Given that a decent percentage of the poor reviews cite bugs and an inability to play a multiplayer game successfully, I hope that the upcoming patch addresses these problems. I'll admit, it was a bit concerning that bug fixes for SP and MP were not mentioned in the latest dev update about the Oct. patch. Modders can do a lot for the game (especially once the modding tool is out), but bug fixes have to come from the developer. The turn pending and lost connection bugs, in particular, seem to result in negative reviews and players losing interest in the game. Polish and balance are all well and good, but people need to be able to play the game for those things to matter to them.

If the patch we get soon doesn't make multiplayer playable this is going to be a pretty hard pill to swallow.

The "upcoming patch" is now "a while yet" patch.   :/

The game greatness don't come on the first games, it need a bit more time to check.

There is some things to make better on various subjects, but overall it's a very good game.

The "culture" change on each era is really something fresh and new, many combos everywhere in the game. 

It's a bit like playing a CCG, you have to find all combos you came make. And every game, I find a new combo.

I have a lot of things, that went wrong.

i wrote it on steam after maybe a week, when there was still a lot of hype about Humankind. Now it looks like people are changing their mind.

So a short list, and not bugs, because bugs can be fixed, but most of it not;

1) difficulty level.

Winning game on highest difficulty at day 3? It happened to me for the very first time. 

2) Whatever culture you choose, you still do the same, Lack of any replayability. but yes, neolitic era is exciting

3) No expansion, specialization. being limited to only a few cities for the most of the game, and being forced to build the same in all of them = being bored after 30 min. Copying civ5 expansion model is bad, copying endless legend is better. Why they chose civ5?

4) Game is not finished: a) we got AI in theory, but there is no AI. We got religion, but it only exists. We got pollution, but no impact. We got (diplomacy screen, hundreds of infrastructure, civics, insert whatever you want here), but all not finished or even barely started

After 1 patch the game still is totally not replayable. How many times you basically do the same and noone even tries to disturb you?

Aeram wrote:

At this point, whatever the devs do, I doubt the game can pull a "No man sky" kind of recovery. A part of the critics were unfair in Humankind case, but let's be honnest, the devs brought some of it on themselves in my opinion. You do not promise a Magnum Opus and then fail to deliver at least a very good game. We might enjoy it, but the game is high average and lowely good at best. It's not because you enjoy something that it's "objectively good", and vice versa. Don't like Souls games for example. But I suppose they are very good at what they set out to do. Not the case for Humankind, is it ?

You only have one chance at first perception, regardless of the roadmap and attached pipeline. If I were part of the dev team, I would patch and fix the game for free for 2 years to make amend (reputation to uphold and all that), and then start working on the sequel, or something else. Any attempt to support the game long term realy seem risky to me. That being said, I am not part of the dev team and I do not have the data they do. Wherever they go next, I hope they can make a better game in better circumstances, regardless of what the game is about (even if said game is Humankind itself : if it turn out to be a No man sky situation, all right, why not, but I would not bet on it).

I agree with this. HK feels lackluster after a bit of excitement and a few hundred hours. The way this is set up is just not going to support a long-lasting franchise imho (which is really a shame for someone who cares about strat games). They might try, but I cannot see how it will get anywhere near Total War. But still things can happen - Imperator Rome was a disaster, but turned around just fine after some team changes.

enKage wrote:

3) No expansion, specialization. being limited to only a few cities for the most of the game, and being forced to build the same in all of them = being bored after 30 min.

To this, I would add there is very little exploration. If you're on a continent with the AIs, they surround you and won't give open borders. If you're on a continent with an ally or alone, you're surrounded by deep water that you can't get through. 

The overwhelming impression I get from this game is "claustrophobic." I feel like my nation is jammed into a box.

It's supposed to be a 4X game, but the whole thing is designed to make it extremely difficult and tedious to explore (not the least of which is caused by all the backtracking from terrain "features"). 

As your unit moves forward you are rewarded with...one more tile of deep water or an AI border you can't go through...not two tiles of nothing...only one. The glacial pace of discovering the map is one of the most unappealing things about this game, imo. 

Probably the main reasons are the territory mechanism where borders expand in a huge way with very little effort to expand borders, the bizarre way maps are constructed (with deep water adjacent to land), the stingy number of tiles boats and units can move on water without dying, the clouds that hover around until you are directly next to them, and the very late appearance of research that allows deep water travel. 

A 4X game shouldn't actively discourage exploration, but trying to explore in this game is so unrewarding it's as if it was designed to stop players from exploring.

kryton24 wrote:

If the patch we get soon doesn't make multiplayer playable this is going to be a pretty hard pill to swallow.

They have already said multiplayer is going to take some time to fix. I really don't expect multiplayer to be fixed this year. 

I'm one of those negative Steam reviews. I really want to love this game but I can't play it. I will return and sing its praises if they make conquest\domination more playable.

For reference I've got 1,286 hrs in Civ 6, 1,058 hrs in Civ 5, and 506 hrs in CivBE. Most of this is in multiplayer. I play mostly domination but that's the cool thing about Civ.. everyone can play the game their own way. Humankind makes domination and expansion a chore. If you want to see how much you can farm and research in 300 turns this is your game. It's just not mine.

My reasons: https://steamcommunity.com/id/aeonova/recommended/1124300/

"The game offers amazing military units and civs, a novel tactical interface for using them, and a competent AI to use them against. (EDIT: the AI is trash after the classical era. It will build zero units and not upgrade the existing ones. You can walk over a continent w 3 armies.. which is good bc that's all you'll be able to afford) Combat is a truly rewarding experience and beats the competitor hands down in that regard. However, it then does everything it can to stop you from using these things to conquer your neighbors. If you like seeing how many buildings and crops you can build before 300 turns and don't ever want more than 10 cities.. this is your game. If you want to win by military domination go play the competition. This game clearly does not want you to play that way. You'll end up fighting every mechanic to do so and surrendering to your vanquished enemies even though you're surrounding their last city with superior armies. My war support for this game is now zero.

1. Rome did not stop sacking Carthage because Carthage got tired of the war. The war support mechanic is broken. War support going down should be a stability hit instead. If I've decimated my enemy, my people love the war, and I'm at their last city's gates I should not be forced to stop. We removed every city, unit, and outpost from a player and the game god referee magically resurrected him from the dead and forced us to give him half his stuff back. Total BS.

2. City cap needs to be seriously raised\removed and scale with the map size. Why have expansionist civs and other continents on a huge map with a 10 city cap? No matter how creative you are with attaching territory it's impossible to conquer the world. Why have military units in the late game if I can't use them to conquer cities? This makes any domination victory on large maps impossible.

3. Unit maintenance costs need to be drastically lowered and they scale into absurdity. A well placed Dutch special commerce district = $30/turn. A single redcoat regiment = $55/turn. If every acre on the the island of England was a commerce district they still wouldn't have enough redcoats to fight one battle against America or India. And why bother because you won't be able to take their cities due to city cap.

4. No fame is rewarded for taking cities, capitols, or removing a player from the game. You only get a little from killing a few units. Pretty sure Germany got some fame when they sacked Paris in 1940. The only incentive for military conquest is eliminating a civ from generating future fame. Also, a civ that's removed from the planet by military conquest can still win? When we land on Mars we'll claim it for ancient Rome?

5. You cannot attack land units or cities from the water. This HAS to be fixed. Any ranged water unit should be able to fire on land units and cities. Melee units should be able to assault with a penalty. Also, transport ships carrying troops should not be able to defeat naval units designed to fight at sea. My army of 8 redcoats can't land on a tile but their transport ships are somehow stronger than am armada of 4 frigates? You can't do an amphibious assault onto a district tile = small islands become invincible. Why build naval units at all? Just settle islands and laugh at the battleships from the beach.

Maybe some future mods will address these issues and make conquest playable. I not expecting anything from the designers since all of these mechanics were invented to stop the type of gameplay I enjoy from Civ."

aeonova wrote:

I'm one of those negative Steam reviews. I really want to love this game but I can't play it. I will return and sing its praises if they make conquest\domination more playable.

For reference I've got 1,286 hrs in Civ 6, 1,058 hrs in Civ 5, and 506 hrs in CivBE. Most of this is in multiplayer. I play mostly domination but that's the cool thing about Civ.. everyone can play the game their own way. Humankind makes domination and expansion a chore. If you want to see how much you can farm and research in 300 turns this is your game. It's just not mine.

My reasons: https://steamcommunity.com/id/aeonova/recommended/1124300/

"The game offers amazing military units and civs, a novel tactical interface for using them, and a competent AI to use them against. (EDIT: the AI is trash after the classical era. It will build zero units and not upgrade the existing ones. You can walk over a continent w 3 armies.. which is good bc that's all you'll be able to afford) Combat is a truly rewarding experience and beats the competitor hands down in that regard. However, it then does everything it can to stop you from using these things to conquer your neighbors. If you like seeing how many buildings and crops you can build before 300 turns and don't ever want more than 10 cities.. this is your game. If you want to win by military domination go play the competition. This game clearly does not want you to play that way. You'll end up fighting every mechanic to do so and surrendering to your vanquished enemies even though you're surrounding their last city with superior armies. My war support for this game is now zero.

1. Rome did not stop sacking Carthage because Carthage got tired of the war. The war support mechanic is broken. War support going down should be a stability hit instead. If I've decimated my enemy, my people love the war, and I'm at their last city's gates I should not be forced to stop. We removed every city, unit, and outpost from a player and the game god referee magically resurrected him from the dead and forced us to give him half his stuff back. Total BS.

2. City cap needs to be seriously raised\removed and scale with the map size. Why have expansionist civs and other continents on a huge map with a 10 city cap? No matter how creative you are with attaching territory it's impossible to conquer the world. Why have military units in the late game if I can't use them to conquer cities? This makes any domination victory on large maps impossible.

3. Unit maintenance costs need to be drastically lowered and they scale into absurdity. A well placed Dutch special commerce district = $30/turn. A single redcoat regiment = $55/turn. If every acre on the the island of England was a commerce district they still wouldn't have enough redcoats to fight one battle against America or India. And why bother because you won't be able to take their cities due to city cap.

4. No fame is rewarded for taking cities, capitols, or removing a player from the game. You only get a little from killing a few units. Pretty sure Germany got some fame when they sacked Paris in 1940. The only incentive for military conquest is eliminating a civ from generating future fame. Also, a civ that's removed from the planet by military conquest can still win? When we land on Mars we'll claim it for ancient Rome?

5. You cannot attack land units or cities from the water. This HAS to be fixed. Any ranged water unit should be able to fire on land units and cities. Melee units should be able to assault with a penalty. Also, transport ships carrying troops should not be able to defeat naval units designed to fight at sea. My army of 8 redcoats can't land on a tile but their transport ships are somehow stronger than am armada of 4 frigates? You can't do an amphibious assault onto a district tile = small islands become invincible. Why build naval units at all? Just settle islands and laugh at the battleships from the beach.

Maybe some future mods will address these issues and make conquest playable. I not expecting anything from the designers since all of these mechanics were invented to stop the type of gameplay I enjoy from Civ."

I agree the game is in rough shape, but conquest is extremely rewarding. I don't understand how one can play Humankind and not realize how good attacking people is

blackwell wrote:

aeonova wrote:

I'm one of those negative Steam reviews. I really want to love this game but I can't play it. I will return and sing its praises if they make conquest\domination more playable.

For reference I've got 1,286 hrs in Civ 6, 1,058 hrs in Civ 5, and 506 hrs in CivBE. Most of this is in multiplayer. I play mostly domination but that's the cool thing about Civ.. everyone can play the game their own way. Humankind makes domination and expansion a chore. If you want to see how much you can farm and research in 300 turns this is your game. It's just not mine.

My reasons: https://steamcommunity.com/id/aeonova/recommended/1124300/

"The game offers amazing military units and civs, a novel tactical interface for using them, and a competent AI to use them against. (EDIT: the AI is trash after the classical era. It will build zero units and not upgrade the existing ones. You can walk over a continent w 3 armies.. which is good bc that's all you'll be able to afford) Combat is a truly rewarding experience and beats the competitor hands down in that regard. However, it then does everything it can to stop you from using these things to conquer your neighbors. If you like seeing how many buildings and crops you can build before 300 turns and don't ever want more than 10 cities.. this is your game. If you want to win by military domination go play the competition. This game clearly does not want you to play that way. You'll end up fighting every mechanic to do so and surrendering to your vanquished enemies even though you're surrounding their last city with superior armies. My war support for this game is now zero.

1. Rome did not stop sacking Carthage because Carthage got tired of the war. The war support mechanic is broken. War support going down should be a stability hit instead. If I've decimated my enemy, my people love the war, and I'm at their last city's gates I should not be forced to stop. We removed every city, unit, and outpost from a player and the game god referee magically resurrected him from the dead and forced us to give him half his stuff back. Total BS.

2. City cap needs to be seriously raised\removed and scale with the map size. Why have expansionist civs and other continents on a huge map with a 10 city cap? No matter how creative you are with attaching territory it's impossible to conquer the world. Why have military units in the late game if I can't use them to conquer cities? This makes any domination victory on large maps impossible.

3. Unit maintenance costs need to be drastically lowered and they scale into absurdity. A well placed Dutch special commerce district = $30/turn. A single redcoat regiment = $55/turn. If every acre on the the island of England was a commerce district they still wouldn't have enough redcoats to fight one battle against America or India. And why bother because you won't be able to take their cities due to city cap.

4. No fame is rewarded for taking cities, capitols, or removing a player from the game. You only get a little from killing a few units. Pretty sure Germany got some fame when they sacked Paris in 1940. The only incentive for military conquest is eliminating a civ from generating future fame. Also, a civ that's removed from the planet by military conquest can still win? When we land on Mars we'll claim it for ancient Rome?

5. You cannot attack land units or cities from the water. This HAS to be fixed. Any ranged water unit should be able to fire on land units and cities. Melee units should be able to assault with a penalty. Also, transport ships carrying troops should not be able to defeat naval units designed to fight at sea. My army of 8 redcoats can't land on a tile but their transport ships are somehow stronger than am armada of 4 frigates? You can't do an amphibious assault onto a district tile = small islands become invincible. Why build naval units at all? Just settle islands and laugh at the battleships from the beach.

Maybe some future mods will address these issues and make conquest playable. I not expecting anything from the designers since all of these mechanics were invented to stop the type of gameplay I enjoy from Civ."

I agree the game is in rough shape, but conquest is extremely rewarding. I don't understand how one can play Humankind and not realize how good attacking people is

What he said. Something something, not having to pay for the ressources. Big guns and planes to burn down cities. Set up outposts. One city that you rename "OCCUPATION AND PROCESSING" and that's done for this continent. Oh yes, and the body counts. For historians I suppose. Not that relevant to me. (Jokes are being made here.)

blackwell wrote:

aeonova wrote:

I'm one of those negative Steam reviews. I really want to love this game but I can't play it. I will return and sing its praises if they make conquest\domination more playable.

For reference I've got 1,286 hrs in Civ 6, 1,058 hrs in Civ 5, and 506 hrs in CivBE. Most of this is in multiplayer. I play mostly domination but that's the cool thing about Civ.. everyone can play the game their own way. Humankind makes domination and expansion a chore. If you want to see how much you can farm and research in 300 turns this is your game. It's just not mine.

My reasons: https://steamcommunity.com/id/aeonova/recommended/1124300/

"The game offers amazing military units and civs, a novel tactical interface for using them, and a competent AI to use them against. (EDIT: the AI is trash after the classical era. It will build zero units and not upgrade the existing ones. You can walk over a continent w 3 armies.. which is good bc that's all you'll be able to afford) Combat is a truly rewarding experience and beats the competitor hands down in that regard. However, it then does everything it can to stop you from using these things to conquer your neighbors. If you like seeing how many buildings and crops you can build before 300 turns and don't ever want more than 10 cities.. this is your game. If you want to win by military domination go play the competition. This game clearly does not want you to play that way. You'll end up fighting every mechanic to do so and surrendering to your vanquished enemies even though you're surrounding their last city with superior armies. My war support for this game is now zero.

1. Rome did not stop sacking Carthage because Carthage got tired of the war. The war support mechanic is broken. War support going down should be a stability hit instead. If I've decimated my enemy, my people love the war, and I'm at their last city's gates I should not be forced to stop. We removed every city, unit, and outpost from a player and the game god referee magically resurrected him from the dead and forced us to give him half his stuff back. Total BS.

2. City cap needs to be seriously raised\removed and scale with the map size. Why have expansionist civs and other continents on a huge map with a 10 city cap? No matter how creative you are with attaching territory it's impossible to conquer the world. Why have military units in the late game if I can't use them to conquer cities? This makes any domination victory on large maps impossible.

3. Unit maintenance costs need to be drastically lowered and they scale into absurdity. A well placed Dutch special commerce district = $30/turn. A single redcoat regiment = $55/turn. If every acre on the the island of England was a commerce district they still wouldn't have enough redcoats to fight one battle against America or India. And why bother because you won't be able to take their cities due to city cap.

4. No fame is rewarded for taking cities, capitols, or removing a player from the game. You only get a little from killing a few units. Pretty sure Germany got some fame when they sacked Paris in 1940. The only incentive for military conquest is eliminating a civ from generating future fame. Also, a civ that's removed from the planet by military conquest can still win? When we land on Mars we'll claim it for ancient Rome?

5. You cannot attack land units or cities from the water. This HAS to be fixed. Any ranged water unit should be able to fire on land units and cities. Melee units should be able to assault with a penalty. Also, transport ships carrying troops should not be able to defeat naval units designed to fight at sea. My army of 8 redcoats can't land on a tile but their transport ships are somehow stronger than am armada of 4 frigates? You can't do an amphibious assault onto a district tile = small islands become invincible. Why build naval units at all? Just settle islands and laugh at the battleships from the beach.

Maybe some future mods will address these issues and make conquest playable. I not expecting anything from the designers since all of these mechanics were invented to stop the type of gameplay I enjoy from Civ."

I agree the game is in rough shape, but conquest is extremely rewarding. I don't understand how one can play Humankind and not realize how good attacking people is

Indeed. Waging a war and conquering a capital city of another player as soon as possible is one of the best strategies in the game right now. Stating that conquest is not playable means that you are not even trying to understand how the game works, but leaved a negative review... Booooh!

Update on the Steam Reviews:

68% Mixed (All Reviews)

55% Mixed (Recent Reviews)

Sadly, still a lot of angry and disappointed reviews. Even some of the comments for the latest patch have some going off about "the final nail in the coffin" or "WHERE ARE MY CHANGES"

You'd think this was Cyberpunk 2077 with some of the stuff.

I too noticed the “this patch puts the nail in the coffin” comments on steam… lots of reactions there mostly negative. I think the devs need to make bug fixes faster and move into deeper balancing / tweaking instead of timed events

ObligedAndUnhappyAboutIt wrote:

It's all self-inflicted. They aimed too high, too ambitious, and lacked the talent to achieve it.

Most notably, their marketing folks really know their job and did really well when it came to building up hype. They included streamers, teased just the right amount with the Open Devs, and presented the devs as approachable and open to feedback. Marketing material had high production value and looked really polished.

There are always two sides to disappointment: expectations and reality. Between those, Humankind was torn apart from both ends.

I don't think the game is particularly ambitious. Most realms where the game is ambitious, like the art, they nail it. Really, it's the game is not finished. Now I don't know how game development usually goes, but from the open devs last year till release there were significant changes. And while I think big changes were needed from Lucy (although unfortunately they didn't really change the stuff I wanted changed like the way industry is powerful or the scientist ability) at some point you need to sit down and say this is what we have and polish the game. A game like this should not have so many bugs, or esoteric tool tips. Or bugged tool tips. It feels like an Early Access release, like ES2 when it was in early access. At some point you need to polish the game 

enKage wrote:

It is nice to see how many people noticed how rewarding early war is, but the main problem of the game is not penalising anything.

The secret of the great game is not how many tools you are given to win the game, but how well those tools work together and if all of them are impactful enough, that the player has to take care of them.

It is a wide problem of many games, especially introducing new content every single patch.

Why Civ4 is the greatest 4X game ever?

Because if you neglect anything in the game, you would be penalised.

You neglect economy - civil war, game over. You neglect science - DoW and stack of doom on borders, game over. You neglect religion - diplomacy penalties, stack of doom, game over. You neglect exploration - no commerce, no research, game over. And so on. Civ5 is the worst as you can freely ignore: expansion, religion and so on. Civ6, though is still a good game (but still at beta stage despite officially finishing development), offers abundance of mechanism and yields, that offer rewards, but forgetting about them causes no penalties at all.

The same is with Endless Legend - Humankind.

While neglecting anything in EL causes penalties (what makes EL absolutely fantastic game), you can freely ignore most of the things in Humankind. You can forget about religion completely, you can forget about pollution completely, you can forget about military completely, you can completely turn off research. And you are not penalised in any way!

Oh, my mistake. you are "penalised". By enforcing meaningless civic. At the same time rewarding a player with a science boost.

If on Humankind level of difficulty a player can be in classical era, two eras behind AI and still have a lead in fame, 2k fame over 2nd place, that definitely says sth went very very wrong

We could spend hours or days talking about how a 4x game should be or not to be. I don't agree by any means on what you are stating (and I am really getting bored by the tune that everything that is not civ4 is bad, than just play civ4 and don't bother), for example I really like civ5 as well as humankind and had very different impressions from those games in respect on what you say, so i guess that we are very different players with very different tastes and I mean its fine. And that is my point, I didnt like how civ6 came up for various reasons and i really expected a different game from various aspect, but i did not put a negative review on it just because "it is not civ4" or civ5 or its not the game I wanted it to be. There are a a lot of good strategy game out there and also some good 4x in particular (im thinkink about old world or oriental Empires as an ex.) and everyone is different with points of strenght an points of weakness and again i would love to spend days talking about what se like or dislike about those games and that is why forums like this exists. But those games are good even of they are not civ4 and humankind Is among this good games. So reading reviews disliking the game because "I cannot take Greece" or "I cannot conquer the whole world easily" really underwhelm me.