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There's been a lot of salty people playing this game for hours on end- leaving terrible reviews only to put another 40 hours into the game that week. However, they never list the reasons they keep playing so I'll go ahead and post the major improvements in ASA that they leave out of their reviews.
1. You don't have to wait for your mods to load a second time unless they've updated. No more sitting for 20 minutes to load up 20 mods every single time you join an Unofficial server. In addition to this, all of the original 10 ARK Additions modded creatures are being added to the base game. Ceratosaurus and Xiph are already in and Garuga is currently working on TLC'ing the others before he hands them off to WildCard.
2. You hit things when you shoot them. I've yet to see my hit marker indicate that I've hit something and not do damage. In ASE this was a massive problem but I've yet to encounter it in ASA. If I see the hit marker on my crosshairs go off, I do damage.
3. The dev team patches. A lot. Lately, there's been a patch and fixes once every couple weeks as they either work on QOL or bug fixes because this is a brand new game engine for them. Sometimes with new maps / major patch releases, I'll encounter some very frustrating bugs but it's almost always within the next week that they're fixed.
4. Crossplay with Steam, PS5 and Xbox is amazing.
5. I absolutely hated the exclusivity with Nitrado at first but they've really upped their game. Honestly. I was livid to the point of considering that I might never play ASA, but I'm pleasantly surprised at how cheap the servers are and the ease of installing mods onto (and off of) my server is a breeze compared to some of the other server providers in ASE. My old provider charged me an extra $45 in ASE once Genesis II came out due to the obscene amount of RAM the map used combined with what all our mods needed. Now I use more RAM and plenty of mods and I pay $32 a month or so.
6. Basic water physics exist. It's amazing and it adds a lot of immersion to the game. It's not Atlas, but it's a start.
7. Club ARK is actually really fun with all of the stupid little mini-games. I thought I'd hate it but it's actually pretty quaint. That said, I do play the base game way more.
8. The controversy around Bob's Tall Tales is pretty undeserved. It offers some really nice skins and decent QOL improvements but it's nothing that's going to put you at a huge disadvantage if you don't get it. The Pyromane hate is also out of control. I kill them all the time without much issue. Again, worth the $5 but not essential. I bought the ability to tame them on a whim to try them out.
9. There's an update that the team is chipping away at to bring the game to the latest engine version for free. Unreal 5.4 will be able to use all of the processor cores on a machine rather than just 2. WildCard estimates that game performance could improve by up to 50%. ASA is a beast of a game to run on PC, there's no getting around that- but this patch will probably be the relief that a lot of PC players need. However, I've seen very few console players complain though they'll probably feel the love, too.
10. The AI improvements aren't mind-blowing but dinos are much smarter and harder to trap, now. Pathing is pretty decent, now, and raptors will have no problem running straight into your door after you if you're not fast enough to close it. If you leave the door open and happen to be crafting inside, they'll just waltz right in to wreck your face. It's odd to say this, but I feel like it was better at launch? It's still very nice, though. Likely due to AI and pathing being very expensive. I imagine they'll give it a bit more attention once the new engine patch hits later this year.
A bit of advice, though. Be careful of the mods you download and keep an eye on your game performance. Some mods absolutely trash the game and make it nearly unplayable. One, which is fairly popular ended up causing my server to boot loop on restart. Once removed, it worked without issue. Don't let this deter you, though. The modding community is blooming and soon the premium mods will work similar to Bob's Tall Tales and the Pyromane where a mod author can make it so that while you have to pay to tame the animal you're not blocked from servers running the mod if you don't own it.
TL;DR: The game is worth it, and it's only going to keep getting better as time goes on.
I'll update this review as time goes on and WildCard makes changes to the game so that you can read this and get a look at what's changed.