I'm a sinner for early access survival games. I had fun in Ark but that's something I couldn't recommend to anyone in good conscience. This game is equally time wasting but at least twice as good. There are legitimate criticisms you could have about the "Pal" designs in this game where's it pretty clear they were too close to pokemon. I swear to god I saw a meganium and gyrados in this game. However, anyone calling them an asset flip doesn't understand what an asset flip is, and Nintendo, one of the most litigious game companies out there still hasn't sued really does say a lot. The idea of using your pokemon as base workers instead of just as tools like ark does is a considerable upgrade. There's also a lot more pokemon than there are dinosaurs. The map design is pretty generic. The combat though can be a bit fucked. Whether thats due to lag or to dumbass decisions is unknown. For example, many moves are piercing which means they'll also pierce the pokemon you're riding and hit you. Armor in this game is also fake. It breaks basically instantly and barely gives you the HP to compensate. You are still in high danger if you ever want to be an active participant and you will be because the aggro will randomly switch from your mon to your player character. You also can't control the mon unless you're riding it. The pokemon will just randomly use one of 3 moves you assign it based on cooldown. So the combat isn't particularly fun, I mostly played to get stronger pokemon and expand my base. It's a very good game to turn your brain off to though.

TLDR Good brain off survival game. If you liked Ark this is much better, play this instead.