So, the reviews on this are pretty much all identical:
Seems potentially great, but play SP or face rampant cheaters.
Could anyone comment how this would be playable for just 2-3 players? I'm interested in running a server just for my GF me, and maybe one other person.
I used to play Ark with my GF and we loved it, but it was clearly not meant for two people only. The amount of grind was too extreme for just the two of us (and we already set the server to give 50% more of everything to speed it up), and the big monsters way too strong for just two people as well, so we stopped.
apart from building and basic controls being similar conan exiles isnt really comparable to ARK. ARKs gameplay revolves around discovereing all those different creatures, fighting them, taming them, riding them, forming your own army to command out of them, leveling them up, mating them, breeding them, finding armor(saddles) for them.. there s an absolutely huge variety of beasts that not merely look different but have different special attacks, stats, roles etc. flying creatures, diving creatures, rideable creatures, creatures on whose back you can build a house etc. etc.
conan has absolutely nothing comparable: thralls are a totally half-assed (cannot gear them, cannot command them, cannot level them, there s little to no variety among them, etc. etc. ) lacklustre feature devoid of content - it seems to be only ingame for edgnyness purposes just like the dick slider. "hurr durr you dont tame dinos - you tame humans ! " and while technical true ... gameplay-wise thralls dont have even 1/50 the relevance/impact/gameplay-role creatures in ark have.
...same goes for religion: you can build shrines and ultimativly summon an avatar but otherwhise the whole religious stuff feels tacked on and just as devoid of actual content & ideas as thralls do.
so whats left ? ressource gathering and basebuilding. in that regard both games should be around equal: conan does some things better but so does ARK.
and well.... running around the world (which is a lot smaller and less varied than ARKs ) and engaging in really awful combat with really dumb enemies... and we re talking worse than oblivion combat/AI.
....the game might have merits in PVP ( i really cannot comment on that aspects) but as a solo or coop experience i d stay the hell away from it because its really, really shit.
....
i hope one day i can eat my words because i actually had huge hopes for this =/ ....a game with ARKs gameplay ( preferably minus the bad parts and with some cool new ideas instead) but set in an actual interesting setting like conan (instead of Arks DINOSAURS + LAZERS!) would be very welcome.
so far however they add content at a snails pace: in the time ARKs adds content via patching that some other games would sell as a small expansion pack (new creatures, new mechanics, new items, dungeons etc) .... conan exiles added 50 new emotes and a mini-dungeon =/
not that ARK is perfect ( they should maybe actually slow down with adding new stuff and do quality>quantity .... their new tek dungeon for example is total shit ) but in this case the player ratio roughly 40:1 in favour of ARK is a pretty good indicator how much less content & fun conan has.
its also kinda hilarious that the much bashed (because released during EA - which is indeed a dick move) Scorched Earth DLC on its own has more content than Conan Exiles .... =/
TLDR = conan exiles is utter shit for singleplayer/small coop. maybe has merits in pvp - doubt it though. buy ARK+SE at (often) half the price for 50times the value.
