ARK: Survival Ascended Reviews

This is one of those engrossing time suck games that, with a few tweaks from the default settings becomes a really fantastic PvE experience which is how I play it. You can play it online, but that's not my jam. I haven't run into any of the performance issues others here bring up, but Ascended did have a rocky roll out in that way. In 2026 its quite polished and the developers are adding to it over time. The Island map alone is plenty of value for the price tag the game is offered at. Expect to die a lot at first, but as you begin to identify the game loop you will be less likely as a beach Bob to be taken out by a pack of raptors. (Hint: make sure to learn bolas). Eventually you will tame and breed a dino army to begin the boss fights. Beat all 4 and ascend to the next ark. Or chill, relax, and build the most epic cliff side base down near herbavore Island, or a series of tree bases in the red woods. This game is that canvas for you.

Although I feel like this game should have been a free upgrade for owners of ASE, It's still a really great game, with lots of good upgrades. First of all, this game runs better on my computer than the original does, which is wild considering the difference in graphics. And in terms of nice upgrades, they overhauled the building system, and I personally like it way better now. On top of that, there are now wild baby dinos which is really cool. alright that's all I have to say, peace.

Get rid of premium mods please. That system's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ garbage. I see a cool server with some cool mods? "Oh you better pay $15 to download two mods" WHY THE HELL IS THIS EVEN A THING?? ASE WAS TOTALLY FINE WITH STEAM WORKSHOP MODS BEING A THING, BUT NOOOOOO ♥♥♥♥ US I GUESS. I've already paid $40 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DOLLARS for this game back when it launched in hopes of supporting the devs for their future endeavors and what do we get? Every interesting piece of content locked behind a paywall because they can never get enough from us. Want to experience some of the new dinos? Buy Lost Colony or Bob's for over $60 total, BASICALLY A WHOLE AAA GAME ON TOP OF WHAT I'VE ALREADY SPENT. It's downright predatory. I was really looking forward to playing this again since it had some updates since it launched, but I cannot even experience most of the servers because of the amount of money I need to spend on TOP OF A GAME I'VE ALREADY PAID FOR. Hell no. The devs have no respect for us whatsoever : )

i really like the game since you can ride,tame,kill.fight and even more like the originall ark survival evolved,but please,before you buy the game,wait a bit for the price to go down because paying 60 dollars for a game that lag and crash pretty much is not worth it

I love building bases, taming and fighting dinosaurs, and exploring. This game is wonderful for that. The advantages over Ark Survival Evolved that most leap out to me are as follows: -The creatures have slightly more behaviors than having herbivores simply wander aimlessly, or having carnivores be mindless murder machines with black holes for stomachs. -There are baby creatures wandering around you can tame easily, and even gain imprint bonuses on (if you can get them to safety) once their parents are no longer around. -There are more creatures. -The game has the potential to be prettier (though it's very demanding on system resources, and in today's economy, that can be a problem.) -You can easily pick up and move structures, rather than having to rebuild or demolish things for a refund if you misplace something, or want to change your base around later. -There's slightly more effort put into a story you can discover through exploration. However, it's important to note that most of these benefits are ones you can get from mods in ASE. This makes it a little more streamlined, however, and you don't need to mess around with mods, if that's a source of frustration to you. It's also important to note that the Devs are very unscrupulous. They put features from their DLCs into the game's menus, allowing you to see what's there and make it look like something available, but you can't use it until you buy the DLC. They also include creatures on the maps that can absolutely attack you, but you can't do much with them other than kill them unless you have their corresponding DLCs. You might not discover that, however, until you're trying to figure out how to tame one from running across it in the wilderness.

I spawn in. I punch a tree. I got pegged by a raptor gang. 10/10 game

This game is like getting shot then dipping your wound in salt water, but ever since i lost my girlfriend I play it to feel something again.

I love hating this game. I thought I was done with this godforsaken game made by con artists. But then my wife's co-workers talked about playing and through tintoberry colored glasses we fooled ourselves into thinking that was a good idea. This game is worse than I remember and somehow runs worse. I have to boot up twice to get anything to run and I can feel myself age playing this game as it sucks me drier than a wyvern's milk gland. The beyond cool DLC tames (that should be FREE, considering the state of this game and all the dino ♥♥♥♥ they make you wade through) show how creative the team behind this game can be and I hope that one day they will make a game worth the money so more people can play, or just ya know release the sequel. Screw you Ark, I'll see you tomorrow you sunnofabitch.

Terribly optimised. Cant play the game above lowest settings, even then i experience constant fps drops

As an Ark player from console with over 5,000 hours since 2016, I've watched this game evolve tremendously. Unfortunately, despite all that time and development, many of its biggest problems remain unchanged. At its core, Ark is an incredibly fun game. Whether you play on private servers, PvE, or official PvP like I do, there's a playstyle for everyone. Ark: Survival Ascended has added new creatures, DLC content, and several quality-of-life improvements that genuinely make the game better. The problem is that these additions also highlight what's wrong with the game: greed, poor priorities, and a shocking lack of technical polish. I bought Ark on Steam to play with friends, only to discover I couldn't properly interact with certain creatures and structures because I didn't own specific DLC. Instead of offering optional content, the game often feels like it's pressuring players to spend more money just to access features that others in their tribe can use. Some DLC items even provide significant advantages on official PvP servers, making the experience feel increasingly pay-to-win. My biggest complaint, however, is performance. This has been an issue since the console days and somehow still hasn't been solved. In just 15 hours of playing on PC, I've experienced more crashes than I can count. I'm running a capable system, have spent time troubleshooting, and even play on low settings with optimized INI files. The problem isn't my hardware—it's the game. Ark remains plagued by crashes, bugs that have existed for years, bloated updates that take forever to patch, and technical issues that seem to be treated as normal by the community. The most recent update reportedly caused some players to lose their characters entirely, wiping out countless hours of progress. Rather than focusing on fixing critical issues, Wildcard continues pushing out new DLC, often in an unfinished state and at an additional cost. I genuinely wish I could recommend Ark. Few games have created as many memorable moments for me, and the core gameplay is still something special. But when a game struggles to meet basic standards of stability and performance after all these years, I can't endorse it. Ark is the best terrible game I've ever played. TL;DR: Great concept, amazing memories, terrible optimization, questionable monetization, and years of unresolved technical issues. Don't buy it expecting a polished experience. Wait for optimization—and then wait a little longer, because it probably isn't coming.