Humankind! Civ-like game from Endless Space developers

[Gusington]

 :nerd:

[steve58]

Reviews of Humankind are starting to come out.  Here's a couple:

https://www.pcgamer.com/humankind-review/

https://www.pcgamesn.com/humankind/review

Not sure it sounds different enough from the Civilization games to get me to open my wallet now...maybe way on down the line during a sale.

[glen55]

The RPS review came out today, and while the reviewer purported to love it, I didn't find what he said about the game very enticing. For example:

In a recent game I played, picking the Zhou in the Ancient slot and spamming confucian schools next to mountains led to my research rate multiplying by a cool 10,000% in the space of a few turns. It seemed abjectly silly. This meant, however, that I researched every technology available in a flash, leaving me with the option of either rushing an era advance before the optimum point, or continuing on through the ancient era with a load of expensive research districts doing absolutely nothing. Moderation, it turned out, would have served me a lot better than min-maxing.

His point is that the devs punish you if you try to jack the game around with exploits, but really shouldn't the exploits not be possible? I don't want a game that lets me research things 100X faster than normal. That's absurd, and it's the kind of thing that turns me off a game.

I have really been looking forward to this game, but at this point I'm waiting for reviews.

[Gusington]

I thought the PCGamer review was a lot better than the RPS one.

[Pete Dero]

I have really been looking forward to this game, but at this point I'm waiting for reviews.

https://www.gamesradar.com/au/humankind-review/
https://www.gamewatcher.com/reviews/humankind-review/13291
https://www.ign.com/articles/humankind-review-4x-strategy-game
https://www.nme.com/reviews/game-reviews/humankind-review-war-never-changes-3020120
https://www.pcgamer.com/humankind-review/
https://www.pcgamesn.com/humankind/review
https://www.pcinvasion.com/humankind-review-4x-pc/
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/humankind-pc-review

[glen55]

I have really been looking forward to this game, but at this point I'm waiting for reviews.

https://www.gamesradar.com/au/humankind-review/
https://www.gamewatcher.com/reviews/humankind-review/13291
https://www.ign.com/articles/humankind-review-4x-strategy-game
https://www.nme.com/reviews/game-reviews/humankind-review-war-never-changes-3020120
https://www.pcgamer.com/humankind-review/
https://www.pcgamesn.com/humankind/review
https://www.pcinvasion.com/humankind-review-4x-pc/
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/humankind-pc-review

Appreciate it. I read 'em all and I think I'll wait for a price cut.

It does sound like some of the problems can be patched out. And I'm not that concerned about the bugginess. But there's a general consensus that this is not the Next Big Thing in 4X, it's just another 4X with really good graphics.

[solops]

Ok. I bought it with the small 17% discount. I am too old to worry about waiting for a good discount on a game that I KNOW that I AM going to eventually buy. After fiddling with it I have a few observations.
1. For me, it does not have the instant, addictive "just one more turn" narcotic appeal, though it seems to be very good. It may well grow on me.
2. Do not put any credence into any reviews at this time. It is far, far too deep and complex for any of these reviewers or beta testers to have a clue as to how the game really, really stacks up.
3. There WILL be a lot of changes coming via patches. I have had no bugs so far, but it is inevitable that a lot of little problems will pop up and get fixed over the next few weeks. The first patch was today. I have the feeling that there is a lot of balance tweaking that will come after that.

Overall, I think we probably have a good, finished product that is too new and complex to be finely polished or balanced. Over time it will be and it may well be quite superior to what we have now. As to what we have now, I am really not sure. There is just too much to learn and test. It will take hundreds of hours of play time to really evaluate this thing.
For the record I disliked both of Amplitude's Endless Space games but I love and still play Endless Legends. This game seems more like Endless Legends, but with a lot of new systems in place for historical advancement, culture and religion.

[Rayfer]

Ok. I bought it with the small 17% discount. I am too old to worry about waiting for a good discount on a game that I KNOW that I AM going to eventually buy. After fiddling with it I have a few observations.
1. For me, it does not have the instant, addictive "just one more turn" narcotic appeal, though it seems to be very good. It may well grow on me.
2. Do not put any credence into any reviews at this time. It is far, far too deep and complex for any of these reviewers or beta testers to have a clue as to how the game really, really stacks up.
3. There WILL be a lot of changes coming via patches. I have had no bugs so far, but it is inevitable that a lot of little problems will pop up and get fixed over the next few weeks. The first patch was today. I have the feeling that there is a lot of balance tweaking that will come after that.

Overall, I think we probably have a good, finished product that is too new and complex to be finely polished or balanced. Over time it will be and it may well be quite superior to what we have now. As to what we have now, I am really not sure. There is just too much to learn and test. It will take hundreds of hours of play time to really evaluate this thing.
For the record I disliked both of Amplitude's Endless Space games but I love and still play Endless Legends. This game seems more like Endless Legends, but with a lot of new systems in place for historical advancement, culture and religion.

Thanks for the update and, if you can, keep them coming.  I'm old too, but with my limited gaming budget I wait for better sales down the road.  This is a genre of game I enjoy so it is most likely a buy for me some time later.  And yes, I also enjoyed Endless Legends.

[Rayfer]

A YouTube review, 26 minutes long.  In a nutshell....this is the famous Civ series blended into the Endless Legends engine.  It looks stunning and is a mix of the two games.  Haven't finished watching the review yet so I haven't gotten to his final opinion.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zXJmjz9wGM

[al_infierno]

Thought this Steam review was interesting.

I get why they decided to do it this way. Mao Zhedong fighting Napoleon with war elephants in 1000BC was always a bit of a running joke in the old Civ games. So instead of playing a single civ from start to finish, Humankind has you switching to a different civ every time you advance to the next age.

The result is a complete sense of schizophrenia and alienation. You start as Egypt, then turn into Rome, then become England, Korea, then France. Meanwhile, they're all being led by the same blonde pale dude (your avatar), cosplaying and looking super out-of-place half the time. Your cities are still called Memphis, Thebes, etc. The architecture just bizarrely changes from Egyptian to Roman, then suddenly East Asian, then suddenly European again. There's absolutely no sense of consistency, theme, or ownership. Pretty soon, you're just minmaxing the abstract game mechanics, getting your numbers up, and stomping the other nondescript, schizophrenic cosplayers without any feeling of leading a people through history.

Meanwhile, the same thing is happening with your neighbors: you start next to Harrappans (ancient Indians), so you've gotten used to thinking of them as Indians. You're intuitively expecting an Indian culture to be developing next to you. But now they're Celts. And now they're suddenly something else. The idiot on the other side is Mycenean-Hun-Polish-Aztec-Whateverthehell. You feel no sense of relatability or connection to the other civs, because you don't even know how you're supposed to visualize them in your head. Pretty soon, you're only killing them or ignoring them.

Ironically, this approach also gives you less, not more freedom. Want to play England? Nope, wait until the middle ages. Want to play Russia? Wait until the game is nearly over. On the highest difficulty settings, you also have to be mindful of the bonuses/abilities each civ gives you, which further restricts you to only a couple options that are actually viable in your situation.

On that note, Humankind also sacrificed one of the main things that gave the old Civ games so much of their personality - the cast of historical leaders. You won't get to feel that gravitas and weight of dealing with Alexander Macedon, Chingis Khan, or Lenin. Instead, the aforementioned schizophrenic, faceless cosplayers periodically disturb your minmaxing, forcing you to remember who the hell they're supposed to be during this particular five-minute interval.

This is 180 degrees from the incredibly diverse, flavorful factions in Endless Legend and Endless Space 2, where you really feel that you're playing a very distinct faction with its own special character and feeling, surrounded by other interesting people. Amplitude rejected one of the main things that made their games so good.

The aesthetics also rub me the wrong way, although I have the same complaint about Civ 6. The avatars are fidgeting and grimacing like BuzzFeed eunuchs, not world leaders. The art is happy-campy-colorful, which forms a surreal backdrop to the war, starvation, industrial pollution, and tyranny that is supposedly unfolding in front of you. The game seems to struggle to take itself seriously, which doesn't exactly help the player take it seriously.

The underlying mechanics are mostly very solid, Amplitude knows what they're doing as always. There's a well-made game somewhere underneath all that. Unfortunately, that's not enough to salvage a game devoid of any immersion or sense of investment.

I have to make this a thumbs down, because these problems can't be patched out or fixed with DLC. I'm a big respecter of Amplitude and it hurts like hell to criticize them, but Humankind doesn't live up to their previous games.

I apologize for being verbose.

[Jarhead0331]

^I think they took a chance at trying something new, and it sounds like it just doesn't work. That's a painfully honest review from someone who clearly had high hopes and wanted to like the game.

Still, Amplitude gets points for taking risks, as always. 

[Gusington]

That is a great review above and lists many of the things I never liked about Civ but just couldn't express. Rocket mounted French elephants in 1000 BC always made me sad.

[solops]

^I think they took a chance at trying something new, and it sounds like it just doesn't work. That's a painfully honest review from someone who clearly had high hopes and wanted to like the game.

Still, Amplitude gets points for taking risks, as always.

I would agree with this. I am experiencing a bit of temporal confusion and a lack of continuity. That review sums up some problems. These issues also make things less than intuitive. The graphics are ok with me, though.

[devoncop]

Excellent review and encapsulates perfectly why I decided to give this a pass. It also explains my problem with the Civ series of fighting pikemen with tanks....  :(

Old World to me seems far more appealing for the above reasons and I am waiting to be able to buy it on Steam as Epic is still no go for me.

[Gusington]

^We must be related.