Recent reviews by Leviathan

They shouldn't even be allowed to call this a Bloodlines sequel. Everything about this game is substandard by comparrison, from the rushed DEI riddled leftcysts storyline and it's painfully obvious bad rewrites (and they call themselves "creatives" lmao) to the absolute abortion of everything that made the first game great like player agency, choices that matter, and side quests that encourage you to explore.

This game puts you on a railroad story of "Yass queens" manipulating you at every turn to be their ♥♥♥♥♥ and the harder you fight back against it, the more disgusted you get when you find out just how little choice you have in how things play out. Even meaningful sounding decisions right in the start of the game are completely meaningless and play out no matter who's "side" you take. In the end, the only person's side you're allowed to take is the narrator.

Buy it on sale dirt cheap if you have to play it just for the nostalgia of a bloodlines title, but honestly you might as well watch someone's youtube playthrough. You'll get all the same story with the same ability to change things (none) without any of the dogshite combat mechanics to have to suffer through.

Paradox, please do real World of Darkness fans a favor and sell this IP to someone who'll do it justice, instead of letting your pink haired mental illness crew continue to wipe their unmentionables all over every inch of this ugly, poorly animated and even more poorly voice acted insult to the RPG genre. And maybe next time, let a game developer who actually has some experience with RPGs make the next game instead of gambling on random upstarts that will just do whatever you want them to do so they don't "lose the message" in your precious games.

TLDR: I play RPGs for the replayability and feeling of influence and choices mattering, and in this game they don't. I also don't want to get preached at with current day politics while playing in my escapism dark fantasy game. Thanks.

The entire time I'm playing, I'm thinking to myself "something about this is off..."

Oh, Sweet Baby Inc. No wonder.

*uninstall*

Well, it was fun for a minute, but if you expect me to open my steam account up to your console peasant data breached account system, you can politely shove it.

Thanks for the fish.

EDIT post PSN requirement lifted:

If you changed your review back to positive over this, you're idiots. Sony straight banned sale of the game in all the countries PSN isn't available and left it that way ever since. People in those countries bought this game and now they're screwed, all because Sony is a bunch of greedy clunges.

If you somehow don't own Ark and you want it, and maybe Ark 2, wait for this new remaster to come out to buy both bundled together. Great deal right?

Nah. If you're like the rest of us, hundreds of thousands of us, WE are being told we have to buy the game again because they're shutting this one down.

If you're going to give them your money, you might be playing alone. I know I for one won't be shoveling more money into a company this backhanded.

EDIT 2025:
I downloaded the Aquatica DLC and had a ton of issues with it the first couple days like everyone else did, (most seem fixed now) but I'm just about sick of the entire internet regurgitating the same old gripes about it and the game at large to the point where useful info gets drowned out completely, screwing over the players that DO want to play with the new content.

So for that reason alone, I'll change my recommendation. I still don't own Ark Ascended, never will. But I've got nearly 1500 hours in evolved, and it was money well spent. I had a good time, dev decisions aside. The game's not for everyone, but my god the people that hate it really can't help themselves but to complain about it.

Started playing the game
Found food very difficult to find
Realized zombies were dropping food, usually raw meat
Found something that looked like a potato
Couldn't eat it. In hindsight, might have been a zombie turd.
Died trying to eat said turd.

8/10

Absolutely love this game. Really disappointed to hear it almost certainly will not get a sequel. If Sony wanted better sales at release, the game should have come to PC on day one. Blaming lagging sales and reviews of the game on console gamers while ignoring the roaring success of the game on steam is just idiotic.

This game is a buggy mess. Early access, yeah I get it, but in this state it's all but unplayable. Bots routinely teleport around the map, desyncing while 360 noscoping you in the forehead.

Loads of potential for sure and believe me, I want to love this game. I miss Swat 4 something fierce...but this game doesn't do it right now.

I'll adjust when the game is fixed.

Edit 12/23/2021

New patch, game's still ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for now. Maybe next patch. They did seemingly fix the sync issues but it's still all but unplayable between crashes and oddball errors like the game not being able to verify my steam account when I try to play.

So according to Kotaku, it's a hate crime to buy this game.

Good thing I made a second steam account so I could buy myself two copies. Because @#%@ you.

If you ever wanted to play john madden football but online with actual people instead of bots, this is a solid start. The game play is alot of fun even at this early stage. Can only go up from here.

A significant number of the "negative" reviews are just people from second life that have an axe to grind with one of the Devs. Long story short for those that don't know what second life is, they have a very poorly implemented football game that for the last 3 years or so has been run into the ground by a small handful of players that are actually good at games rather than the neckbeards still playing SL who just cyberdiddle 50 year old housewives who cheat on their husbands while pretending to be 20something dallas cheerleader types. Crushing the dreams of people who need a game like "second life" (because they're actual lives are trash) leads to review bombing I guess. Pretty sad if you ask me.

The game looks like it would be interesting, but unfortunately I, like many other people, got violently ill from the built in camera / headbob issue. Developers are not interested in allowing us to disable this, and I couldn't find a real way around it after doing some research. I'm sure the game is fun if you're not the kind of person that suffers from motion sickness like I do, but since I do, I can't recommend the game.