Recent reviews by lucariogamer

I want to start off by saying that this game can be a whole lot of fun. Sometimes.

The real problem with Ark is that the fun is constantly broken up by long stretches of mind numbing grinding and tedium that is made all the worse by conscious design decisions that seem to WANT to be annoying.

Carry limits and high item weights make it so several collection trips are needed to craft anything, especially crafted items you need a lot of, like bullets and housing structures such as walls. Constant stamina usage can make underwater exportation a hassle. Taming dinosaurs, a main feature of the game, often takes quite a long time, even for lackluster dinos. The fact that there's a time limit where you can't respawn at a bed once it's been used by you or another player is such a baffling choice, made all the more confusing by the fact that dying once can tend to lead to a lot more deaths, especially because of how the death system works.

Once you die all items in your inventory are dropped where you were. The time limit on respawning at beds means that a simple trip to retrieve items lost on death can result in having to randomly respawn around the map on subsequent deaths. If that happens a random dino near your spawn or where your dropped items are can turn this into a frustrating cycle of endless dying.

These are only a few of the many gripes with this game that absolutely bog down much of the fun there is to be had. Playing this can be a great time, especially with friends, server settings that alleviate the grind a bit, and mods that change some of the numerous flaws. However, even with all of those the unavoidable long grinds and the sheer imbalance of the overall gameplay make this game more of a chore to play most of the time rather than something to enjoy.

This game really does suck you in more than anything else I've ever played. Everyone who plays it has such a high play time for a good reason. Get this game if you like strategy games and don't mind spending several hundred hours playing. Just one more turn isn't a joke, it's a warning.