I've spent an unknown number of hours on this game (and at one time was a top 5 player, briefly - I usually hung out in the top 25-50 crowd). Overall, it's incredible. Strategy, collectible, turn-based, etc. - It's had some ups and downs with development/expansions/abilities and changing of the guard BUT the core of the game that first attracted me continually brings me back every now and then. I'd love to see the game developed more and am thankful the Discord channel appears to be active.

I've played 1,000+ hours on this game- that's insane! I come back and constantly find new stuff. The Dev team for this game is smart enough to constantly update, listen to player feedback, encourage player growth/mods, and, if necessary, hire 3rd parties to improve the game (one of the things many independent studios fail to do btw).

PROS: The fact you can switch between third person and first person is fantastic, especially since both modes have certain strengths/weaknesses (for example I prefer to play 1st person but play 3rd when using mounts). I'm admittedly weird and use predominately a controller with keyboard/mouse to supplement and this game accomodates that! This game is fantastic for single player and local hosting. I am always trying to find new people to game with and constantly enjoy the experiences I have with Ark. The plethora of mods is also a nice benefit as they can change the game dramatically. The Wiki for this game is also pretty boss- much better than most wiki's I see out there.

CONS: The system resources to run the game are kinda high. My computer *can* run the game on Epic, but it gets a little laggy so I usually run on Medium, which is still quite pretty. Also, I'm amazed the dev team, despite normally listening to players, doesn't alter the tame/harvest rates. In normal play (often referred to as "Vanilla"), it takes nearly 4 hours for you to tame a level 1 bronto with the best taming food in the game (kibble) and a level 1 sucks! Dinos normally go from level 1 to 120, with higher dinos taking longer to tame (so you see the concern). BTW, random dino or player comes by and hits your unconscious tame and your dino will be worse when it is tamed due to taming efficiency being reduced. PVP on official server really does sucks as they tend to be dominated by Alpha Tribes but official PvE servers kinda suck as they are stale and dominated by people who want to stake claims to huge territory with no recourse (you can't destroy or unclaim for huge spans of time thanks to the rules of PvE servers). It's for these very reasons that I recommend this game ONLY if you plan on single player mode or private server mode, both of which you can adjust rates/tame times for.