Recent reviews by Rio

The exclusivity crap is annoying, and yes I am one of the ones who waited over a year to play it on PC because I refuse to install Epic Crap Store to play a game. I really wish devs would stop accepting their exclusivity bribes..

That said, the game is great. Charming, pretty, relaxing (usually), and cute. After playing lots of Path of Exile, Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, etc...I needed a little change. The game has a really pretty, kind of Disney-ish feel to it. There's a big sense of exploration and discovery. The soundtrack is pretty and suits the mood very well. The controls can be a LITTLE weird, especially when controlling the Rot. But overall I haven't had any major issues.

Looking forward to keep playing. It's the first game in a while where I get the urge to hop back in and keep playing after closing out.

The overall concept of the game is addictive. You find yourself finally finishing an armor set, just to immediately move on to farming another. You will die in a very dumb way, rage-quit, and just hop back into the game 30 minutes later. The core game is very good.

The music is excellent (except for the Astera theme, which I find very annoying after a while), the graphics are great, especially with the High Res pack. And the monster designs are great. The controls will take some getting used to. I already owned the game on Xbox, and found playing the game with the Xbox control to feel sluggish and clunky. I waited to buy this version, until after the mouse input control issues were sorted out. Overall its a lot more enjoyable to play, now.

The community is....ehhhh....it's...a thing? As long as you know what you are getting yourself into when you leave your quests open, or fire that SOS flare, you should be fine. By getting yourself into, I mean...that the random people that join will usually make things more difficult for you. Every so often you'll get lucky and some high level pro will join you. But for the most part, you're gonna get people smacking you with their hunting horn and firing their bow in the wrong direction. You'll put the monster to sleep to set your barrels, just to have some guy smack you and the monster with his hammer before you can finish. You'll mount the monster, and have a guy drop a pile of rocks on you. Its REALLY a free-for-all crap-fest, so...yeah. If you want to play with randoms, just...make sure you bring your patience along. Otherwise, its definitely better to play solo or with friends.

Overall I've definitely been enjoying the game so far, even with the quirks.

Overall, the game is....ok. Not the worst game I ever bought, but definitely not the best, especially considering I shelled out for the deluxe edition (my bad).

Basically, you make your own waifu, then you make a waifu for your waifu, and run around shooting stuff to get better guns to shoot harder stuff to get better guns. Fun to hop in and farm for a bit after work, but it does get boring pretty fast and I find myself closing out to play something else instead.

The game looks nice overall...very anime stylized (obviously). The character customization is about average, with most of the expected anime hairstyles and facial features being available. The outfit system is a nice idea. If Bandai sticks with this game instead of moving on to the next one right away, they can regularly add new costumes and accessories to keep things fresh (whether they'll do that or not...we'll see. >.> ). The music/soundtrack is really good, and so is the voice acting (Im in the group that is glad they stuck with the Japanese voices with subtitles). The controls are pretty sketchy....not so much the combat controls. But the menu navigation is pretty bad. I know it's a port and all but is it so much to ask for a mouse curser? >.>

The AI is just....ugh. You will see your waifus get confused about how to go around a rock, you'll see enemies turn into a pinball and zip back and forth across the map. You'll see foes kindly stand in place while you repeatedly shoot them in the head. It's just plain bad. You'll sometimes have to take cover, but your body can protrude through the cover and you'll get pewpewed through it.

My conclusion is that the game isn't horrible. I would recommend it to anime fans, and obviously SAO fans. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a hardcore shooter or an alternative to Warframe or something. You won't find that here.

This game caught my interest months ago, and I was watching it since then. I've been very cautious about survival games after the past few I tried have all let me down, bigtime. I usually shy away from PvP in games, so naturally I was hesitant to play this one. A few weeks ago, I received it as a gift from my significant other, and finally gave it a shot.

First of all, what worried me the most about this game, was the many many stories I read about joining and being instantly ganked, being killed in their sleep, being griefed, trolled, and every other horrible PvP thing that can possibly happen. So far I just have not experienced this. Maybe I have just been very lucky....but so far I have not yet ran into someone who instantly tried to kill me. Everyone has been friendly, saying hello on voice, offering supplies, and I even met a tribe leader that took me into the tribe to teach me the basics. I just have not seen the toxicity that some other reviews talk about. But again, maybe I just got lucky.

The game is beautiful. A screenshotter's paradise. It is graphics intensive but Im able to play on high without many issues (I get short freezes when I enter a new biome while flying, that's about it). There are also frequent latency issues on the official servers.

Content is added all the time. It seems like every few days there is a new dino being added, and there are pretty much daily updates. I saw many negative reviews that say "the devs don't care", but I am not sure where that idea came from. Maybe I'm missing something, but they seem quite passionate about the game to me.

For me the game is very addictive. It is HARD for me to get "sucked into" a game on Steam. I usually play for about 12 hours and then move on. But so far in Ark I'm at 60 hours and usually log off still wanting to play more.

There are some small things that bug me, and they are kinda silly things...mainly the artistic freedom the devs use on the dinos. I know they said they aren't going for total accuracy, but small things like the Stego having 6 tail spikes instead of 4 makes me roll my eyes. Same with the two downwards-pointing horns on the Ankylo's chin. Just minor things.

Overall for me, the game is one of the best I've played on Steam so far. I am really loving it, and look forward to logging in every night.