This game should be amazing. It is not. It has the parts of everyone's ideal survival game. It looks good. It has dinos. it starts with nothing and with hard work and playtime, builds to fully armed and armored with a tamed dino army behind you.
HOWEVER! this game is massive. far bigger than other games of equal quality or lack thereof. Even with decent internet it can take several days to download or for updates. Those updates never actually improve the game. If you have issues with the game be prepared for those problems to exist forever. You need a pretty high capacity device to run this game. I am a designer with a laptop outfitted for big apps and lots of rendering. I understand its not an ideal device for gaming but this game still surprises me with how badly it runs. It stutters and lags on the lowest settings.
Onto actual game content. The worlds are big and beautiful. There are also many worlds. However, only one of the "Story" aka actual game content maps, are available. ALL of the other Story maps are about 10 to 15 bucks. Each. that's another 50$ or more for the full game maps. There are also free maps but those are not considered Story maps. They are simply new environments and don't add much additional content. Outside of environments and maps, the game itself is.... ok. The survival element is good, comprehensive, and delightfully adjustable. But while the building seems as if it would be nice, it is missing key options and will usually end up frustrating. There are very few modern game quality of life features so many things end up being manual and time consuming. While the game is a survival game and light on the story, what story it has is confusing and lack almost any directions. If you are a completionist or progress based player you will almost certainly need guides.
And finally, bugs. This game has many bugs. Flying mounts are tricky, the game forgets things sometimes. I recently lost all character leveling progress on a world and had to either redo everything or scrap that save. Corpse rendering is.... interesting. It has ragdoll physics but the doll usually ends up stretched and warped. It can be entertaining but shows the lack of polish. Night time is pitch black even with torches. Daylight is often blinding. Animals won't always follow your commands. Menu UI is messy and difficult to navigate. and Coop mode has all of these problems tenfold. Besides the players being leashed to the host, it also messes even more with the UI making it impossible for multiple people to be in a chest at the same time. Another common bug I ran into was that anyone who was not the host could not see underwater.
I could probably list more but this is getting too long. If you've read this far then you have my respect, judgment and concern. Also save your money and sanity by not getting this game.
