ARK: Survival Ascended

After playing Ark: Survival Evolved and buying into the hope that Ark: Survival Ascended would be a true upgrade, I can say without hesitation: no, it is not better. In fact, it’s significantly worse. We were led to believe this “upgrade” would bring improved graphics and quality-of-life enhancements—that was the whole reason many of us were willing to buy the same game again. We wanted to support the developers and enjoy a better-looking, smoother experience. Instead, what we got was a game that still suffers from the same bugs as ASE, along with a whole slew of new ones. And to make matters worse, the only way to get ASA running at a remotely playable level is by turning down the graphics so far that it ends up looking just like ASE did years ago. Wildcard Studios and Snail Games seem more interested in chasing quick cash than creating a quality, lasting experience. If they have long-term goals, they clearly have no intention of following through. To anyone considering buying this game: let me be honest—the concept is incredible, and the game could be amazing. But the execution and technical work simply aren't there. Unless there's a major change in leadership or ownership, this game will never reach its full potential. Save your money, your sanity, and your time. Play one of the many other games out there that actually run well, play well, and respect your investment. If the day ever comes that Snail Games or Wildcard lose the rights to the IP, there might be hope. Until then—do yourself a favor and steer clear.

Instead of constantly releasing new expansions and DLCs that are exclusively “pay to win”, developers should rather focus on optimizing the game itself to bring new or old players back to play and thereby generate profit.

Constant crashes since todays update, my pc is running 6400mhz 32gb ram, 9800x3d cpu and 5080 gpu and the game is crashing every 5 minutes. Extremely dissapointing to spend $70 aud, plus the extra for DLC's only to get a game that runs worse with every update

[b]TL;DR:[/b] I do recommend but with caveats. Wait for a sale if you're not interested in Official Server Play. The only benefit to buying full price at this point is early access to materials as they drop (and thus official servers for early land claim) or supporting the developers if you're really into them. [h2] Long Version [/h2] I would give this game not really a thumbs up but not really a thumbs down and there's several reasons that go into this. I've played both ARK Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended enough time that I feel able to give this sort of review at this point. [b] Let's start with the Good: [/b] [list] [*] Unreal Engine 5.5 is the current engine of the game as of this review. (I may update this in the future but unlikely.) It has resulted in a gorgeous game visually. [*] The developers are releasing all of the maps and content that were originally DLC (paid and free) for ARK SE as free updates to ARK SA, meaning for the box price you are getting everything that came with ARK Survival Evolved (eventually, they have just dropped Ragnarok as of this review, with Gen 1/2, Fjordur, Crystal Isles, and Valguero still to come among a few others. [*] There is new content being added to ASA that is not going to be added to ASE, including new gameplay benefits, creatures, and cross-platform mod support. [*] Development is active, with a pretty active community and a healthy unofficial community as well. [*] Crossplatform mods also give rise to Premium mods, are very easy to install from within the game and tend to work... most of the time, with some whitelisted to work on Official Servers! [*] The developers do maintain an active official network where those who can't afford to rent their own servers or prefer to play with others outside of SP can do so. [/list] [b] Now to the Bad: [/b] [list] [*] There are still bugs present in the base game that have existed since ASE, the reasons for these vary, but while some has been fixed not all of it has. If you were hoping for a less buggy game I'm afraid that classic ARK jank is still present. [*] The game has been optimized repeatedly since it's initial early access release, but it is still pretty hard on older rigs. I would recommend making sure you have updated hardware. [*] No Steam Deck support due to the aforementioned hardware requirements. You can get it to run, it just won't run well. [*] MTX. You can call it DLC and it functionally is, but $5 here, $5 there, that's a microtransaction and there's a significant number of them. [*] The arrival of crossplatform mods has also meant the arrival of premium mods that you also pay for. This isn't really a sticking point for me, as I love supporting passionate individuals but it is a turnoff to some, especially with many premium mods starting at $5 USD for varying quality. [*] Though the Official Network is fairly healthy, the developers have begun a pattern of sunsetting inactive official servers, potentially leading to progress loss for those who don't manage to get their characters off onto a different official server. They do kindly offer the saves themselves so you can play with them on SP or load them onto a personal server cluster, but this has been a point of contention for the community. [*] The additional DLC that provides gameplay changes as well as unique creatures to tame can be pretty expensive. Overall I have been a longtime ark fan even if I wasn't around for the 'beta' days. I enjoy the game but I fully admit that it's not a game for everyone. It can be buggy, and if you play on officials (and even then) it can be extremely unforgiving when something bugs out, or you lose progress etc due to server troubles. The game has gotten better from its initial release, but that doesn't mean its perfect and as of writing this review it is still in early access and adding yet more content at a pretty blistering pace while translating over older content from ARK SE. As far as the promised content goes, I do believe that promise is being kept pretty admirably but for a lot of other people I fully understand the anger regarding the costs. It is worth emphasizing that the exorbitant cost of this game is all in optional content that has come across as Pay-to-Win because the creatures involved are very powerful, but locked behind these DLC Passes. If you are someone who thrives in PvP and were hoping for fair fighting grounds, I'd argue this game is not for you unless you have $$$. Even among PvErs though, the game is costly if you want some of the really cool critters. This is why I recommend purchasing on a sale if you really want to get into it with all the bells and whistles. to me it's not worth the value that I myself have paid out over time so far. As of this writing, total cost to enjoy this game at full price with all new things: (rounded to nearest whole dollar) Base Cost: $45 Bob's Tall Tales: $30 Fantastic Tames Pyromane: $5 Fantastic Tames Dreadmare: $5 Fantastic Tames Drakeling: $5 (after LC release) Partner Map Astraeos: $15 (The only map where Maeguanas, a reptilian version of the Maewing that was released as an early access baby trough spawn naturally. Otherwise an optional community map developed by a modder working along with WC as a partner.) Lost Colony Expansion Pass (currently w/Veilwyn and Drakeling): $30 USD (Drakeling will be sold separately after LC releases and Veilwyn is only temporarily available until the LC map releases which is its otherwise exclusive spawn.) There is additional optional content released by WC in regards to cosmetics, one which is available on Steam STore, the other which I've seen on their internal Overwolf Premium Mod offering: - Power Rangers Official Cosmetics: $10-20 USD total (not super positive on this one, I feel like the price changed for it.) - Official ARK Show Cosmetics: $15 USD Without these cosmetics and just the main creature DLC though you are still looking at $135 USD just to keep up with their pace of releases and have access to genuinely GAMECHANGING mechanics and devices. Things like a gestation incubator, the ability to tame Pyromanes or Dreadmares or Armadoggos etc, all of which naturally spawn on the otherwise free base maps, the ability to use special mechanics like the shovel from bob's tall tales to hunt for treasure and dig it up. Or even the ability to access new lore notes related to the expansions. To be perfectly clear there is plenty of reason to be upset at this level of gameplay being locked behind additional paywalls, but this content also goes several steps BEYOND what was initially promised with ASA, which was simply bringing ARK SE forward in terms of technology and engine. They have accomplished that portion, and as a company need to continue funding development so to an extent I understand it. However it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many players, myself included when we go beyond the occasional $5 release and announce more 20+ USD expansions. I love the game and I'll still support it at the end of the day, but I won't say the anger is unjustified to an extent. [b] Overall my verdict is that if you're new to ark, then starting here is a great point, because you won't really have much background context or even nostalgia to be furious over. If not though, then maybe wait for a sale.[/b] It will save you a lot of money in the long run, and unless you're competing for early fight rights or land on the Official Network it genuinely does you no harm. There's a healthy unofficial server community that caters to a vast array of interests and time availabilities so I'm positive you will find someone or someplace to hang out, and if you're a Single PLayer then there's already a vast amount of content available to you before the DLCs that you can chew on until you're ready to purchase. Until then, I tentatively recommend the game, but with some very heavy air quotes around recommend.

awful developer, filled with money grabs, unannounced delays, awkward DLC, and zero commitment to anything great. avoid

honestly this game runs so bad but its addicting so do what you want with this information

Game's def got a rep, tons of bugs, exploits, and server issues. But despite all that, it’s still my favorite game. When it works, it’s hella fun. Just know what you’re signing up for!

Well... where to begin. This game is bad. Plain and simple and I regret I spent the money and time on it. It was barely playable when it got released, it is absolutely unplayable now, unless you have NASA level pc and even then there is no guarantee. I've dumped over 1.5 years into this game, gone through all the maps released up till now, seen all the content and here is my humble conclusion: Optimisation - none. I have a good pc and the latest Ragranork map makes me have less than 20 fps regardless of what I do. And that is not my problem personally. All the people in my tribe have this problem. Especially since 5.5 update. I don't know who the developers hired, but they need to go and relearn their profession. Gameplay - I don't play pve, so I can't really give any assessment there. But the pvp side I can comment. The game is dead. It is precisely what happened to the previous ark. People systematically exterminate all player life on server. Then live there alone until the server is closed because nobody plays there. New paid DLC - I don't even know what to say here, honestly. Only profanities come to mind. When they released astraeos it was literally 1/3 complete. Now they release the paid dlc with a skill tree. And lots of pay to win dlc before that. All the while systematically making the game worse and worse with each patch they roll. Overall, the game had potential. But the devs killed it. Hundreds upon hundreds of posts on steam, reddit, discord and many other platforms scream at devs to stop spewing out dlc and other money grabs and simply fix the game. They never did and they never will. All the graphics in the trailers is simply false advertisement that you will never see in game. So, anybody still thinking whether to buy it - my sincere advice, spend your money elsewhere. It's not worth it.

My PC meets the recommended specs, yet the game is non functional. 0/10

go play Ark Survival Evolved for free..... i have a 12 cors cpu, a 4070 super and 40+ gb rams, and since their "major" update of 5.5 the games crashing for EVERYONE after 10minutes - 2 hours. the devs response to this is adding P2W DLC for £30 and then 30 minutes later cancell ragnarok release ( wildcard have NEVER met a deadline / release date) Save your money, as everything here is avaliable via mods on ASE. lets add that if you went onto official servers to play, there is a tribe called Tea and they are snail game employees and customers, who cheat, hack and are ALLOWED to by WC! look it up on YT if you think i am joking, theres enough examples on there without any bans ..... well there is bans, but it will be your entire account if you raid them. AVOID ! SAVE YOUR MONEY! WC DO NOT CARE ANYMORE !

Playing on Official sucks, Unofficial is way more fun but get ready for way more server wipes and buggy mods. Overall, the game feels like Evolved but with more quality-of-life features and better graphics. Unfortunately, they are slowly releasing the old maps and we don't have Ark 2 yet. Perpetually unfinished plans seems to be the motto for Studio Wildcard. 6/10.

Have played on and off since release and was happy with the game until Ragnarok launched now i blue screen and my computer crashes and i cannot play. Still waiting on an update to fix this so I can play the new map. Now I push play on the game and it just crashes my computer lol.....wow

Great game completely ruined by executives. Partnering with Nitrado and giving them monopole was a big mistake, they have the worst servers. I strongly don't recommend to buy their d-tier servers. Anyone buying them is throwing money away.

Oh how the game has fallen... A once great game now RIDDLED with hackers... You can still play PVE and enjoy the game How ever the PVP side of this game is done forever... They sold out instead of listening to the gamer's playing the game... They had 2 things they needed to fix before they conned the entire player base into paying for the same game with better graphics... They needed to fix 1) The meshing and 2) The Hacking... Instead they're now milking the dwindling number of faithful gamer's left... They have taken to forcing the player to buy Mini DLC's that are needed to keep up with anyone that has them... So you don't have to buy them, but if you don't your going to get outclassed by anyone who does buy them... PAY TO WIN disguised as a choice... Let us learn from our mistakes and let this company fail and never buy into the years of Lies and postponing... A company like this doesn't deserve such a loyal player base... Rant over... Thanks for the fun times everyone!!!!

You run a sale for your company with a pop up on steam saying "up to 80% off our games" and you INCLUDE ASA as a game you sell, and it isn't even discounted 1%, you try shilling ASE which you stopped official support for months ago, the more expensive DLC bundle for ASE, and some other games you sell no one has ever cared about, it is pathetic to bait people in with a photo of your main title adverting a huge discount sale and not even discounting the only game anyone cares for, that you bought by the way, because you're a terrible developer.

Wildcards thinks that we are some sort of TESTERS not an PLAYERS that buy game! Every patch brokes game at all, so you just CAN't even play. They DONT even fix bugs that been at ark evolved.... They just transfer them to ASA and make new bugs every patches and dont want to fix them.... They just scam us, they dont care about ARK community at all! It's brobably will be last game i buy from WildCards studios!!!!! :steamfacepalm:

Long Story short: In my first 4 hours of gameplay, the game crashed 3 times. Played to long for a refund, so i unistalled this Pile of Garbage and cried myself to sleep. Would i recommend this game to other players? Hell no! ASE never got fixed, so waiting in belive that ASA will get a better treatment is just stupidity by Definition.

I wish I could refund this garbage. I was a longtime Ark fan and I hate where Snail Trail Games has taken this franchise. They are milking a dying husk dry. I bought an upgraded version of the game after buying every DLC of the previous game just for them to charge for more DLC on top of not finishing the game that they already promised. All of the additions should have been included in the base price of the game. Do not support this shitty company.

I've played Ark: Survival Ascended for 466 hours, and i can't recommend it to anyone. Most of the time of me playing I was forced to deal with bug issues. You and your tames die to fps drop, lag, and buggy issues stupidly. Some days I couldn't even play because the game couldn't find my server, and you're forced to trouble shoot the issues by yourself. It's a great game.. or it COULD be, i wanted it to be. The frustrations make the game not worth it, not worth the time you spend trying to play what should be a great game. Because of those frustrations, i cannot recommend anyone play this game. Or at least, if you want to, just remember that you'll encounter a lot of bugs, lag, fps drop, and stupid deaths that will make you want to uninstall because those deaths are due to the bugs lag and fps drops.

Filled with bugs, many of which are game breaking. I lost my save of 10 hours due to bugged crystal nodes, which could not be mined. Found out after I already had deleted that save that a workaround for some nodes could be used (crouch to hit them, it probably won't work on some of the nodes). Nearly unplayable performance, even after the Unreal engine update. All the while, Wildcard continues to release paid content, paid mods, and pay to win creatures. Steam should NOT allow such practices, and until these issues are fixed, I cannot recommend this game to most players. I'll probably put a lot of hours into it, but buyer beware, studio is scummy asf.

Graphical mess

I have an 7900 XTX with 24 GB of VRAM and on High I am stuttering and lagging like hell. I also have an AMD Ryzen 9 7800x and I cannot even run this game on high graphics. This game really needs to optimize. PS: Even on low I was lagging like crap.

Imma gonna keep this one simple. Don't waste your money. Its a worse version of ASE. Snail Games and Studio Wildcard can chug a mug of butt-holes

Was loving the game. But once again a update had made it impossible for me to play. Now I cant get game to start. It hits splash screen then crashes. Used to be a fan but I have lost interest and trust in company.

Performance issues makes this game lose its fun. The publishers seem to care more about throwing new paid DLCs for an early access game than to fix performance issues.

you need a really strong pc to actually enjoy a fraction of this game. too many bugs, not sure why they even made this game. crashes way too much with this recent inventory swap bug,

Super fun game, but currently broken. They need to fix the lag and servers before trying to make anymore DLC

Instead of fixing things they are too busy working on paid DLC. I thought Early Access was supposed to be get the base game to V1.0 then move onto paid DLC but it seems like its exploiting Early Access.

Wildcard and Snail games are just chasing quick cash now, game is ruined and its downgrade from ASE

Host tethering distance cannot be changed or bypassed even when messing with the game's ini files. Dont bother.

I recommended the game until last week, after update 5.5, which promised to improve performance, things got absurdly worseIt's impossible to play after the update. Every 5 min the game bugs out the FPS, and you have to close and reopen it. Unbearable. Unplayable. The update that was supposed to improve performance actually made it considerably worse.

Game is completely unplayable after the 5.5 unreal engine update. Can't play more than 10 minutes without the frames dropping to 3fps. Tried multiple fixes but nothing helps. At last long in I only get 2fps and have 200+ms. Save your money. They'll maybe patch it in the next 6 months if we're lucky.

new update makes the game impossible to play without crazy lag spikes

the game has massive visual artifacts and it runs horribly. they are releasing DLC like it's a mobile game with everything giving you a massive advantage and ruining your fun + setting you back. I got it on sale in hopes of maybe playing it but even after I got the game to run smooth enough , albeit with a lot of visual bugs due to the volumetric fog you can't get rid of, the game crashed and I regret my purchase. the game does look beautiful, the game does implement a ton of mods Ark Survival Evolved quality of life mods which is great but when you keep feeling like you have an incomplete copy of the game unless you pay hundereds of dollars then it's not a fun game it's an addiction. I do not recommend this game to anyone unless you have a 4090 minimum and even then it's likely unreal engine will find a way to crash constantly.

Keep getting Fatal error! Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x0000000000000010 Literally cant play the game, crashes 1 minute after loading even on the lowest settings even though it was running fine at high settings before. I've looked online and tried everything to try and fix it, i updated my drivers, i reinstalled DirectX, i ran as an administrator, i ran Steam as an administrator, i disabled DLSS, i uninstalled and reinstalled the game, i even went as far as to swap out my 600w power supply with a 850w and still nothing. Don't recommend buying until they fix this!!

The game is a 10/10 if you are looking for a refund experience.

I love ark, really, but the performance gets so out of hand. Before Rag it was playable but after I cant even play. I have 24 GB RAM with 8 GB RTX4070 and my fps goes 5-80. Every few seconds I play in pictures, I tried to play low settings everywhere, to the point it looked more like minecraft than ark. I would like to tame my dinos in peace not become a tech support jut to play a -mind you- premium priced game.

Did i have crashes pre patch? No, did i have crashes after patch? Yes. Actual dogshit game. 10K hours in it and surprised every time i open it to see them running it into the ground even more then they did last time. 4000 dollar pc game still crashes constantly, whether its transferring off server or just ya know moving fast....Point of my story if you haven't do not listen to this and do not waste the fucking money on this dogshit game. It is a cash grab and they do not care, they are actively closing rat holes for smaller tribes but leaving gigantic mesh holes for ya know....mega tribes to live in. Actual disgrace this game has become and it deeply saddens me. RIP to a great game but IMO this game should just be taken off of any store. If you are any kind of sweat or have tons of hours you know what i mean and I'm sorry you have to deal with it as well. <3 much love to my Dino friends but for your sake step away from the game....maybe if we stopped supporting shit decision making they would have some pep in their step.

Terrible company who just do stupid shit for money instead of making the game work well and play well. Stopped playing when they put out dinos you have to pay to tame. Don't support this POS.

It's impossible to recommend ASA in its current state. Nearly two years after its release into early access, this game is bordering on unplayable. The game's recent "update" to Unreal Engine 5.5, which was naively embraced by some as the sorely needed panacea that would finally remedy all of ASA's considerable ills, has actually made the game's stability and performance far worse. From the constant crashing, abrupt and dramatic drops in FPS, to ghost images of trees and rocks remaining after they are harvested, this game is a hot mess right now. Buyer beware!

i tried this game like half a year ago, kept on crashing back then after a couple minutes ingame. really not worth buying if they just can't refine a game within months to a point it at least runs stable. Playing the Early Access card again as an excuse for such bad performance really shows the politic of both the Development team and the Publisher. 0/10

If you dont have anything more than a 3080 you will not be able to play this game on anything higher than low settings. the game is extremely unoptimized for how old the game is.

I wanted to enjoy that feeling of playing this game again from scratch. Game looks so much better and has QOL features I like. ON THE OTHER HAND, I spent hours trying to get rid of ghost models, bugs, crashes... immersion is non since textures and objects are just slapped on the terrain so you can see grass and rocks floating in the air everywhere, scorched earth looks like someone just ran it through unreal engine to look better without any care for it. When you cut down any resource nod it stays there as its ghost version, game crashes withou any good reason, performance was ok for me but with forced frame generation. I requested refund since from my 7 hours ingame, I was just trying to get things work. Only solution right now is deleting your .ini files with all these settings I was playing with just to make it feel right, so after doing all that from scratch solution lasted for ONE play session. This game is great as it always was but developer doesnt care at all about anything in it except getting as much money as possible. Its such a shame since game looks great and has a lot of interesting new details. Its a toxic realtionship, you want to stay in for the good things and its just up to you how long you are willing to ignore all the bad stuff. They are just spewing out remade maps and new content with zero care for quallity. Iam so tired of doing so much work and research just to do things they should have did themselves from the start. Dont let it fool you, play the original one if you want it badly as I did but expect product with zero care and zero love for it.

It sucks to write this, I want to love this game. But it is just garbage made by liars. I'm tired of the "wait for the next update, it will fix everything!" mentality, especially since it seems like nothing ever gets fixed. The Publishers and Devs only see us as walking wallets and care nothing for our experiences in game. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME!!!

Honestly I loved ASE, I bought this one because all the servers shut down. I genuinely regret giving them more money. This game runs horribly. I will say I like some of the features but not enough to enjoy the game fully. I had creatures falling through the world. This company only wants money they don't care about actually fixing their game. As much as I truly love surviving with the dinosaurs.. this isn't worth the time.

love playing ark, really, despite my feelings on recent developments and ancillary content being made, i really like playing it, however i am getting tired of the creatures sold individually and the ever increasing expansion packs, i was originally fine with the costume packs and paid mods, but even those generate a sour taste just looking at them now, now they feel more like "made to sell", outsourced content instead of having to hire people and getting a cut of they sales of the mods on top, anyhow, point is, tired of having ot keep up with buying new pieces of content for this, make it free to play and put battle passes already so it can just die

Terrible game with the worst game developers known to man! Don't waste your time on this trash. Grinded for months on Extinction, The Centre just for the game devs to push out update separating the game files from the DLCs without checking if you can re-install the DLCs. Have been trying for weeks to install the DLCs with no luck and no help from their terrible customer support. Have just found out that everything I had is now gone due to not being able to log in because of their stupid update and their inability to test their game before releasing any update. Pure lazy game devs which care only amount money and not their game or community.

They plan an update, delay an update by 2 days then when they release the update it breaks it, it has now been down for 2 days due to issues. Does this company not test before release ?

Edit: After playing this game for a few more hours on a non-dedicated multiplayer I can officially say this game isn't worth the money. It crashes all the time and every time this happens your save game is rolled back making it near impossible to make any progress, I don't understand how a team can be this incompetent that they are able to make a game using one of the worlds best game engines and still have this many issues. The game itself is fun to play but I can't give them a good review purely because their dedicated server doesn't work. I've tried running it on both Window and Linux, opened the firewall and port forwarded but it doesn't show on the Steam API or the server lists in game. I think this is a company decision to force you into paying £17+ a month for a dedicated server.

I have over 2,500 hours in Ark: Survival Evolved and I was excited for ASA, as I wanted to play PvP on Official servers again. However, after only playing around 15 hours of ASA I uninstalled the game and went back to Survival Evolved. I can't recommend this game in it's current state, despite the fact it could be decent if it was actually optimized. Pros - More character customization options - Some of the building engrams being reworked to allow different options and adding things like secret entrances Cons - I could barely run the game and had to adjust settings to be ridiculously low to even be able to play. (I have a decent computer and meet/exceed the minimum requirements) - The graphics seem to be a downgrade, from a more realistic feel to a cartoon feel - The main menu and the UI, while similar, seems to have taken a step back compared to ASE - The removal of the movement speed stat is a huge negative imo Save your money and if you want to play Ark, then I would recommend Survival Evolved and either playing single player or looking for a good unofficial server to play on with others.