possible sub menus and interactions is fine. But I feel like my intent of interacting with the plant was already made clear with my mouse hovered over it. Doing this with 20+ plants, an invisible timer on plants before they start dying and an effect that's meant to highlight the plants in need but sometimes makes it look like the neighboring plant is the one requiring your attention..

I don't like that I can only choose between giving the game a thumbs up or down. I think this game has a place to exist and it obviously brings a bunch of people joy. But I feel like if I'd ever want to return to the game, some things need to change. I would love to go into a lot of detail on where and how, but Steam reviews can only be a certain length. I hope my words don't sound harsh. I think with a bit more polish, it could be a game I could recommend wholeheartedly.

I love ARK and want to play it with my friends.
I can also totally live with once every half hour of crashing, since that's not going to be a permanent issue and the game just came out.

But what I can't live with is the fact that to play with my friends, I am forced to use the ONE server host I swore to never use again because they are overpriced and I've had very negative experiences with them.

To put it into perspective. The smallest server you can buy costs 25$ per month. With a minimum of 20 slots. Now I understand that minimum requirements to run and slots don't scale linearly. But we're a group of 4-5 people. We simply don't need that many slots.

Don't buy if you intend to play in a group. Yeah, it's a good game, a lot of quality of life improvements and polish that Evolved vanilla lacked. But it's not worth it until it's possible to host your server with a company we can trust.

I'm going to be absolutely honest, I haven't beaten the DLC yet, and gameplay wise, I have no problems.
But one thing that gets me out of the mood is Ada's voice actress. I'm sorry. Her voice acting is below average at best. Some of her voice acting feels like a first take.
I loved the performance of Ada in Resident Evil 2. She was so incredibly good. Why not use her? Especially for this DLC? Wasn't it enough that she gave a soulless performance in the main story?

Yes

This game just doesn't end. I keep encountering new things even today.

The game is incredibly good. It pushes you to learn the mechanics over anything else.
All failures are only YOU to blame for.

That being said.
The campaign is unforgiving and you can straight out build yourself into a corner by purchasing the wrong technologies.. Especially if you are not a skilled player.

I only recommend the campaign to a masochist, that is not easily discouraged by having lower scores (Which I for instance, am)

It's cute, it has engaging gameplay, an awesome story AND great music!
It's one of those rare games, that you just have to play at least once.

You are adviced to read all your mail to have to full experience! ^w^

This game took over my life for a good amount of half a year. We are talking ~6 months in which I have spent a good 400$ in cash shop stuff for both me and my friends.
It's an incredible game with lots of fun things. But for the fun things to stay fun, you have to let the game run pretty much 24/7, so your active playtime isn't cluttered with idle times.
I have not played it in over half a year now for very good reasons. It's a massive sink for money. While you can unlock a lot through normal gameplay and buy even cash-shop items off the market (Good luck with that, the chances are incredibly slim), you are driven by the mechanics into making this decision.
Everything from coloring your clothes the way you want to getting more money through your transactions are just a swipe of your credit card away. What about these clothes to cook faster, process your stuff automatically, etc?

Many people already said back then, this game was pay to win. I still disagreed. But recent developments into REAL pay to win had me do this.

Stay the f away from this, if you care for your free time. It will swallow it all right up. And you'll end up regretting it all.
To be honest, I want to go back really bad, because it was so fun. But I, just like so many other fools thinking, this can't happen to me, fell for this scam.

I really had to give it a few weeks of thinking before sending in a review. I have played all the games in the series besides the first one. With each one getting a little bit more in-depht and interesting. If not, at least trying things with another perspective on the subject. I can't stay absolutely objective, because I compare it to previous games, which I loved to hell.

This is a much harder decision for me, than I actually wanted to admit, since I am trying to work in the game industry and I just know, how hard it is to make the right decisions, so it'll appeal to most of the audience and possibly expanding it further. I get behind that. It is a very hard job, and the developers, despite doing their best, have done some grave mistakes. They tried to reinvent the game so much to fit a specific demographic (Casual gamers), they forgot about the people having most to say about the game. Which is the people loving the game series for what it was.

NOW TO THE ACTUAL REVIEW.

THE CAMPAIGN

Fact is, I have never finished the campaign, because I got too frustrated over excessive micromanaging my restaurants and the sudden realization of how shallow the customer system is. But hear me out.

The game campaign already starts out with you owning just a mobile pizza stand. The possible amount of different toppings in storage is small and you only sell pizza for a short period of time during the day. Most of the day, you just stare at the map. Later on, you'll notice, how little these mobile stands actually matter. I am not even sure, why it made it into the game besides of storytelling. They could have easily cut this from the game without making an impact on the final product. (Meaning, if it had more of an impact, such as brand recognition over the whole city by placing it somewhere specific, giving you a boost in goodwill by the mayor, because your pizza stand is just on his way home, etc.)
Either way, it's a missed opportunity and gives you barely an edge in your gameplay.

As the story continues and you progress to different cities, you'll find out more about where you are coming from and who your family is through people and messages left behind from your dead uncle. Why nobody before you found them, and how he could have known, you would, is besides the point. The amount of letters left from your dead uncle is abnormously high and little to the point. Just too many, too long messages, laid out over too many countries. This killed my immersion in the story really fast. If my uncle was just a secretive guy in a hospital, and he'd wait before giving me more informations until I met certain standards, it would have been a much better choice.

And with this, I need to end the analysis of the campaign. It just doesn't have much to offer, other than giving you insights into the game mechanics while entertaining you with a story, that may or may not take a better turn. To be honest, there were some points, I was interested in. But getting back into the game is hard, because a lot about it feels like a chore.

YOUR OWN PIZZA

Now there is something, the game stands out between all of its predecessors. Beautiful HD graphics, and even the dough can now have different shapes. Not only that, when placing your items on the pizza, they automatically spin into a random position, making it look overall better, if you go for an authentic pizza look.
If you want to place your items in a certain pattern though, this will only lay rocks in your way. If only there was a way to toggle this function on and off?

Surprisignly, that's all the good about this system. Because when it comes to the customers liking/disliking your pizza, it just becomes apparant... that stats don't matter.
The system is plain shallow. And on top of that, it's even unclear whether your pizza will sell or not.

Always on the side of the screen, you have live inputs on what your customers have to say about the pizza. Does it have a good amount of toppings, how is the price, and what ingredients really make it shine for certain groups of people.
And on top of that, you can buy an expensive recipe from a star chef, which in theory, should sell very well.
The system is poorly balanced, and optimal pizza toppings are usually way out of anyones' price range. AKA. Workers will never buy their beloved Oregano and Tuna only pizza, as long as there are cheaper pizzas on the menu. (Because you will need a LOT of oregano to make workers happy)
This could have been prevented by designing the toppings analysis different. While I want to give constructive criticism, it would blow the review.

In total, just create the pizza, you would like to eat, at a normal price, and NPC's will most likely buy it.

SPEAKING OF NPCs...

It's just so much of a letdown considering older entries in this game series. Their personalities are bland, their visual design is bland, and all that fun poking at stereotypes is completely missing.
Plus, having an open world like this made the NPCs have a very negative impact on FPS.
I certainly wouldn't mind the wacky design that went into previous games redone, or even the old assets reused again and rendered in real time.

Especially when it comes to your own employees, does the new game show its weaknesses. You can't train your employees, and pretty much all of their stats, which in previous games had a big impact on performance, are simplified into quality and speed. And even on this, you don't have any influence. With a fixed number of employees on the map and no stats to change, it's clear, you will always take the highest rated NPC's.
In previous games, you had a very solid system of hiring who's available and invest money to train them into what you really want/need.

MICROMANAGING YOUR RESTAURANT

While in Pizza Syndicate and Pizza Connection 2, there was a handy manager doing all the dirty work, and giving you more room to balance quality and upkeet in your restaurant, you can now do all that by yourself. Which at some point, is everything you do. Ever.

Your furniture will break down in record speed without even telling you. I have run multiple times into the problem, were one or more restaurants were suffering from broken furniture. And the only window to replace it without suffering from wasting the entire day is by replacing it whenever your restaurant is closed.

And no matter what size of restaurant, if you have more than 3 pizzas on your menu, your storage will often be too small for all ingredients.

Whether or not your restaurants then makes money is another thing. There aren't any insights. No statistics, not even the slightest hint on what you make most of your money from, and where it goes.

THE SOUNDTRACK

I don't know too much about music, but I can only say, it's pretty bland. Previous titles had much more interesting melodies and weren't set around different places, but genres, while giving the player the option to play one song over another.
While I appreciate it being sold seperatelly as DLC, I don't see a reason, why in this case. There is nothing really special about the music. It's as barebones as it gets. I can only imagine, the composer had not much to work with, other than city names and possibly some buzzwords describing them.

END OF REVIEW AND OTHER ISSUES

There is a lot about the game, I haven't touched on, like the research system and the lack of strategy appliable to the maps. But what really ticked me off, was something, I need to put into its own category.

ALL GAME SOUNDS ARE NOW IN MY STEAM MUSIC LIBRARY

Every. Single. Sound. I can hardly find my music anymore. This NEEDS to be fixed. If I could, I would refund the game for this alone.

FINAL JUDGEMENT:

Gameplay 2/5 Repetitive, Unpolished, Too simplified, but still somewhat fun
Soundtrack 3/5 Quality music, but really nothing to remember
Graphics 2/5 Modern, Almost sterile. Doesn't feel like Pizza Connection anymore
My Feeling 1/5 I am very disappointed.

Overall 2/5 Not a good game.

I highly recommend this game, but please take the time and read my story before judging my criticism. Thank you.

I have invested hundreds of hours into this game and I don't regret one single minute of it. My friends and I were playing for the most time on private guild servers, so I didn't interact with the community all that much, only when dealing with minor problems or gathering informations.

Since it was first released, this game has come further than most other Early Access titles. Though it is one of the least appreciated ones, due to a lack of communication and wildspread rumors.



You start with nothing but your bare fists and need to collect your surrounding materials in order to build tools, shelter and tame animals. What sounds very shallow is in fact a deep crafting system, an almost flawless building system and intelligent taming.
The progression is steady and fun. You can chose to take a risk and get to the next higher tier, or grind with your lower end tools to get to your goal. The only downside to this is, especially if you are a beginner, you may feel the urge to tame everything around you, crowding your base with unneeded dinos.



I have never encountered any problems related to sound and in fact, never needed to change the volume ingame. Not even while voice chatting.
The soundtrack is easy to hear while in the middle of screaming people and subtle enough to ignore, when cooking, crafting or gathering.



The performance is the main reason for most negative reviews.
ARK relies extremely on processing power, and thus, can not be played on most PCs without any lag. Though, this is not due to a lack of optimization or polishing. It is made for next gen machines and thus should be played with adequate hardware.

The system requirements to enjoy the game may be MUCH higher than the minumum requirements to start the game.

The game rarely ever crashes and the biggest problem is clipping and dinos getting stuck somewhere. But workarounds are typically easy to use, but sometimes frustrating and take a long time. I recommend frequent saves of the game and backing your save up, before trying something extreme.



One of the most active development teams for an Early Access title! Updates are being released almost two times a month, with roughly one major content update every other month. Community mods have even made it into the game officially. Wildcard has more than once hired community members for making awesome mods to improve the game even further.



The fact, that this DLC and the developers have gotten so much hate, because they sell a DLC is incredible. Many people don't seem to understand, what Early Access means and what it doesn't.
As an Early Access game, it means, the development team releases a game, that's still getting major reworks and content updates. It doesn't mean it is a typical Alpha game, that lacks content, runs unstable and can only be described as a tech demo.
ARK has content for hundreds of hours, tons of replay value and enough variety to keep playing while constantly discovering new things. Plus they release their game on consoles. What else is there to be said?

As of the DLC, it offers everything, you would ask for in a triple A title DLC. It offers new mechanics, a whole new feel to the game, the challenges of the new map are different and it feels finished. The DLC exclusive content can also be transferred to the old map without any problems.