YMMV / Jurassic World Alive

• Base-Breaking Character: The animal roster again. Many of the new species are either Ensemble Darkhorses or Replacement Scrappies for more popular ones which appeared in Jurassic Park Builder and Jurassic World: The Game. It doesn't help that some of them are seen as boring and redundant, while many iconic and popular species that made notable appearances in Ludia's other games are curiously absent (Ceratosaurus, Giganotosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Therizinosaurus, etc). However, they were eventually added in future updates.^note Pachycephalosaurus was added in Update 1.6, whereas Giganotosaurus and Therizinosaurus might have been saved all this time for 2.16 to tie-in with Jurassic World Dominion. Ceratosaurus meanwhile was FINALLY added in 2.23.
• Breather Boss: Out of the Apex creatures, Pteranokyrie is by far the easiest to beat, with a pretty harmless and straightforward attack script that largely focuses on debuffs, and minions that aren't much of a hassle. It only requires a basic strategy to take down.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The first iteration of Resilient creatures, as their attacks, in addition to cleansing damage reduction and removing the opponent's cloak, dodge, and speed bonuses, also decelerated the opponent, effectively guaranteeing that the Resilient creature would go first next turn. While intended to counter the fast Cunning creatures, it also ended up being used to soften up Fierce creatures, who were intended to counter Resilient creatures, and take them out before they could use their powerful shattering attacks. Update 2.9 reworked the basic Resilient attacks to apply Vulnerability instead of deceleration and modified some of the Resilient creatures' movesets accordingly.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lythronax gained a huge cult following since the addition of the Purrolyth hybrid in Update 1.5, with many alliances (also added in 1.5) and memes revolving around it, often depicting it as a Memetic Badass. Ludia took notice.
  • Majundasuchus is one of the more popular Rare hybrids, despite originally being one of the weakest, due to being likely the first one many players acquire. Many called for it to get a superhybrid, and their prayers were answered in Update 1.14 with the release of Majundaboa, who in turn gained an incredible superhybrid itself in Troodoboa months later.
  • Sinosauropteryx (added in Update 2.11) gained a following for its Ridiculously Cute Critter status, as well as being reasonably accurate compared to other creatures of the game. Anurognathus a few updates later received an equally warm welcome for the same reasons; even from detractors of the general franchise will often admit that these two look great.
  • Alankyloceratops also gained much popularity when it was announced in a 2021 poll as a long-waited hybrid of Alankylosaurus. Ultimately, it lost out to Indotaurus, but for months players begged and imagined what could have been. Then their wishes came true a year later in 2.19, when it was revealed to be the runner-up and was added to the game; to say fans rejoiced would be an understatement.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Generally most creatures are just known by shortened nicknames(Antarctovenator gets "Antoven" or just "Toven", for example), but a few unique ones stand out.
    • Erlikosaurus gained the nickname of "golden chicken" due to its color scheme and Epic rarity, while its hybrid, Erlidominus, is dubbed the "zombie chicken" for its glassy-eyed look and dulled complexion.
    • ''Procerathomimus is dubbed "Yoshi" or the "Christmas Chicken" due to its striking green and red plumage.
    • Dracoceratops has "earned" the derisive nickname of "the Rat" because of how aggravating its Swap-In Ability is and how common it is in the mid-tier arenas. Dracoceratosaurus sometimes gets the nickname too, although far less commonly.
    • Thylaconyx has also earned the nickname of "Rat" or alternatively "Shrew", but in its case it's because it literally looks like one.
  • While hybrids formed by fusing a superhybrid with something else(i.e. Spinotasuchus with Albertosaurus to form Albertospinos) are still officially called superhybrids, many players have taken to calling them megahybrids instead. With 2.20 introducing a megahybrid(Pyrosuchus) that can be fused even further, players called it a gigahybrid.
• Funny Moments: When swapping in a bear with a Swap-In Ability, instead of charging into the battle or stepping in rather forebodingly like the other creatures in the game, they just slowly walk into the arena...bipedally. Needless to say, it detracts a bit from the intimidation factor.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In Strike Events, bleeders and renders can significantly cut down the difficulty of some enemies, particularly tanks. Any amount of Health means nothing if you can predict the order that they use moves and attack when necessary.
  • The move "Ready to Crush," coupled with fast, hard-hitting creatures and healers(which are pretty much a necessity to stand up to high-level bosses), can make short work of any boss and its minions while making sure the player's team is consistently at its prime. For context, Ready to Crush increases the team's Damage and Crit Chances for two attacks over a span of four turns, and since healing is based on damage, it makes recovering from the powerful attacks the boss can dish out much more efficient.
  • Rexy, considered by many to be, Apexes aside, one of the best non-hybrid in the game,. Even high in the arenas, it's not uncommon to see her in teams alongside Apexes and Uniques. Much like Refrenantem, she is a hard counter to flocks, having two attacks, one with priority, that not only deals huge damage, but also rip through flocks' absorb thresholds like they were made of veal. Rexy also has one of the best healing moves, Fierce Devouring Rampage, which deals huge damage and LifeDrains a big chunk of health, even moreso than most other Life Drain attacks in the game.
• Goddamned Bats: At launch, Velociraptors were among the most dangerous enemies due to their very damaging Pounce(which also reduces your damage) and high Speed. Although they have been nerfed and more counters have since become available due to the introduction of Swap-In bonuses on certain creatures, they remain pretty deadly. Even in middle leagues some players will continue to use Velociraptor, dumping a ton of boosts into it to make sure few outspeed or survive its Pounce.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The entire premise of the game foreshadows that a real Jurassic World will happen now that dinosaurs are released into the world. Granted, considering the game released just before the film, perhaps this was intended all along.
• High-Tier Scrappy: It has enough to warrant its own subpage.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The tier lists on the GamePress fan site had a tier called Apex long before Apex creatures were added as a rarity in Update 2.0. The Apex tier was thus changed to "Elite", and then another tier labelled "Tyrant" appeared above later.
• Low-Tier Letdown: It also has enough to warrant its own subpage.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Lythronax is the strongest animal in the game according to the fans. It eventually became an Ascended Meme.
  • Thanks to its "10% Damage Over Time Resistance" buff down below, Ardontosaurus is cited as the strongest Legendary.
  • JWA Batman is an infamous player who used Com Mons and base creatures like Tyrannosaurus rex and Postosuchus for endgame content. Their battles online against players as well as against bosses like Lord Lythronax are widely circulated on the game's Reddit.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Four years after the game first launched, Ceratosaurus had yet to join the roster despite being an Ensemble Dark Horse and recently appearing in Camp Cretaceous. Many fans joked about how all sorts of creatures with no prior appearance to the franchise, including the much-maligned Panthera blytheae, joined before it. Then Ceratosaurus finally joined in 2.23...and then got dunked on even harder for the same reasons people hated Panthera blytheae, as mentioned below.
  • Alankylosaurus has been mocked for a very long time due to not getting a superhybrid—as mentioned above it missed the chance to Indotaurus—in addition to not being very useful in battle. After Alankyloceratops was finally introduced, this largely died down and instead Dimodactylus started getting flack for going even longer without a superhybrid, though at least it's a decent fighter.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • See Ensemble Dark Horse for Lythronax.
  • Common-only tournaments, or rather the lack of them. They are constantly requested by the fandom, but have yet to be implemented...that is, until January 2022.
  • 10% Damage Over Time Resistance^note In 2.19, Ardontognathus and Ardentismaxima both received pretty decent buffs. To match, Ardontosaurus received a buff as well...said buff being literally only +10% Damage Over Time resistance and nothing else. Fans memed this as being the best buff in the history of the game, and surely Ardontosaurus would rise to the top of the tier list.
  • All non-hybrids will inevitably be shoehorned into the Omega rarity.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Arguably is the case for once-high tiers like Skoonasaurus, Thoradolosaur, Ardentismaxima, and Geminititan. The latter three, while still found in the lower arenas, have long passed their heyday, but since all four with their high damage output, high health, and powerful group-attack abilities, have found new, less pressuring roles in raids.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Boosts. Their pay-to-win implementation and massive initial power proved very unpopular. Ludia had to nerf them twice to make them manageable.
  • Since their introduction in 2.7, Flocks have certainly earned quite a bit of ire. Flocks fight in a group of three, and the Flock's overall Health is divided into thirds, one for each Flock member. The passive Absorb ability means that the maximum damage the Flock can receive is only equal to the Flock member closest to death; in other words, one cannot damage the Flock and punch past the Health threshold of a Flock member without already being at that threshold, except with Group attacks. Fair game, but many Group attackers are weak and unreliable, whether due to Group attacks having hefty cooldown, or the users themselves, like stegosaurs, simply being low-tier. Not to mention most Flocks can Rally Heal, which is healing at a specific percentage, and most Rally Heals equate to about 33%, which is the Health of a Flock member. Fighting a Flock can easily devolve into a pretty long slog as you try to chip away at their Health while they constantly Heal up, and a lot of Flocks are Cunning, too, so they can Distract you to slow you down even more.
  • The sheer amount of creatures that do not spawn in the wild and can only be obtained through "special events"(i.e. weeks in which they are showcased) has only been growing larger with each update^note As of 3.4, the list is Ailurarctos, Albertosaurus, Allosaurus GEN 2, Arctops, Argentavis, Beelzebufo, Beta, Bumpy, Carcharodontosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Cervalces, Clever Girl, Diplodocus, the Dire Wolf, Dracorex, Giganotosaurus, Kelenken, Moros intrepidus, Panthera blytheae, Pulmonoscorpius, Quetzalcoatlus, Red, the Rodrigues Solitaire, Sonorasaurus, Styracosaurus lux, Tenontosaurus, Titanoboa, and the Woolly Rhino.. Many of these creatures, especially Pulmonoscorpius, Diplodocus, Panthera blytheae, and Styracosaurus lux are extremely powerful in and of themselves, but a majority of these event-exclusives are components of very powerful hybrids as well. This means that if they aren't showcased much, thus denying you of opportunities to dart them, consider yourself stumped if you want to make progress to certain high-tier creatures.
  • Catalysts, enhancements, and Reactive passive abilities were introduced...with no fanfare. Catalysts are formed by sacrificing DNA of lower rarity creatures, and then are spent along with coins and DNA of the enhanced Unique creature to unlock the next enhancement "tier"^note In order: +10% Health, +10% Damage, +2 Speed, a free boost slot, and finally the Reactive ability. On paper it seems like a perfect foil to Boosts. Enough Catylists and you will be given a Limit Break that could give Uniques that fell out of the meta a glorious comeback, but in practice...the grind is unbearable. See, to be eligible for Catalyst formation, creatures(Common to Legendary) need to be at least Level 25, and the Unique to enhance at Level 30. And with high prices associated with enhancement and Catalyst formation, don't be surprised if you find yourself spinning Supply Drops even more than darting. All this for a passive ability that, depending on the creature, could be either be the Unique's one-way ticket to a comeback as promised by the idea, or just be so useless it's not even worth enhancing it more than two times.
• That One Attack:
  • Swap-In Shattering Rampage. It's almost impossible to stop, and almost impossible to reduce the damage; only a clever swap-in with a faster creature(i.e., one with Swap-In Distraction, which reduces the damage of the target's next attack by 100%) can interfere with it. In most cases, you'll be taking a massive chunk of damage that bests any revenge killer and kills low-health creatures before they can react. The attack proved to be far too powerful, and the creatures that had it^note With the exception of the Purposefully Overpowered Lord Lythronax were nerfed to simply have Swap-In Rampage, and then Swap-In Savagery, which is percentage-based.
  • Cautious Strike, the former Secret Art of Indoraptor GEN 2. It cleanses, boosts speed, puts up evasion for the turn, distracts the enemy, and was later buffed to be precise, allowing it to hit cloaked or evading creatures for full damage. If the opponent can't deal with it in some manner and/or just gets plain unlucky, then Indoraptor GEN 2 can win entire battles just by spamming that single attack. Now even other creatures such as sloths have it, but mercifully it was nerfed to no longer cleanse before that.
  • Critical Ambush, the Secret Art of Scorpios rex GENs 1 and 3. Simply put, upon swapping in Scorpios speeds up by 30%, gets a chance to Dodge incoming damage, and increases its already high Crit chance; all of this persists for two turns. But on top of the Dodge it also halves the foe's Damage for one turn, so whether or not you punch through the Dodge, unless you used an attack that cleanses reduced Damage you won't be getting off to a strong start against this swapper. Oh, and Scorpios rex GEN 3 also has the move Instant Ambush, which is literally just Critical Ambush as a normal move except with priority and a 2-turn cooldown, so theoretically it can stack Dodges. Scorpios rex GEN 2 instead has Defensive Swap In, which is basically just Critical Ambush but with no Crit chance boost; Scorpios GEN 1 also has Camouflage instead of Instant Ambush, which, again, omits the Crit chance boost in exchange for having no cooldown, and Scorpios GEN 2 thankfully has neither.
  • Toxic Quills, another Secret Art of Scorpios rex GEN 3. To start off, it's Lethal Wound with a 75% chance to stun with no delay. This can be annoying if you don't have a creature with at least stun and/or bleed resist, as it can stop you for one turn and do one-third damage of your HP.
  • Sheltering Impact, one of the signature moves of Atrocodistis. Not only it is a priority move that deals a decent amount of damage but also cleanses and heals the user about twice its damage stat and increases its speed as well, making this already hard-to-kill creature even more difficult. It can be used after Atrocodistis used Berserk Resilient Rampage which sacrifices one-third of its health.
• That One Boss:
  • Lord Lythronax from the first April Fools' event and the Campaign. It's Level 30, immune to everything except Rend and Damage Over Time(it's only 50% resistant to them), counters all attacks with a Maximal Counter-Attack, and has Nullifying Strike to counter evasion and buffs, Instant Invincibility to protect itself from all but Defense Shattering attacks, and two Rampages: Instant Rampage and Defense Shattering Rampage. This is without mentioning monstrous stats; with 10803 Health, 3074 base Damage, 142 Speed, 60% Armor, and 20% Crit Chance, it outspeeds Velociraptor and out-damages Mortem rex.^note It also has the above-mentioned Swap-In-Shattering Rampage, but thankfully it's useless since it's by itself/can't swap with anything...unless you're fighting it in Intermediate difficulty in the Campaign, in which it gets a normal Lythronax partner that's obviously intended to just be fodder so Lord Lythronax itself can swap.
  • The Goats have massive stats, utterly insane moves, and a handful of resistances so that you can't just cheese them. Different Goats have different movesets; the Common Goat may actually be one of the more threatening ones, with a 100% Rend combined with 6000 Health, 60% Armor, and full Vulnerability immunity to make for a Hell of a wall. Lil Gruff the Rare Goat may actually be the easiest courtesy of her weak stats, but she has full immunity to all negative effects and will typically get off at least one Damage Over Time before she keels over due to high Speed. Then comes Billy Gruff, the Epic Goat, with a moveset geared towards Stunning and stalling, and finally Biggie Gruff the gigantic Legendary Goat, with as much damage as Mortem rex, a 90% Crit chance, moves to boost both, and 12000 Health. The best way to fight them, especially Biggie, is with a Prowl-boosted Rending Takedown, as that damage is guaranteed...at least if the Goat doesn't KO the user first.
  • The Raid boss Mortem rex, full stop. While each Raid boss has their own unique movesets, stats, and lower-tiered Mooks (called Minions here), most can be easily dealt with by three players with the right strategy; in some cases, you can even pull it off with just two players. Mortem takes everything Lord Lythronax and the other bosses throw at you, and dials it up to way past eleven. It has the highest Critical Hit chance of any creature in the game, its attack stat is high enough to make short work of even the likes of Ardentismaxima, its health sits at close to about 85,000, and worst of all, its minions (a Velociraptor and Majungasaurus) are incredibly powerful in their own right; the raptor's Damage is on par with Mortem’s and its Speed sits at 162, guaranteeing it’ll be the fastest creature on the field, while the Majungasaurus can Draw Aggro, shield all three opponents, and counterattack. Needless to say, while with the other Raids it’s helpful but not really required to have four players with incredibly powerful creatures and take out the minions, with Mortem, it’s a necessity to have four players take it on, each with a very high leveled creature with a lot of boosts on it, and to take down the minions ASAP. And even then, there are only a few very specific strategies requiring very specific creatures that stand the best chance of giving the players a shot at emerging victorious, and no small amount of luck involved.
  • The other bosses are no slouches either, many requiring powerful Unique creatures to take them down, and raising those creatures is a task on its own. They also come with threatening minions of their own. Some of the newer raids like Rinchicyon are very bothersome due to relying quite a bit on RNG.
  • Imperatosuchus is probably the hardest Raid boss in the game. It counters every attack with Counter Spike, which buffs its entire team and shatters the shields of its target, and since this buff applies after the effects of Cunning or Nullifying attacks you need to hit it with multiple Cunning attacks to make a debuff stick. It also puts up a shield at the start of the first two rounds to make it and its minions more difficult to take down, and since one of them is Majungasaurus it'll also counter-attack if it isn't killed. However it's near the end of the second round and the beginning of the third that it gets ludicrously unfair, as it has three massively powerful attacks that can all easily cause a wipe: Infectious Revenge, which decelerates and bleeds the target and can hit the entire team if used in a revenge state, and the third round sees it use Braking Revenge - which is a rampage-strength attack that has priority if in a revenge state, which it likely will be that attacks the entire team, and the following turn has it follow up with Waning Revenge, another rampage-strength attack that hits the entire team if in a revenge state. Surviving the third round against Imperatosuchus requires careful cooldown management and teamwork to avoid a Total Party Kill.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Grinding to get to Unique creatures without microtransactions, and especially ones that use incubator-exclusive DNA. Later somewhat averted with Dracovenator spawning (albeit rarely) in the wild and can easily be a Disc-One Nuke.
  • Completing the Campaign, as most later missions require a high-level creatures to even challenge them.
  • Obtaining Apex creatures. Most can only be obtained by gaining DNA from their Raids or through two-time only Campaign rewards, which are all That One Boss to begin with, and you can only get between 10 and 30 DNA a week out of the 300 required to unlock them. The few that aren't restricted to Raids instead require the fusion of a Unique and a Legendary, and getting both to Level 25 can in itself be a hassle. The slight mercy is that due to starting off so high level, they don't take a lot of DNA to level up.
  • Trying to find Parasaurolophus lux, as not only is it found only through proximity spawns, it's also the first non-hybrid Legendary in the game, making it much harder to find than even Epic hybrids. Once you actually find it, darting the thing is no easy feat either; it's quite a bit faster than most creatures due to its high rarity, and one of its target points is on its foot. It was even worse before, since it was a night-only spawn, but now it spawns anytime.
    • Ditto with Rexy as of 2.19 update, but mirroring Parasaurolophus lux in its first introduction she only appears during the day. To a lesser extent Tiger only spawns during the dawn and dusk, very short periods of time, but due to only being Epic it's much easier to find it.
• The Scrappy: Panthera blytheae released to almost unanimous hatred from the playerbase. The biggest kicker was that it was Legendary rarity, making it the third Legendary nonhybrid behind Parasaurolophus lux and Rexy; fans were not pleased that a creature with no previous relevance to any of the series was placed just about on par with essentially the franchise's face. Being a High-Tier Scrappy in a game already dominated by a very top-heavy imbalance of overpowered creatures only twisted the knife and salted the wound further, as did it getting a hybrid in Pantherator and subsequently a superhybrid in Sah Panthera, both also utterly dominant in their respective rarities.
• Unexpected Character: Ailurarctos was a big surprise on its initial release, considering it was released on April Fools' Day with absolutely no foreshadowing or previous note. Aside from that, a prehistoric panda was probably one of the last things players were expecting in the game.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Everything in the game is very well modelled and overall has much better graphics than its predecessors. Both the environments and animals are very pretty to look at, as are their animations. The graphics are so nice one can even forget this is a mobile app and confuse it for a console game.
• The Woobie: A meta example with the entire Common rarity, after the Omega rarity was introduced. Despite Ludia trusting the player base that they would add more Common creatures, not a single update introduced one, which led to the playerbase believing it was scrapped in favor of Omegas. Later in the year some players even believed Ludia would never add creatures in the lower rarities, much less Common. Thankfully, the January 2024 update included Plateosaurus as a new Common creature, confirming that Ludia hasn't completely forgotten about the group.