The Isle

This game is a unique and interesting take on mutliplayer survival. I maybe be bias as a huge Dino-Nerd but honestly it's great fun. There's an odd sense of attachment I got from my first playthroughs that I have never gotten from any other game. Growing your Dino from a small vulnerable animal, navigating giant horrors trying to eat you while you run and fight your way just to survive, only to then eventually (if you're lucky) become the giant monster yourself after hours of hardship and tense moments which really make just growing to an adult feel like such an earned reward - it's a great feeling. I bonded with my Dino more so than any character/protag from a recent RPG or story game. The community from what I've experienced are great, and you'll definitely meet some characters, some are terrifying others are wholesome but all positive from what I've seen. For it's price, the hours that I can sink into this game, be it for a serious sweaty session or a relaxed destressing exercise are well worth it. Honestly I feel it's under priced, based on if it were 20 or 30 quid I'll still feel like I got my monies worth for the experience. The cons for me: The game is quite buggy, there's a lot of frustrating moments where for example you cannot eat or grab prey because of weird hitbox issues, eating or drinking doing nothing - and this has almost cost me my Dino a few times. Limited in-game guide for new players. This was sort of a pro more than a con for me, as I love diving head first into a game and learning things on my own, but I quickly found myself googling how to do certain things as, it's multiplayer so you can't pause and every second counts in this game. (I was honestly just too attached to my Dino to risk it's life with trial and error) Development time. I'm a new player, so I've not experienced this myself but it's a big issue in the community and as someone who loves this game I want to see it thrive. That's all I can think of so far... if you're on the fence, I'd say get it - it's great value for what you can, it's a game you can sink hundreds of hours into and you'll make some great memories with hopefully great people.

good

Bro, buy this game ONLY if you have a friend with a ton of hours and a huge dino to play with. Otherwise, it’s basically UNPLAYABLE. The navigation system requires ancient Indian skills. You’re blindly rotating around an enormous, chaotic map full of dead ends while everyone is trying to kill you. (You can use an online map from a website, but you have to Alt-Tab out of the game to check it, and even then, navigating is still extremely difficult. It basically just gives you a rough idea of where you are.) As a beginner, the most you’ll do in this game is press W, press W, and press W until eventually someone eats you alive, and then you lose all your progress. This game is NOT meant to be played solo. You start as a juvenile, and as you play, you grow. Sounds simple, right? Except they never let you grow. In order to grow, you need to eat AI animals that randomly spawn, but the AI system is so, SO bad for new players. The AI animals can literally spawn miles away from you. You can play for an hour and still not find anything, and eventually you just starve to death. And even when you actually find something to kill, playing as a baby dinosaur—especially something like a T-Rex—makes it almost impossible. The AI animals teleport around like crazy, and while you’re chasing them, some bigger dino can come out of nowhere and one-shot you. And that’s it. Hours of progress gone. This game has a really good concept, but it desperately needs to be more noob-friendly. Right now, it feels like a game made for people who already know someone with hundreds of hours. It’s basically a closed circle. New players trying to play solo are just screwed.

I get to play as a dinosaur! Eat other dinosaurs! Run from dinosaurs! And die as a dinosaur!

Guarded recommendation - the gameplay is fun but there's high frustration due to it being a development-hell PVP survival game. As a result if your ping gets high, or if the game files get borked from an update, you can and will just die over and over. Feels like it could be amazing if it were less buggy.

**Title:** A High-Potential Game Broken by Server Instability and Cheaters **Rating:** 2/5 Stars **Review:** I put 142 hours into *The Isle*, and at its core, it is a genuinely fun and unique game. I particularly enjoyed playing as the Deinosuchus. However, as someone with a job and kids, my gaming time is extremely limited, and right now, the game feels like a complete waste of time. **Major Technical Issues:** * **Performance:** Severe FPS drops, latency spikes, and frequent ping issues ruin the gameplay. * **Server Instability:** Constant crashes lead to losing hours of hard-earned progress. At one point, progress was practically wiped on a daily basis. * **Broken AI:** Animal and fish AI rarely spawn properly, leaving you to starve before you even have a chance to survive. **The Dealbreaker:** Growing an apex predator like the Deinosuchus takes massive time and patience. Spending hours raising an avatar, only to be killed by fresh-spawn cheaters, completely destroys the experience. As content creators and the community have pointed out, the cheating epidemic on official servers has only worsened recently due to poor moderation and weak anti-cheat. I haven't logged back on since my last encounter with a hacker, and I can't recommend *The Isle* to anyone who values their time.

FEAR