Recent reviews by Charades

I heard this game had improved a lot over the year, so I decided to pick it up after Patch 5 when it was slightly discounted. Overall, it's a decent game, but it didn't quite meet my expectations for a sequel. In many ways, it still feels like Planet Coaster 1. The overall scale hasn't really changed, which is a big letdown since the limited map size restricts creativity. It makes features like monorails feel pointless when the park is this small.

Another issue is that every park is still located in the middle of the wilderness. It's odd that the sequel didn't fix this by connecting parks to a proper road network. That design choice felt strange in the first game, and it's even more noticeable now.

Crazy amount of low quality DLC marked up to exorbitant prices. You want to get into this series, but its clear there is very little incentive as a casual consumer. This game is for the CA paypigs that are willing to pay for the pleasure of collecting all the slop. Even with a big Warhammer sale the DLC remains hilariously overpriced.

Its like they went to business school and were taught how to do everything wrong and decided that was the right approach when launching this product.

There is a level of incompetence on display with this title that I don't think Colossal Disorder will every fully repair their reputation with fans. The decision making, still to this moment, lacks any common sense. The content in the base game is barebones and the delayed DLC is horse armor levels of hilarity. There is no simulation, so its not even a real game but rather a city painter as nothing you do truly matters. The modding support that took half a year after release doesn't even include custom asset support.

There is no way you guys failed this spectacularly after all the success CS1 had. Whomever decided to do a surprise release last year before this game was even close to being completed should prob not be further involved with the series.

While this still isn't the game I was hoping for when I pre-ordered Rome 2, it still has turned into a title worthy of its name.

There are a ton of things I could nitpick about the Rome 2, but the overall experience was well worth the amount I paid on the base game. DLC prices vary, I think they could have combined more factions under the price tags they're asking for, especially this late into the game's lifespan.

I can see why people would rate this game poorly and I'm still upset that modders don't have the ability to make their own campaign maps. However, flanking and maintaining your lines in this game is always a good bit of fun, I love the feeling of being a commander sending thousands of men to their deaths. The campaign map is probably the best the series has seen, but there could be more depth in conducting diplomacy and domestic policies.

If you're on the fence between Attila and Rome 2 you'd be better served getting this first, it simply has more content and the gameplay is roughly the same. The performance in Rome 2 is also better than Attila, with CA having spent more time patching Rome 2 after Attila's release because there are more people that have purchased this game.

August 29th '17 Update:
Holy crap this game is still a hot mess and nothing has really been fixed. The game is now officially out of Early Access and it still has the same deplorable features the game started out with.

The building system is still ridiculously bad in every aspect. There are times where all the dinosaurs you tame will go full ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and will wander away for no reason after a small fight, making for a miserable game of fetch. Flying mounts are still too retarded at landing, Wyverns being the most hysterical example of something being poorly coded. You could actually change their model to a Zeppelin and it'd feel more accurate. Crashes are not uncommon, you will get your share and usually happens at the worst possible moment. (Flying over an ocean full of Megalodons for example.)

There is no game more frustrating than Ark, but its charm makes you play through the misery just because there is nothing quite like it on the market. With that said, the last thing I want to touch upon in this review is the price of this game. This game should realistically be priced at 20 - 30 dollars, there is nothing in this game done well enough where you'd want to pay full price for it. In fact just about everything in this game has a feel of clunkiness to it, akin more to a mod than a full fledge game.

Not sure who is giving financial advice to Wildcard for this game, but it's not grounded in reality.
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June 23rd '17 Update:
This game continues to run like ass and is full of bloat rather than performance fixes.

Building system is still the same ♥♥♥♥, network code is still terrible.
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Paid DLC in Early Access is an amateur's mistake.

The game has many pitfalls, time would have been better served revamping the building system or trying to improve the netcode.

Another Early Access game that made an indie developer filthy rich but then they decide to ignore all the issues with their game in favor of more money.

Note: Updates for Ark have been great since its inception if you just like sheer content, though a lot of faults of the game have remained pretty much untouched since its release. Building system's only update I can remember is a few months after release where they added the ability to rotate an object 180 degrees.