izigame.me

For context, I play Ark mostly solo, always PvE. The concept of homesteading in a dino-based survival world is why Ark appealed to me and I always wished the game would be more accessible to a casual solo player. I hope this review can help people with a similar play style decide if they should buy it :)
The game is essentially a remaster. The main change is the graphics. The game is stunningly pretty, even on lower settings. Wildcard also say they made improvements under the hood for optimisation, I think this is what comes with changing over to UE5 because it still needs a strong GPU and careful tweaks to run well. The graphical changes do really help with the immersion, which is a big appeal for someone like me, playing for a relaxing, dino taming time rather than PvP. I can imagine the performance is pretty frustrating for PvP players.
In Ark Evolved, my biggest frustrations were feeling locked out of content, the janky and unappealing UI and some of the odd mechanics. Does Ascended fix these things? Yes and No.
There is more respect for your time now. The difficulties are easier to set up for single player and the overall SP mode feels more balanced. The building mechanics really help with this too, with changes such as being able to pick up anything you've placed indefinitely and just general QoL with building that actually means I can try things out without feeling I've wasted a lot of time for nothing. I feel like breeding projects are more accessible, as the changes to mutations make it less time consuming to make pretty and powerful tames.
The UI looks a bit sleeker now and less like a placeholder, although there are still frustrating things like not being able to see all craftable items in the smithy for example. The UI still feels janky to me, I was hoping that some design improvements would happen to make it a little more intuitive. They've made some mechanics work more intuitively though. Radius effects for water and energy is a big change that makes building a bit more accessible in some regards. All the extra paints are really nice for the creatively minded player too :)
But there are still loads of bugs. I crash lots sometimes, other times not. I've died randomly and not had a death marker or my stuff drop, it's just... gone. The game has some odd issues with spawns and there are years old bugs that have made their way over from evolved. There hasn't been much acknowledgement of these problems either.
The game also feels a bit empty at the moment because the DLC stuff isn't included yet, so it's a very bare-bones Ark experience. It's nice to start a little slow and know there's more to come, but it's worth mentioning as it could be a deal breaker for some.
I still recommend this game, but only because dinosaurs. It fills a special void in my brain and I have such a love hate relationship with the game, but there's nothing else like it out there. Ascended's changes have meant for me, the game is a little closer to the chill dinosaur homesteading game I craved at the time of ASE. I will put lots of hours into it, I am sure but make no mistake, this game is flawed.