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If you have the hardware to run it, this is an upgrade over the original game visually. The graphics are astounding and it increases the immersion in a big way.
There's a few exceptions to this: the new volumetric clouds, which present a lot of artifacts and have an unacceptable performance hit. They can be disabled with the console command "r.VolumetricCloud 0" (without the quotes). The devs have specifically mentioned they will be improving the performance of these clouds with future updates, which I look forward to.
Another graphics nitpick I have is the shadows. They are too sharp and do not soften as they get further from their origin, which looks very strange alongside the global illumination.
Artificial light sources need a touchup. Wall torches and lamps light up objects very close to them way too much, resulting in blown out lighting. The falloff doesn't look good either, there's too little of a gradient and the light doesn't reach as far as it should.
Sometimes, small amounts of light leak through things they shouldn't, like stone and wood ceilings and roofs.
It's unclear if Wildcard added DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction. If they haven't, I humbly ask that they do.
Unfortunately it's not stable right now - crashes more than any game I have ever played. This will improve with updates, I am choosing to be patient with it considering how much fun I am having.
Dino AI has been significantly improved.
The addition of wild baby and juvenile dinos is amazing. Increases immersion and gives you choices as far as taming goes.
It doesn't run particularly well - even with a Ryzen 9 5900x and RTX 4090. On maximum settings, 4k (DLSS Performance and Frame Gen on) I sometimes struggle to maintain 60 FPS out in the wild, although it doesn't go into the low 50s or the 40s ever.
If you don't have a 4k monitor like me you'll find that it runs much better (resolution is by far the biggest impact on performance). For RTX 4090 owners that have a 1440p G-Sync monitor you are going to have a great experience.
Performance inside large bases has been overhauled with a new instanced rendering technique - I get up to 120 FPS in my house which is nice. Basically - rendering 100 identical build pieces only has the CPU workload as rendering one of them, annihilating the extremely annoying bottleneck most survival games have in bases.
Some things have been removed from the game, like Cryopods, although there is already a mod that adds them back. The map is NOT exactly the same as The Island from the original game, which to some will be a slight disappointment, to others an exciting opportunity to explore the changes. None of the changes are extreme though. Much of what wasn't broken hasn't been 'fixed', which my friend and I appreciated. But please know, this is NOT just a simple remaster of the original.
Another thing worth mentioning for people running servers: the ability to pick up wild dinos with Argents and whatnot would not work with the default server settings. I fixed this by going into "/arksa/ShooterGame/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/GameUserSettings.ini" and added AllowFlyerCarryPvE=true
The command for that was in the original game's server config file but I actually had to add it into the file. I did it on a whim, as a last resort, and it worked. Hope that helps!
The new UI is much better, especially the map. (Double tap M for the really good map). You can zoom, pan, and place waypoints.
The new tracking system is really nice for keeping track of tribemates and tames.
For players that are looking to play official PVP or PVE servers, there's just not enough of them right now. It's very difficult to get into a server and the amount of crashes makes it difficult to STAY in one once you have gotten in. The crashes also break PVP gameplay, as players will crash in the middle of raids.
Also, the favorites tab in the server menu is completely broken. I have to search for my server every time I go to play.
In spite of the early problems, overall I am happy with my purchase as I do know that updates will improve it a lot and they will be adding more servers, although I already have my own dedicated one I am playing with friends.
IMPROVED CLOUDS AND PERFORMANCE TUTORIAL BELOW:
This is a set of Unreal Engine 5 commands you can enter in the game's console that will fix the artifacts in the clouds and improve performance at little cost to visuals. Keep in mind, these are the settings I am using on my setup and your results may vary. I am playing in 4k, DLSS performance with an RTX 4090.
Also, the volumetric settings will do nothing unless you have not turned off the volumetric clouds.
To enter the console, press the tilde key ( ` ) in game. Then, put these commands into it one by one, pressing enter between each command:
r.Streaming.PoolSize 0
The above command allows the Streaming Pool Size to be as big as it wants to be. Will use more VRAM but perform better.
r.Nanite.MaxPixelsPerEdge 2
The above command lowers the nanite resolution, decreasing mesh density on objects far from the camera. This greatly improves performance. The default is 1, I like to use 2 as I see no difference and get more frames, if you don't mind faraway trees looking crappy you can go up to 4.
r.VolumetricCloud.ViewRaySampleMaxCount 128
The above command sets the resolution of the volumetric clouds. The higher you go, less grain and flickering will be there, at the cost of performance. I tried 64 but the grain was still there in 4K - although I think on 1080p you could use 64.
r.VolumetricRenderTarget.Mode 3
The above command changes the mode the volumetric clouds are rendered at. You'll notice after entering the last command the clouds actually look WORSE, but this setting actually kicks the fix into effect. Feast your eyes! No more distracting artifacts and flickering.
Hope this all helps, happy Arking!