Greetings gamers! Greg Vander Velde here to talk about HUMANKIND again from AMPLITUDE Studios and SEGA. HUMANKIND gives you a glimpse into how the world may have evolved over time if you were in charge. This 4X game brings a new contender for the Civilization franchise learning from its legacy.
v gives you the chance to raise a civilization from the Ancient Age to the Space Age. Starting players out in the Neolithic era gives players a small number of options as people yet to discover the wonders of basic technology may allow for learning the basics of the game from the ground up, but also give players a taste of worrying about just basic survival. This is nice because it engages players into identifying with their people and creating stakes for winning while learning the turn-based tactics. Once you master basic survival, HUMANKIND allows for a combination of 60 historical cultures, which can be layered over time creating a huge variety of exciting combinations through six eras of human development. You could choose to keep with a culture or jump to a new cultural background giving different perks and layering traits the player gets to keep from the previous era. Each choice brings about different advantages and hindrances as you try to navigate the political landscape of emerging cultures. This gives players a unique experience each time a run-through is started. Regardless you will get to keep your legacy trait bonuses for the rest of the playthrough. Build alliances where possible to gain trade benefits, resources not rich in your lands, perks that have been negotiated, and best of all peace. If that doesn’t sound like the best path forward for your civilization you can take on rival cultures and conquer them if your garner enough war support from your people. Conflicts in the launch version of the game will very seldom be engaged by the A.I. different from the preview beta I got to play early on where I was wiped out by a waring A.I. bent on conquering my people and lands. This game allows for long-term strategy gameplay over the entire course of human history. Pushing the player to wonder “What if?”
How do you win HUMANKIND? Well, for starters, you have fun creating your own unique civilization but for a more tangible and comparable metric, they have a fame system that allows players to compare the success of their civilizations. Fame can be gained by significant advancements in your society, era stars, claiming landmarks, killing units, building a strong economy, and completing objectives. To HUMANKIND’s the fame builds up over time from every era so no matter what course you take, you aren’t losing any progress.
The creators wanted to give the player historically accurate bricks and let the player build whatever story they wanted with those bricks. Creating the ultimate alternate reality sandbox, where Samurai could conquer the moon. These bricks don’t always make sense when you stack them on top of each other, but at least you can get some type of an idea of how things may have gone. This isn’t a full narrative game that is trying to tell branching narrative storylines that are all perfectly blended together with it’s more about exploring the possibilities and trying to get to the later stages of the game. Unfortunately, the later stages leave a little bit to desire not diving too deep into what the world may have been like under other circumstances. I would have loved it if you played your game well you could get very science fiction with the end game may be even start conquering other planets or battling aliens. I’m glad that climate change is in the game, but I wish it reflected as real of a danger in the game as it is in real life. I would think the game turning into Waterworld or your civilization being Atlantians would have been a fun twist too.
If changing the story of HUMANKIND sounds like a journey you would like to take, this 4X game just may be the treasure you have been looking for and hopefully, it only improves and patches its little problems in the meantime. Giving players the Civilizations rival gamers want and deserve. Ill give HUMANKIND a 7.5/10.
Check Out the HUMANKIND trailer – https://youtu.be/3n5iIHIIZY0
HUMANKIND is available at humankind.game, on Steam, (check Out Our Original Preview!) the Epic Games Store, Google Stadia, or play via Xbox Game Pass for PC.
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I've been a life long nerd and video game junkie known to associate with the likes of Link, Nathan Drake, Batman, and Master Chief. I'm a filmmaker by profession, but spend lots of time behind a controller escaping the real world. @GregVelde on Instagram/Twitter/YouTube
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