Recent reviews by Teinar

Although there are many bad opinions about this edition of the game, I have to say that I had fun playing this.
Of course it isn't perfect, and it has some bugs but honestly through my 100% game gameplay I noticed only a few that caught my attention, like graphic bugs, nothing seriously gamebreaking. I had wonderful time coming back to my childhood just for a little bit, although of course this isn't completely the OG. There are many improvements comparing to OG version, which are actually pretty good in my opinion, and as I said, bugs are present, but I didn't meet anything gamebreaking. Graphics are actually really good and optimization is pretty good, but CPU optimization could be better.
Summarizing, I enjoyed my time playing this and I would recommend buying when this game is on sale because it's quite good. But I wouldn't really be able to tell if definitive or OG version is better, that would really depend on many factors so the choice wouldn't be that simple.

After playing like 6000 hours in ARK:SE, and like 100 hours in ARK:SA, I have to write this:
Game is pretty playable at this moment, but there are MAJOR issues concerning it:
- Optimalization is really bad, my RTX 4080 Super cries for help playing this and essentialy becomes 1080p card (around 60-90 fps on The Island in 1440p WITH FRAME GENERATION ENABLED)
- Unfortunately, bad fps aren't justified by quality of the graphics. Don't get me wrong, game is really pretty, but there's one thing that was implemented such in poor way. DLSS. Pixelated clouds, sunrays, shimmering trees, grainy effects on trees, these are signs of badly implemented DLSS. Eyes hurts looking at pixelated clouds. Of course, you can disable DLSS and enable DLAA, but then FPS are even worse. It is for them to fix this unfortunately, let's hope this is fixed soon, because it looks really bad. Adding low fps into account, this isn't worth playing with higher resolutions.
- Cash grab. Yeah, Not only they released this game as paid game, they also released (and they gonna be releasing) paid DLC, which are controversial because of P2W character. This doesn't really concern PVE players, but there are a lot PVP players that developers don't take into consideration. So they basically running out of money. This is not a good sign, because game is still in pretty bad shape. Unfortunately you have to also (sometimes) pay for mods for it, if you want to play with bigger ones.
Now, these cons presented above are (personally) really major for me, so if I wouldn't be typical ARK player, I wouldn't bother buying it. But of course game has also some pros concerning it:
- Gameplay is pretty good, excluding DLSS graphical glitches and taking gameplay into cosideration, it is improved version of ARK:SE. There are some curious additions to the game, for example reworked building and loot tables for drops.
- Excluding graphical glitches and really bad FPS, game still looks pretty impressive. People with worse GPUs might cheer fact, that even low preset setting (not everything on low) looks really good in this game.
- There is much more console commands that might improve your FPS, than in ARK:SE (for example r.VolumetricClouds 0)
- Frame Generation implementation. Yeah, it was fixed (probably). Personally, contrary to DLSS itself, I haven't had any problems with FG for a few months (game was crashing constantly before, but it was fixed). FG doesn't change game much, artifacts are visible only just a little, but of course there is also input lag problem. But generally FG is implemented well. If you want to use it in game you have to have RTX 4000 series GPU. It really improves FPS.
- New dinos that are really cool (in PvP new DLC dinos might be a little bit P2W as I said), but there are few new dinos available without buying DLC, such as Gigantoraptor.

Now to conclusion:
Personally if I would be ark player, I would buy this. It is really good and you can ignore for example graphical glitches. But it also depends on computer specs you have, if you want to comfortably play at around 60 fps on pretty good settings with 1080p resolution, you probably have to have at least RTX 3080, as noted in recommended specs for this game. I haven't played around huge bases, but I suspect good CPU is also good addition. This game is so GPU intensive that even lowering resolution down to 480p on high settings didn't cause CPU bottleneck (tested with FG on and, which is exclusive to RTX 4000 cards, RTX 4080 Super, I9-12900KF). So, in my personal opinion, concentrate on getting a good GPU before playing this. If you don't have good PC and you don't plan to buy one, just stick to ARK: Survival Evolved. I've spent countless hours in this game, and it will always be in my heart. It is still a really good game. Don't get annoyed playing this.
As for the rest:
As I said, if you haven't played ARK before, I wouldn't personally buy this game due to major graphical issues and bad optimalization. But it is of course your decision to make. Just a reminder, it is early access title, so they have time to improve everything, new maps that came out (Scorched Earth, The Center), are a little bit better optimized than the first - The Island. But graphical DLSS glitches, if you're paying huge attention to graphics they will hurt your eyes. Are low fps worth in this case? I would not say so. As game improves, my opinion will improve. Now I discourage from buying this.