It's been 7 months since Humankinds pretty terrible launch (at least in ratings) and things appear to have quieted down now. With patches and updates delivered since, is Humankind worth the 50 dollars, or is it better to wait for sale or for more updates?

It's just one personal opinion, but I'd suggest to wait for more updates and patches, the game still has a lot of issues, many of which I'd consider as "core" issues, aka will take a lot while to fix / balance / iron out (if it's even possible). None of the patches recently have been touching these, so the game is still ultimately boring, uninteresting and still unbalanced after you've put more than a few hours into it.

I stopped playing months ago, thought I'd try it again (after the patch that gave unique cultural arts for units, which was a really good addition), but after about 2 and a half hours I just couldn't continue and haven't touched the game since.

I would definitely recommend waiting for a price reduction. The game has some bugs and some mechanics are not well solved yet.  What I especially don't like are these things:

- Commons quarters are almost unusable. You need them only very sporadically. 

- When you build an infrastructure you don't know what it brings.

- The political systems are useless. Hard to discover them and they bring almost nothing. 

- Territory management is not intuitive, just like wars and pillaging.

I hope these things will be solved by expansions.

Otherwise after over 250 hours I have to say that it is still fun.

Since HUMANKIND is on Gamepass, for no extra charge, the best deal for it will always be on Gamepass--at least for the best use of your money, especially since Microsoft Gamepass is also on PC. You could argue that free is a better price, however, the gamepass pricing is available now, while free isn't something you can expect in the immediate and near--or even far future.

Nope.. :(

War is IMO entirely unplayable. I would not recommend this game even at a reduced price, or even free.

From what I can tell it's hardly changed since launch, at least not in any substantial way. This game needs a big DLC/Expansion or a major update to overhaul and/or add new mechanics, and it hasn't gotten one yet. It is the 2nd quarter and we haven't received a DLC this quarter yet, so maybe it'll get what it needs this time. 

Isn't there a demo avaiable? you could try the demo and see if it suits your fancy.

That’s true, a free demo does exist. 

I would not suggest this game to anybody in its current state and the outlook is pretty grim. The upcoming "major" update is laughable. They really want a big pat on the back for taking 7 months to fix their terrible in-game notification system? At this rate, Civ 7 will come out and have two expansions before HK is interesting again. The balance changes do not fix any of the inherent flaws that make this game more boring with each replay. The leaders have no personality and the civilizations are even more pigeon-holed than in Civ. Most Civ leaders have one clear strength, but usually two-three unique and viable play styles. Attaching affinities to each civilization in HK and only designing them based on that one affinity means each era you are either picking based on which civ you want to be or which affinity you want. Seldom do you get both and this makes for uninteresting gameplay because you are almost never playing how you would like to. In HK it always feels like you are reacting to your own civ/affinity choice and never planning ahead or truly building an empire which makes it feel more like a chore than a game. 

From the state of updates so far and the very "meh" roadmap the devs have put forward, I think they are attempting to herd rabbits. Without a clearer focus from the devs, my current hope is that they can fix enough of the issues with the combat system and game mechanics that modders can eventually make a salvageable game out of the truly beautiful and inspired building blocks that HK has.

Still a very flawed game.
Most of the flaws are patchable, but those patches haven't come yet.

Some problems to follow

-the war support system being nonsensical and a losing nation can force surrenders because of this. This is supposedly being fixed in the next update.

-Rebel cities spawn units too frequently and the player has no good option to deal with them. If you conquer them, like all AI cities they're ultimately a liability to you. If you ignore them they'll slowly whittle your border guards down with endless unit spam.

-Kamikaze AI- the AI playing badly causes the aformentioned rebel cities to appear on the player's border, pushes the player to revoke civics or face a penalty, and makes AI cities a liability with how badly they're made. Either the AI needs to stop being so bad at management to make these problems less frequent, or the player shouldn't suffer so much for the AI's decisions.
-Bad pacing- eras, science, events. and construction are always completely out of sync.

Having played it since release (over 500hours currently, mostly with a friend) I personally I think it is, I'll be getting the recent DLC soon too.

The demo might help you decide.

A lot of the bugs that were gamebreaking have been fixed which makes it a lot more enjoyable to play.

Current game is very enjoyable, potential of the game to improve in future is also high. 

I'm slowly crossing things off my list of suggestions as the game changes, so that's good too.

Yutterh wrote:

Smesmash wrote:

War is IMO entirely unplayable. I would not recommend this game even at a reduced price, or even free.

I have the complete opposite opinion. War is the saving grace of this game honestly. It's the main reason I enjoy and play this game over civ. Now if civilization added this system, I probably would never play humankind again. 

As for the OP, I want to recommend it I really do but the patches are coming out so slow and this new update is gonna be really good but it should have come out in the first three months. Though I am sure nodding will save this game. I can't recommend enough the vanilla improvement project and extended naval combat as must have mods (you will need a compatibility patch). They changed the game around for me to the point I don't think I can play vanilla anymore. I personally think they should be added into the base game. We will see how the next patch changes things. I agree with others that you should get it on game pass first before buying it.

I've definitely never been the fan with the nonsensical deployment system this game and Endless Legends both use.
It always seems to find a way to give the player disadvantageous ground no matter where you start, and limit your deployment zone so that you can't use half of your army.

I'd try the demo.

As it stands now for me, it isn't quite worth the money I've paid. I usually consider a game "worth it" if I get $1 per hour I've played. I'm about 40 hours shy of that break even point. I'm not sure I'll get there. I've got 19 hours in and I'm starting to get a little bored. That being said, the same thing happened with Civ VI but I was able to get back into it later and now have 1200 hours.

What's concerning is the state the game is in after 8 months. There have only been a handful of patches release which only fix a few problems.

You take a look at Firaxis and how they managed CIv's release. They put out substantial patches monthly for the first 6 months to a year that dramatically improved the game.

I'm not really sure what Amplitudes plan is with Humankind. They have already announce a new game, Endless Dungeon. That will certainly take resources away from Humankind development. I'm fearful this is as good as it gets and we may not even see an expansion. Hopefully, I'm just a worry wart and we hear something soon.