Recent reviews by Henk De Steen

Cool game and fun concept but:
-don't play this alone
-has an insane amount of mechanics that make the game more tedious than it needs to be
-prepare to spend hours of gameplay doing things you don't want to do (grinding)

-fun mechanics and variety
-quick and fast-paced
-extremely grindy and pay-to-win (i got 350hours and only about half the playable characters)
-very toxic community
-anti-toxicity system that doesn't actually help against toxicity but cripples currency gain for small mistakes
-battle pass (enough said)

Used to really love playing this game but the focus has been shifting to profit at the expense of the player experience way too much for me to recommend it.

Very disappointing. The map is filled with low-effort enemies and the entire dlc only has two bosses (that rely on cheap mechanics to be challenging). Waste of time and money.

Git gud.

Masterpiece,

Game has so many things to explore, has a solid story, fun sidequests, great bosses and feels immensely rewarding to play. Also seems to be a lot more forgiving than most souls games as you can pretty much set your own difficulty depending on what build you go for. The only negative I can think of are the pc requirements which honestly aren't even too outrageous for a fairly modern machine. And if you do happen to be struggling youtube will be your best friend :-).

Pros:
-Lot's of things to do
-fun missions
-Active updates

Cons:
-Pvp is very badly designed in this game
-Practically unplayable without friends
-Long sessions (hard to accomplish anything in under 2 hours)

Conclusion:
I would have recommended this game as I love the concept and the missions in it but I just can't with good conscience since pvp takes so much fun away from this game. Losing hours of progress to either larger crews or more experienced players who got nothing to lose themselves just feels wrong. And even for people who are willing to pvp this game is seriously lacking since attacking players will either result in a chase lasting a couple hours or a neverending fight because of how easy it is to keep your boat afloat. And sadly this problems are just the tip of the iceberg of what's wrong with pvp in this game.

PRO'S
-Really fun game with loads of things to do
-Generally very friendly community
-Hours of gameplay
-You can transfer with your items/dinos in between dlc maps

CON'S
-Requires a very good pc to run at all (let alone smoothly)
-Even with a godlike pc you will still suffer alot of serverside lag
-Very grindy and hard to take a break from (without losing all your progress)
-Certain servers are unplayable during events (100+ hour downtimes possible)
-Transferring to other servers can be very risky (death or loss of literally everything) due to bugs
-Hard to build bases due to loads of lands claims by other players
-Ark support is non-existent (sent a ticket twice and got ignored twice)

CONCLUSION
Massive shame as this game in itself would have been easily among the best I have ever played if it wasn't for the extreme instability of the servers and the lack of care from the devs. Causing it to be a stressful lagfest that feels more like a chore than a game. If you do however want to buy it anyways I would suggest doing your research and picking a boosted rates community server as the officials are horrible.

NOTE: This is completely disregarding pvp as it is something that I have stayed far away from myself due to the high toxicity, cheaters and giant unfair clans that make it pretty much unplayable for a person with a life outside of ark.

Best lobby/queue simulator i have ever played.

Nice game, good concept but the trashtalking community makes this game very unpleasant to play.

nice game with cool add-on (skins)