I wish I could give this the thumbs up, I really do...But they just won't fix it.

As a fan of both dinosaurs ansd building games there have been times where I have enjoyed Ark tremendously. On private servers where the grind isn't so Draconian it can be very satisfying to make your place in the world building whatever structures you can with a zoo's worth of pets to utilize. The graphics (especially with wildlife) are mostly very good and the gameplay balance is reasonable for a survival themed game.

That being said: Total lack of focus on what matters. As an increasing tide of reviews will tell you bugs, optimisation, and stability all still continue to suffer even after years of development and early access. Whereas they added new content like creatures and blueprints monthly and even a paid dlc during said early access they still can't get the game stable enough to warrant calling it finished and certainly not with the price tag it now carries.

I want to mess around in single player, for example, to test the boundaries of what I can make in a controlled environment with my choice of mods. I have never been able to keep single player running without various crashes sometimes no more than 5 minutes in. In one version of the game I was able to fix it with a command line but sure enough they updated the game a week later and the problem came back. Returning from a few months basence recently I found the updates borked the graphics in a way thet either my game looked terrible orr an terrible with no alternative(which now seems to be handling better but still has undesirable graphical effects). Launching single player again the other night with high hopes I was actually able to play for several hours...But the next day it was back to constant crashing.

Aside from occasionally very hazy/reflective visuals there are still some basic graphical bugs. When I first started playing mining rocks would cause the stone to explode dramatically across hundreds of meters in great pieces that were very distracting. That seems to be toned down but I notice sometimes upon killing dinosaurs their bodies almost do an equivalent version of twisting and stretching in unnatural ways. Being that the game has either been imploding or running like turtle s*** since my attempted return to it I don't even know if they fixed the sun being visible through all terrain (mountains and forests and all) at all times as it sets on the distant side of the map. As for gameplay bugs the most annoying I can think of is thieving dinosaurs who then delete the items they stole from you so it's gone forever even when you avenge yourself.

Multiplayer has always been more stable for me with only fussy server lag and disconnecting instead of outright client death and I will be giving it a swing tonight to see where things stand but it's already at the point where I figure I'll throw it on some backburner to be forgotten for several months until I feel like being disappointed again. When it works, it's fun and I don't regret the time I put into it online with my friends but that was when I bought it on sale early access for $13. If I paid what they ask for it now I'd get a refund.