A game that had tons of potential. Sadly they rushed released and left many things unfinished, like they were adding wild babys, but didnt get further than penguins, and lots of other things they left to the mod devs to finish for them. sadly this means official is stuck in this half finished feeling state, and will never get updated due to it then may mean unbalancing the worldwide cluster, something they dont want to do as they already had to 'wipe' the old servers due to the amount of cheaters and exploiters that were duping items and similar. Thankfully they had an nice excuse for this called release.... but they could only do that once. Their anti duping method added (on official) is awkward and confusing for the gamer and still doesnt completely eliminate the problem. All that aside its still one of the most in depth and complicated games out there, and will make you laugh, smile and cry. Personaly i'd recommend to new players, to try PvE, as PvP can be brutal and unforgving, though it adds a nice extra threat once you are competent. The hardest part is finding a good unofficial server, as official is even more brutal when it comes to PvP, and lacks any quality of life mods that can make the game way way more tollerable. And i dont just mean low latency, i mean active enough its not gonna shut down without being packed you cant get on, and admins that are fair and impartial and dont cheat/ban at their own discression, but instead only for actual rule infractions. Drama is a real part of Ark and you will likely have issues if you join large tribes with how people use different methods of play and the usual friction people have with eachother. Sadly PvP adds so much pressure (to grind and keep ahead of other tribes) especialy in a big tribe, that drama and being kicked from the tribe becomes a real problem for people just wanting to play. All in all, its still a better game than most that are out there.

narration.

so that was 4k hours, damn, add 20k more to that. a lot of the things i griped about in my mind are still there. but these things have been changed in ASA. however thats another (worse) game, and this is absolutely EPIC. background about me, i have run servers for this game for years, and also work for years with and still do... the ark community independently, helping with server setup, configuration and debugging. anyway, so here's my..

updated review:

now i'm 11 hours short of 25k hours, and its uninstalled. i look back with a kinda longing. its left in a working state admittedly. though its no longer getting updates, so we'd have to look at the plugin world or modding world to fix certain issues or exploits. but this is a pretty damn addictive game, so many different things to do (map dependant) and unless you put a lot of hours in you wouldn't ever understand the depth of the game, its like minecraft level depths, but not pixels or mining oriented ;)
i have to recommend it, if you have a high end PC with lots of fast storage space, good internet connection, and know a good private cluster to play on, with all the maps, you can get lost in this new reality. and when you're ready, open up to trading and see how far the rabbit hole goes! also has a very good wiki if you want cheat sheets or prefer reading!

i wish instead of abandoning this game, they ran it parallel, they'd still have one of the top 20 achieving on the steam player base - consistently - in players, between the two games, likely more! but this game has so much more to it, it still wants a beefy pc, but like, a decent gaming pc from like 2020 would still do fine, older for better end hardware. so this makes this a bit of a retro classic now i guess. with moders and plugin devs hopefully fixing anything in the future, this game might not be as dead as i so bluntly thought when i uninstalled it.

all combined, considering my hours and enjoyment of mastering the many systems.
An almost perfect game - which i don't expect - but only let down by not investing in removing more developmentally problematic issues.

conclusion

9.5/10
Do buy. especially if its on offer with all the dlcs! might be getting a little retro, but it still looks good, runs fine and can offer many hours of enjoyment!

A game that had tons of potential. Sadly they rushed released and left many things unfinished, like they were adding wild babys, but didnt get further than penguins, and lots of other things they left to the mod devs to finish for them. sadly this means official is stuck in this half finished feeling state, and will never get updated due to it then may mean unbalancing the worldwide cluster, something they dont want to do as they already had to 'wipe' the old servers due to the amount of cheaters and exploiters that were duping items and similar. Thankfully they had an nice excuse for this called release.... but they could only do that once. Their anti duping method added (on official) is awkward and confusing for the gamer and still doesnt completely eliminate the problem. All that aside its still one of the most in depth and complicated games out there, and will make you laugh, smile and cry. Personaly i'd recommend to new players, to try PvE, as PvP can be brutal and unforgving, though it adds a nice extra threat once you are competent. The hardest part is finding a good unofficial server, as official is even more brutal when it comes to PvP, and lacks any quality of life mods that can make the game way way more tollerable. And i dont just mean low latency, i mean active enough its not gonna shut down without being packed you cant get on, and admins that are fair and impartial and dont cheat/ban at their own discression, but instead only for actual rule infractions. Drama is a real part of Ark and you will likely have issues if you join large tribes with how people use different methods of play and the usual friction people have with eachother. Sadly PvP adds so much pressure (to grind and keep ahead of other tribes) especialy in a big tribe, that drama and being kicked from the tribe becomes a real problem for people just wanting to play. All in all, its still a better game than most that are out there. narration. so that was 4k hours, damn, add 20k more to that. a lot of the things i griped about in my mind are still there. but these things have been changed in ASA. however thats another (worse) game, and this is absolutely EPIC. background about me, i have run servers for this game for years, and also work for years with and still do... the ark community independently, helping with server setup, configuration and debugging. anyway, so here's my.. updated review: now i'm 11 hours short of 25k hours, and its uninstalled. i look back with a kinda longing. its left in a working state admittedly. though its no longer getting updates, so we'd have to look at the plugin world or modding world to fix certain issues or exploits. but this is a pretty damn addictive game, so many different things to do (map dependant) and unless you put a lot of hours in you wouldn't ever understand the depth of the game, its like minecraft level depths, but not pixels or mining oriented ;) i have to recommend it, if you have a high end PC with lots of fast storage space, good internet connection, and know a good private cluster to play on, with all the maps, you can get lost in this new reality. and when you're ready, open up to trading and see how far the rabbit hole goes! also has a very good wiki if you want cheat sheets or prefer reading! i wish instead of abandoning this game, they ran it parallel, they'd still have one of the top 20 achieving on the steam player base - consistently - in players, between the two games, likely more! but this game has so much more to it, it still wants a beefy pc, but like, a decent gaming pc from like 2020 would still do fine, older for better end hardware. so this makes this a bit of a retro classic now i guess. with moders and plugin devs hopefully fixing anything in the future, this game might not be as dead as i so bluntly thought when i uninstalled it. all combined, considering my hours and enjoyment of mastering the many systems. An almost perfect game - which i don't expect - but only let down by not investing in removing more developmentally problematic issues. conclusion 9.5/10 Do buy. especially if its on offer with all the dlcs! might be getting a little retro, but it still looks good, runs fine and can offer many hours of enjoyment!