March 2023 Roadmap Edit: Dont buy this: They lied to us about the UE5 update being free, we have to pay 80 dollars for it?!?! Dont buy this. dont play this. dont support this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ company!!!!
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TLDR Version: Don't play it if you are impatient. It is unbeleivably backwards in its design and will make you rage, ALOT. Also It should be renamed to Dino Survivor Server Seller Game.
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Short version: I cant recommend this if your looking for a long term survival game if you don't got the patience for it. However saying that, my own patience is... "very meh" and nearly 4k hours logged into the game. No other game has this concept but its design choices are back-awards as hell.

I would not blame you if you quit after the first 10 hours.

NEVER PLAY ON OFFICIAL SERVERS!!!!!!! I cant stress this enough and I'm probably gonna repeat myself but seriously. This game forces players to grind for **real life weeks** in order to get anywhere. Play with Boosted rates via singleplayer (which i DO NOT recommend btw, playing this game solo) or find a small community server that has a few mods installed.

At the very least just make sure you play it with friends. I absolutely under no circumstance recommend this for Singleplayer/Solo tribe play. Only reason i play it so much is because my friends do, or i would have stopped at 400 hours lmao. Love you guys <3
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Long version:

Honest to god you really have to play the game in order to understand why players like me with nearly 4k hours are not recommending this game. (which btw those hours are mostly spent in loading screens and standing still while things tame). The term "Ark'd" is on urban dictionary for crying out loud. It basically means you get screwed over by really crappy game design. Not because its a bad deisign, its because its a bad choice to put it in the game!

You really have to be a different breed of Patient in order to play Ark.../ its a buggy, awkward and F***king annoying mess of a game. HOWEVER the concept ALONE is probably the only reason this game is so popular. No other survival dinosaur game exists were you can tame and ride on the back of *a* FREAKING T-REX!!!!! Or lead a pack of raptors or direwolves!! Or a freaking DRAGON!! (dont call them that tho, people get really angry when you call Wyverns 'dragons' those people can screw off but dont bother with them)

No other game has a concept like this. And its quite sad its the only reason its selling. Cause like i said its a weird and awkward mess that geniunely eats at your sanity. NEVER EVER EVER PLAY ON OFFICAL!!!! Find a small unofficial community that has boosted rates. The game is intentionally grindy so Wildcard can sell servers to people; longer players are at the game, more servers they need, more money for wildcard. And i ment it at the beginning. Tts very very obvious this game was designed to sell servers to the players that play them (at first).

This is because Wildcard has made absolutely 0 effort to fix very long standing issues with the game. Taming makes no sense when you think about it, most creatures are completely braindead just wandering aimlessly. The effing .exe file is STILL called ShooterGame.exe for crying out loud!! That goes back to before they got the idea to make it a survival game for god sakes!!! The pathetic attempts to curb optimisation? don't even get me started. Even the RTX 3080 struggles with this game, thats all ill say. (And why the **EFFING HELL** did they release a Moblie version??!?!)

Anyway, The addition of new content is great dont get me wrong, they said they were gonna stop after Extintion but then 2 more DLC's (albiet Part 1 is pretty lousy), 3 free TLC updates, a kibble rework, a Building overhaul (thats honestly kinda "meh") and 3 Free Maps with 3 Free new creatures each? Holy crap thats awesome. And later the game is getting a remake in the Unreal 5 Engine (which while cool also has me concerned, they are doing this at the same time they are making Ark 2, the exact same dev team. and thats... just not right. Devs that work on 2 games at once end in failiure, look at DICE with Battlefield V and Star Wars Battlefront 2. Both games had there live service cut short.

Regardless, the new content doesn't fix old problems and each time a new content update rolls out they seem to add things that could be solutions to old problems, like awkward taming mechanics. It makes absolutely no freaking sense that after tranquillising a creature, force feeding it for up to a few real life hours, then it all off a sudden can be bent to your every single whim... Its just... awkward and makes animals feel like glorified vehicles. Instead the new content makes you wish the older things could be reworked into something like that. Take the new Charcardontosaurus (i think thats how its spelt). Basically a Rex on steriods, you cant knock it out to tame it, you have to bring carcasses of other dinos to "offer" to it, and when it "trusts" you enough, you can hop on its back and continue to tame it by killing everything. **THAT IS AWWWWESOME!!!* and.... why cant we do that with Rex? Or Gigas? or like many other creatures... why are we still stuck with this awkward Knockout Tame thing?

You would have to look into Mods to fix things like this, such as the ever so amazing Immersive Taming mod, completely overhauls taming in the game and basically makes most things tame like the Chardonto does. (sorta) you actually have to sorta "build bonds" with wild creatures before you have absolute control. You leave bags of food around the thing you wanna tame and it will realise your feeding it and keep following you around. As the progress goes up it even starts defending you from other creatures. then when the "taming" is complete, only then do you have the same level of control Vanilla taming gives

like i said earlier, It just kinda sucks that animals are treated like glorified vehicles.
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In conclusion...... honest to god the only reason its my most played game is because most of my friends play it. it can be Alot of fun with friends but, the game is incredible rage inducing. which sucks because the concept alone is just so freaking cool. Its kinda sad that a game has only sold this well soley on its concept alone.

(edited as a remake)

This was the first game since Assassin's Creed Unity that made me go "Holy F&%$ Those graphics!"

This is a seriously beautiful game in literally every aspect. Story, Gameplay, Graphics, Animations, Sound Design (minus weapons), AI, Water Physics, Voice Acting JUST~~~ AAHHH it's so pretty!!!

I could go on all day about the graphics so ill just say I've seen this game on a basic Xbox One and holy crap. it geniunely rivals PC the only problem was the framerate (locked at 30 on Console). But There is something about the animations in particular, You can see the muscles on horses flexing and moving and honestly its unsettling the first time you see it. Even peoples faces lack that Plastic Rubbery look most games have these days. Even games that came out in 2022 look worse and this game came out in 2018.

The Story is something else too Set in 1899 its an interesting perspective on a Gang of Outlaws that are at the end of the "Old West" Era, Laws are becoming significantly more enforced and criminal gangs are being wiped out en mass by the Pinkerton Agency, a real life US Goverment agency that basically became the earliest version's of the FBI. You play as Arthur Morgan, the right hand man and 1 of 3 founders of the Van der Lin Gang, fleeing west after a bank heist gone horrible wrong. No spoilers again but I think Arthur is hands down Rockstar Games single most interesting and dynamic character. Bar none. Maybe even one of the most interesting in Video Games

But then, Mulitplayer.... oh boy. 3 words: Totally Wasted Potential. Rockstar and Take2 have abandoned this game there hasnt been a content update since November 2021.

Why? Because Grand Theft Auto Online exists. GTA got 7 content updates after Red Dead Online's support basically ended. Its super obvious that Rockstar and/or Take2 does not care about RDR2 in anyway shape or form because well look at what I just wrote. They will keep milking that cash cow until Grand Theft Auto 6.

I only recommend this game for its Singleplayer, Multiplayer is an empty shell of what could be one of the most amazing multiplayer experiences of all time. But no they want to sell children Shark Cards instead.

Singleplayer: 9/10
Multiplayer: 7/10 but quickly drops to 3.