Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Reviews
Ancestors is ambitious and clunky and not much fun - and it's often quietly thought-provoking too.
In Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, survival is easy once you decipher the basic mechanics of evolution and sit through the cutscenes, but the journey is full of moments of discovery.
A novel premise wrapped in an awkward and repetitive survival slog.
A bright idea made dull by constant repetition and diminishing rewards.
Moments of beauty and distantly spaced moments of sublime discovery are separated by hours and hours of tedium and frustration
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an unfulfilling survival game, one that never provides a compelling reason to see its journey all the way through.
Equal parts baffling, frustrating, and thrilling
Ancestors feels wilfully stubborn.
Yet despite its complicated objectives, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey challenges players to think outside the box by using contemporary, evolved knowledge to survive in a prehistoric world.
I wrote most of this review, then felt maybe I was being too harsh. So I took a break and went back. I wanted to enjoy it.
Initial bewilderment gives way to fascination as you understand what Ancestors is trying to do, but fiddly controls and a lack of hand-holding leads to frustration
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey replicates the fumbling, trial-and-error progress of evolution, which often isn't fun, but there are monkeys in the game, and that is brilliant.
My most confident recommendation of Ancestors goes to casual gamers
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a risky, brave and immense game. Evolution as the key to everything. A huge and difficult experience just like life.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Ancestors is more than a survival game. Panache Digital developed some interesting mechanics about evolution, learning and neuronal development. Bt the game has technical issues and gets repetitive after a few hours.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Ancestors is a large, fussy, and at times uneven survival experience, but it's also deeply gratifying once you sink your teeth in. Make it through the wringer, and you'll come out wanting to share stories about your run-of-the-mill open-world exploits to anyone who will listen – no small feat in 2019. The console versions are smoother than their original PC counterpart, so if you've been curious, now's the time.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey promised so much, but it ultimately isn't any fun to play. The lack of direction, the clumsy controls and unwieldy mechanics make this a huge missed opportunity that just doesn't hang together as an experience. The DNA of a great idea may be here, but it needs a significant amount of evolution before it can become realised.
A tiresome and unforgiving survival game that purposefully makes things as difficult and repetitive as possible, while offering very little in the way of entertainment.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is one of the most interesting survival games I've played in the last few years. With very interesting mechanics and a gameplay capable of evolving together with the brains of the apes, Ancestors lets us experience the struggles of the human evolution. Unfortunately cumbersome controls and a difficulty that easily leds to frustration partially ruin the experience.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is like no survival game I’ve played before.