This is a really tough review. I love ASE, and I will likely continue playing ASA because they have made a pretty tremendous game. However, the state of this game is pretty atrocious. In addition to the poor optimizations, I feel like they were pretty deceptive when talking about how they were re-creating the game and fixing a lot of the original issues. I have not seen this to be true; bugs and issues that have existed from the very beginning of ASE that the community has known and been complaining about for years are still not fixed. This is on top of a whole new set of bugs and issues.

There are some QOL improvements, but its hard to feel good about that when the game is crashing every 10 minutes or so (on a pretty decent build). On single player, due to how it periodically saves, this means you can have tons of progress just wiped out unless you're saving every few minutes.

There are definitely positives. The graphics update is gorgeous: the weather and skybox, foliage, and of course water are all absolutely beautiful (if your GPU can handle it). The building system is better, but certainly not perfect, and the addition of wild baby dinos is a nice one.

Overall, I feel like this was a missed opportunity to regain some of the community's good will. My impressions prior to launch was that they were seriously overhauling the game and taking the time to not only give us a huge graphic update, but also fix some serious issues and bugs that have long plagued ASE, but that's definitely not the case. Once more, Studio Wildcard engages in deceptive marketing and community engagement, and pushes out a clearly unfinished product. (I know, this is early access, but if they haven't fixed these bugs in 8 years, do we really believe they're going to fix them in the next couple months?)

Edit: Three months later and I can't say the game is much of a better state. They've been pushing fixes and in some cases, bugs they claim are fixed are not. Their focus has been on the stability of the official network. Meanwhile, single player console players can't even reliably save their games. Couple that with the fact that we are going to have to wait another month (assuming they don't delay...) before we get a second map and it has been a pretty disappointing remaster; ~10% of the original game released in a barely playable state with a roadmap that takes us two years into the future before we even see some of the maps that we already have in the original (assuming they don't delay...)

This is a really tough review. I love ASE, and I will likely continue playing ASA because they have made a pretty tremendous game. However, the state of this game is pretty atrocious. In addition to the poor optimizations, I feel like they were pretty deceptive when talking about how they were re-creating the game and fixing a lot of the original issues. I have not seen this to be true; bugs and issues that have existed from the very beginning of ASE that the community has known and been complaining about for years are still not fixed. This is on top of a whole new set of bugs and issues. There are some QOL improvements, but its hard to feel good about that when the game is crashing every 10 minutes or so (on a pretty decent build). On single player, due to how it periodically saves, this means you can have tons of progress just wiped out unless you're saving every few minutes. There are definitely positives. The graphics update is gorgeous: the weather and skybox, foliage, and of course water are all absolutely beautiful (if your GPU can handle it). The building system is better, but certainly not perfect, and the addition of wild baby dinos is a nice one. Overall, I feel like this was a missed opportunity to regain some of the community's good will. My impressions prior to launch was that they were seriously overhauling the game and taking the time to not only give us a huge graphic update, but also fix some serious issues and bugs that have long plagued ASE, but that's definitely not the case. Once more, Studio Wildcard engages in deceptive marketing and community engagement, and pushes out a clearly unfinished product. (I know, this is early access, but if they haven't fixed these bugs in 8 years, do we really believe they're going to fix them in the next couple months?) Edit: Three months later and I can't say the game is much of a better state. They've been pushing fixes and in some cases, bugs they claim are fixed are not. Their focus has been on the stability of the official network. Meanwhile, single player console players can't even reliably save their games. Couple that with the fact that we are going to have to wait another month (assuming they don't delay...) before we get a second map and it has been a pretty disappointing remaster; ~10% of the original game released in a barely playable state with a roadmap that takes us two years into the future before we even see some of the maps that we already have in the original (assuming they don't delay...)