Buddy of mine started playing a couple months ago, right after release. He raved about the game but I was hesitant. It went on sale and he bought me a copy. Now I'm about 40 hours in and love it. It's everything DayZ could have been but wasn't, right out of the gate (instead of 4 years of EA). It's still early but the game has a ton of promise and is fun to play. Map will be huge by the time they are done. Base building is grindy but not overly so. AI patrols/military are a real challenge, especially at first.

I've played a ton of EA titles and this one has been one of, if not the, most fun to play right out of the gate.

Did you like ARK?

Do you like pirates?

Have you discovered the magic of an unofficial server?

If YES to all three, buy the game, find a good server community, and pirate your face off.

EDITED FROM AN EARLIER POSITIVE REVIEW

EDIT 9/29/17: I run a private server (hosted through Vilayer), and promote said server in order to try to do my part to keep this game alive. According to the Steam chart website, the game is down to a peak of roughly 130 players per day. It has steadily gone down since release, unfortunately.

My point is that I have tried to do my part (after starting out negatively) to promote the game and get others to play it.

Today, the devs released a new patch that essentially broke the game. Tamed animals saw their HP nerfed by 90% or so, making them basically unusable for fear of them getting killed by weak, low-level mobs. Flying speed for all flying types (brooms and potions) was severely nerfed, to the point where my character can run faster than he can fly. Neither of these things was addressed in the patch notes, so it was an unpleasant surprise logging into the game tonight.

Later, a dev admitted that the flying nerf was overdone, a mistake, and that they would test it "internally" and possibly fix it in a later patch. My claim regarding tames being nerfed was met with incredulity, despite several other posts from players saying the same thing.

Devs said they would be introducing new content almost every week; last "new content" was three patches ago and consisted of an overhyped NPC that was riduclously underpowered (and so, so easy to kill for any level player). Basically fluff.

I know this is a small dev team, and lord knows I've done my best to support them, but the game is unplayable in its current state. I don't know what else to say. Two months in and it appears the devs are out of ideas and/or lack a clear roadmap of how to proceed. Very frustrating as the game has so, so much promise.

EDIT 8/28/17: Many of the Official servers have experienced major stability issues due to what appears to be game engine/rendering/PhysX issues. The devs have worked hard to do what they can, and still seem committed to the game long-term. I'm still enjoying the game immensely, and when my Official server is down, I've tried various private servers to get my "fix." In the long run, I'm hopeful they'll get the bugs worked out and make this game what it appears it can be.

Original: My first review of this game was negative due to the AMD "low level fatal error" debacle. Devs *finally* fixed it up and now the game seems accessible to most players.

I've got around 30 hours in-game so far. FPS isn't where it needs to be, but I have some faith that the devs will get it optimized as time goes on. One minor troubling thing to me is that the devs seem reluctant to push out hotfixes; we've had, on average, a patch every 5 days or so since release. Other EA games I've played (ARK, Conan, etc.) seemed to push out hotfixes daily, if not hourly (esp ARK). These devs don't, for whatever reason, which means that older (existing) bugs persist, and bugs that come with new content aren't immediately addressed.

The game itself is a blast to play, but the grind can be real. It all depends on how you play the game. If you're a "prepper" type like me, you tend to grind for mana, mats, etc., to be prepared for cave runs and the like.

I like where the game is now a month after release, and look forward to what comes in the future!

UPDATE: After a few more hundred hours of gameplay, I would recommend this game now, but ONLY on modded (private) servers.

Cars are still wonky (esp on high-pop servers), and DayZ is always gonna DayZ, but the opening of the game to the modding community has made the base game configurable to any server owner/admin's playstyle. Whatever type of game experience you are looking for, you can likely find among the thousands of private servers that are available today.

When this game first came out, it was quasi-revolutionary, especially given the *way* that it looked, the feel of it, the gameplay, the loot, and, oh yes, the zombies. Here we are almost three years later, and what has the journey looked like?