I'm going to post the negatives of Ark Ascended first: too many dinos are excessively aggressive towards you, and when you get killed by something that also destroys all your equipment at the same time, that sucks. But it is also part of the fun of Ark. You are in a perilous land, and you must build up resources and make dino-buddies in order to conquer the land. With time, you slowly progress to the point where death becomes less likely (though still it is always a threat). You learn what areas are dangerous, and where *not* to build a base. You learn where the resources are, and how to gather them more effectively. You start taming stronger and stronger dinos, and exploring more and more dangerous places.

You WILL suffer setbacks. You will lose beloved dino friends. You will lose in a fight you thought you had easily, and in the process lose lots of valuable things. But those things are all mostly replaceable (not you though Cera the Triceratops, you will always be remembered for your sacrifice against the giga that allowed the base to live on). You will gain stories to share with other Ark Survivors.

Eventually, you will wade into the depths of the oceans. You will die lots. You will die excessively. You will drown, be eaten, be electrocuted, be grabbed and tossed about like a rag doll. And eventually, you will reach a point in the oceans where......all those threats are still constant and never-ending. Look, the worst thing about Ark is the oceans. You have electric eels who are waaaaaaay too aggressive that will agro from 27 miles away to come electrocute you and your tames to death. You have jellyfish who will also shock you and your tames to death. You have sharks who will also agro from 27 miles away to come eat you and your tames to death. Giant squids, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, dunkleosteus, angler fish, mantas, all of them will agro on you. Unlike on land where there's a general balance between herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore, in the ocean the only docile/non-aggressive creatures are carbonemys, ichthyosaurus, and basilosaurus. The rest of the things in the ocean are CONSTANTLY TRYING TO EAT YOU AND YOU GET NO REPRIEVE FROM IT EVER AT ALL EVEN IF YOU FIND AN AREA THAT SEEMS RELATIVELY FREE OF DANGER THE OCEANS SUCK IN THIS GAME BECAUSE THEY ARE UNFUN. If anybody from Studio Wildcard is reading this, please, make the oceans more vibrant, and add about 10 more ocean dinos that are specifically not aggressive to balance the population of stuff in the ocean so the ocean feels like an ecosystem and not a carnivorous orgy at all times. At least the basilosaurus is hands down the best ocean tame because it can't be grabbed, electrocuted, and can effectively take on all other ocean nasties with no issue. They added the Shastasaurus to the game which isn't dangerous and safe to be around, but the problem is that all the other nasties will still attack it, making it ineffective as a mobile base. If they made it so that lower tier aggressors didn't attack literally everything all the time (like make the eels, manta, and maybe megalodons leave the Shastasaurus, mosasaur and plesiosaur alone like how a raptor leaves a rex alone), the oceans would also be more manageable and fun

All in all, Ark is a fun game, but it is a game of suffering for fun. I thoroughly enjoy Ascended, and think it is better than Evolved. I have thousands of hours in Evolved and Ascended is just Evolved but better. Totally worth the purchase (plus all the original base DLC from evolved is slowly but surely being ported over for free).

Definitely a recommend from me.

I understand this game is in early access, but I cannot recommend this game. In theory it sounds like the game I want - a classic style MMO where grouping is encouraged, death awaits around every turn, and you feel a real sense of progression. However, this game fails on these fronts.

First, the combat is horrendously slow. I'm down with a slower GCD, but there's no reason why, on top of the GCD, all of my abilities have cast times or cooldowns longer than the GCD. But that issue isn't so bad as you gain more skills. Except mana regeneration is atrocious - you MUST rest after every single fight, or you wont have the juice to take on the next enemy. And resting isn't something where you channel for 5 or even ten seconds and are ready to go again - you must sit, be vulnerable, and wait as your mana ticks up ever so slowly. As a fourth level character, I was sitting and resting sometimes up to a minute between each combat encounter. That time adds up, and there's nothing to do while resting.

Oh, and it's not obvious if enemies are your level or not at a glance. You have to examine every enemy to determine if you can fight it, fight it but come out at near death, or be killed by it quickly. Don't worry, examining an enemy is just a quick press of a button, no cast time or cooldown, so you could just tab, inspect, tab, inspect, tab inspect everything in quick order. It feels tedious to have to do for every single mob. And just because one mob of one type is an even match, doesn't mean the others nearby will be. And woe betide you if you accidentally pull one that is an even match, but it pulls multiple other nearby 'friends' that will overpower you quickly and kill you.

Now, ordinarily, I think that death should be something games discourage you away from - if death has no consequences, death has no meaning. A lot of modern games go too far away from death having consequences. Personally, I always liked the penalty of corpse runs, or losing durability, or even losing some items or gold upon death. However, in Pantheon, they decided death should be incredibly punishing. You lose quite a good chunk of XP, drop all gear that is not equipped, and unless you died right next to a major settlement will probably have a lengthy run to collect your stuff - note that it isn't a corpse run, as you respawn at full health. You have to make it back to your body again without dying, get your stuff, then get out without dying. It's an excessive penalty. They could stand to get rid of dropping items, or add a proper corpse run where your ghost has to get to your body. Or they could just drop the XP penalty loss.

On top of all of that, the questing is atrocious as well. I'm all fine for having to read the quest text to figure out what to do, but the quests don't tell you where to go (some do). I had a quest to go kill some goblins - sounds easy. But there was no directional advisement. I ran around for 30 minutes trying to find the camps, constantly getting attacked by aggressive mobs I stumbled across, dying, having to figure out where my corpse was to retrieve my stuff, and grinding to gain up my XP I had lost before continuing the search.

Speaking of trying to find things, there's no in game maps. No world map, no minimap. There's no intention by the devs to add a map of any kind - not even a map you can only access in town or anything like that. But helpfully you have a compass! It's the kind of compass you'd get as a child - it tells you the cardinal directions, which is great! But only if you know which direction you need to go for something.

And gathering is awful too. In order to gather, you have to just right click on the resource to be gathered. Sounds simple, right? And it is! And that would be fine, except gathering some carrots out of the ground is a 20 second cast time. Skinning a frog? Another 20 second cast time. Chopping down a tree? You guessed it, 20 second cast time. The fun thing is that you aren't regenerating any health or mana while you are gathering either, so it's even more time spent doing literally NOTHING.

And that's my biggest complaint with the game. It has a lot of mechanics that are designed to waste your time because apparently wasting your time is what makes a game fun.

Look, I'm not some person who needs instant gratification every second for every action. I enjoy and play games like WoW Classic, Lord of the Rings Online, and Final Fantasy XI. But if you want an MMO with outdated mechanics that waste your time, play Everquest. It's still running all these years later and is what this game is trying to be