Recent reviews by JollyDragoness

A massive map with tons of content, full of custom flavor, and more on the way. Wildcard also kept a large majority of what made the map lovable, which is a vast improvement over what they used to do to mod maps! There is PLENTY to do on this map in its current state for both PvE and PvP. Honestly, Wildcard could have said the map is complete and people wouldnt know any better because that's how good it is, but I am A-OK with chunks of the map being released a bit at a time. Im tired of people scrambling to devour the whole map as quickly as possible then a month later stop playing because they discovered everything and got bored. I like looking forward to more instead of being one and done.

Out of all the ASA maps released so far, this is the best one and don't let any of these naysayers convince you otherwise. The issues they list are the same issues that happen with EVERY map upon release. Take what they say with a grain of salt.

This game is calming and satisfying

$30 feels quite steep for what we get. I knew this was coming when they started charging for certain mods, but I feel like those mods have more content in addition to being cheaper. I think I would have been ok with this had they charged that for the Scorching Earth expansion with this already included, but having it separate just gives bad vibes. I still like the content, but I dont have the ability to rate this product as a maybe. If you want more content, then go for it. If not, then dont.

Ark: Survival Evolved, Pokemon, and Palworld make up the venn diagram of love I possess for games that let me catch friends, build mansions, and battle for supremacy.

I love everything about this game. It is fun with or without friends. I especially like building and all the knick-knacks. Everything feels perfectly balanced, which is tough to find in many of the games out there. When I earn a reward, it really does feel earned. I definitely recommend giving Valheim a go if you havent already

Do you like comedy? Do you like jumpscares? Then this is the game for you! Seriously, though. This is a fantastic game. I have never laughed so hard while being so scared

My love for this game just grows and grows as time marches on, despite the salt I occasionally feel. The introduction of new maps to the official roster is an amazingly unexpected change of pace. The huge variety of mods lets you add your own flavor to the game, even on official servers. You better bet I run around in a variety of inflatable costumes while doing shenanigans! Those mods have all but erased my complaints of not enough TLC for role playing. New critters being introduced every few months keeps the game fresh, too. This is a long term time sink of a game. The gameplay and story are amazing and always improving. This is LORE worth following

HOWEVER, in terms of issues:

-Optimization is not great. At all. Updating every file in the game with every single update is overkill. Im hoping the Unreal Engine 5 update WildCard is planning to do in a few months will take care of that and a wide variety of other issues. This game crashes often as is, so be warned. The bugs and mesh issues have always been around and the complaints always surge the hardest when a map is released. WildCard does help players, they do make improvements, they release patches in a timely manner (which never seems to be fast enough for some players), they do pay attention when issues arise (despite what many people say), and they are an active developer. They do not sit around and do nothing as some negatives in here claim.

-WildCard is doing what it did with ASE which isnt flying on this new engine. This game is enormous, takes a lot of resources to run, and can maul your graphics card. Definitely have higher than what is recommended...and maybe a few levels above that for smoother gameplay.

-Quite a few people take major issue with the paywalls either on mods or DLC. Im not one of them, but I understand the anger. "Here's a new cat that's on fire which makes a huge difference in gameplay when tamed, but before you can tame it we need 5 bucks" understandably rubbed people the wrong way. At the same time, though, there are people not associated with WildCard who lovingly make mod maps, cosmetics, critters, etc whom WildCard gives the chance to fund their passion. THAT is what I support and I will stand my ground on. Modders should be given the chance to make money, especially if the mods are good. This encourages community growth and may sprout new games. Im all for forking over a few bucks to support people. What I support may not be your cup of tea and that is ok.

(Also, if you are curious, Wildcard gives modders 50%. The 50% Wildcard takes is broken down into 25% Wildcard and 25% Curseforge. This is not a bad model of payment to modders.)

Taking all of that into consideration, ASA is still an amazing upgrade to ASE. I love this game and everything it has to offer

If you could only play one game in your entire life, play this game. This is a game with memorable characters in a masterfully crafted story that had me ugly crying at the end.

This game is a masterpiece from the visuals to the gameplay to the story to the soundtrack. I recommend this game to anyone and everyone. The only flaw is how short the game is, but the story is told in just the right way to not mind how short the game is. I truly hope there will be a sequel.

Honest review (this is kind of long):

The official original maps have their pros and cons, but the mod maps Wild Card converted to official feel butchered. Valguero, for example, had big issues with spawn points not working correctly, and had either too much empty space or too many wyverns slowly eating up the map from their original spawn. That over population problem was eventually fixed, but you pretty much had to attach a mod to the map to kind of fix the empty space problem. Valguero and The Center are both two flavors of the same coin in terms of map design, which sounds weird but makes sense. Valguero was mostly land based with a hidden deep ocean, while The Center was mostly water based with islands above the waves and hidden below. The end boss of Valguero is similar to The Center in how they just throw multiples of already established bosses at you, though The Center did add day and night cycles to the boss arena, which is still a unique feature many people overlook, and Valguero had the Broodmother as a mini boss. Both maps are enormous and fun to explore.

Out of all the maps, Crystal Isles, which can be considered the most beautiful map, received the heaviest Wild Card butchering. No idea why Wild Card decided to not include crystal variants of their base creatures, but I still consider that to be an enormous mistake because without them the Crystal Isles map had nothing. Just enormous spaces with nothing in them which Wild Card could have populated with something, but didn't. Maybe they decided not to add all those crystal creatures because of copyright or something? I don't know and Wild Card certainly won't tell. Either way, it felt like such an enormous waste to a map which could have been one of the, if not THE, best. As for bosses, Crystal Isles and Lost Island have unique end bosses, but, for some reason, Wild Card decided you can't get visible taxidermy skins of them. Fenrisúlfr in Fjordur looks identical to a normal Fenrir skin. There isn't even a size difference and it seems the reason why is because Wild Card made all Fenrir taxidermy enormous. Wild Card already messed up the skins of two mini bosses in Fjordur, the wolves and the bear, by not allowing their unique skins to show in taxidermy and changed one mini boss from unique twin spiders to a plain bee. Very disappointing. Side note, Crystal Isles, Lost Island, and The Center are the only official mod maps without mini bosses.

Fjordur and Ragnarok are the best mods because they feel the least butchered. Their maps are superior and fun to explore. Their spawns weren't butchered too badly, either. The Ragnarok dungeon bosses are fun to conquer, but the final boss reuses official bosses, just like Valguero and The Center. I greatly appreciate Fjordur, Crystal Isles, and Lost Island having unique final bosses.

As for the official maps, The Island had 3 main bosses and a final boss. Just getting to the final boss was also a welcome challenge. The final boss fight itself felt epic, which got me hooked to Ark. The map itself has tons of unique zones and is great to explore. Scorched Earth was the first map to really challenge players from Day 1. Constantly dying until you could establish yourself was a nice change of pace. The dungeons full of traps, tricks, and death pits were truly the definition of trial and error. Add to that multiple Titanosaurs across the map, the introduction of Wyverns, and the trophy tame Phoenix. Scorched Earth offered a unique experience. Aberration followed in Scorched Earth's difficulty with a large dash of jump-scares. Nothing like thinking you are safe being surrounded by glow in the dark creatures in the middle of the night only to be mauled to death by glowless nearly silent Ravagers. A gorgeous map with simply amazing creatures, difficulties, and experiences. Nothing beats the feeling of successfully stealing your first Rock Drake Egg. I would say Aberration has the best map of all because of the layers upon layers of map making you learn landmarks to avoid being lost. I would also consider the Aberration boss and Genesis 1 boss to be the hardest bosses out of all the maps.

Extinction is its own category of awesome because you can tame the mini bosses. Combining meks into one giant mek and using it to fight the final boss King Titan with your mini boss tames is honestly delicious gameplay. The map itself was alright. The green zone and the city felt like the only good zones. Those zones were dynamic, fun, easy to hide in, and just felt like good design overall. The rest of the map being constantly hostile to you had strong Scorched Earth difficulty vibes. The addition of map events, like the meteor falls, were fantastic and were also implemented for use in Genesis 1 Lunar Zone and Volcano Zone. A nice touch. They tried it in Ragnarok, but it didn't work half the time and didn't feel like a threat.

Genesis 1 and 2 have their mini games and unique final bosses, but Genesis 1 games definitely has severe issues with difficulty scaling. It was a nice change of pace and gave you a reason to breed the strongest creatures ever just to conquer the fighting games, but games like, for example, fishing on alpha were practically unwinnable because the fish would simply freeze in place and not do anything. And you HAVE to complete a large majority of those games just to access the final boss on various difficulties. Not great. Wild Card did fix the game difficulty issue to a very reasonable degree in Genesis 2. Still hard, but no longer impossible. Between the two, Genesis 1 had better quality maps, except for the infamous Ocean map which would either crash your game or not. No in-between. The rest had their own fun dangers. The Genesis 2 map is meh. As in the pros and cons were pretty much even. The green side was just boring. Very boring. Even the water trench in the middle wasnt great. Just an empty tub of water until you got to the "rooms" at the bottom, which were gorgeous and nerve-wracking. The Rockwell side definitely has more unique zones, but could definitely use more caves. Actually, both sides could use more caves. The space zone in the middle had its own challenges, but definitely felt the prettiest.

All in all, I really like this game...in PvE. The challenge of taming and breeding creatures, resource gathering, exploration, building, and conquering dungeons and bosses never gets old for me. PvP, however, was not a great experience. If you like grinding, griefing, and logging on to find all your stuff gone and tames dead, then you do you. I simply do not enjoy that like some people do. Give the game a try and find a map flavor you favor. There is plenty of variety (and mods) to suit even the most picky gamer.