Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Reviews

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is ranked in the 30th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
Aug 26, 2019

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a rebellious game about human evolution, replete with challenge and storytelling opportunities of bare survival.

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8 / 10.0
Aug 26, 2019

It'll be an acquired taste, but for those who have the patience for its deliberate opaqueness, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is the type of game its fans will be playing on and off for months, if not years. Its challenging nature makes it equal parts compelling and frustrating, but there's no question this smart survival adventure contains loads of rewards for persistent players.

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7.5 / 10.0
Aug 26, 2019

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a breath of fresh air in the sandbox/survival genre. At the same time, the original atmosphere and compelling gameplay is blended with some subpar elements that ought to discourage many players – and there’s too much repetitiveness.

Review in Polish | Read full review

5 / 10
Aug 26, 2019

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an ambitious game whose conceptual vision is the very thing that bogs it down. There's a lot of unexplained expectations of the player, and, by the time those are worked out, it's easy to become bored or frustrated with it. Very likely, both. Combined with abundant technical problems, there isn't a lot to praise about Ancestors and even less to recommend.

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4.4 / 5.0
Apr 12, 2020

The story of our evolution as a species is brought to life in this beautifully crafted third-person open-world survival adventure.

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GameZone
Top Critic
4 / 10.0
Dec 30, 2019

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a game that wanted to be so much but in that desire ended up being so little. A repetitive cycle of slowly walking around the jungle avoiding predators while visiting landmarks that all look the same and cranking out babies that know just a little bit more than their parents. It's a game that achieved nothing but mediocracy despite its legendary pedigree.

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4.1 / 5.0
Sep 27, 2019

Help your early ancestors tame a savage landscape and evolve towards modern humans.

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GamingBolt
Matt Bianucci
Top Critic
6 / 10.0
Sep 7, 2019

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey has rewarding survival gameplay at its core, but it has too much early imbalance and repetition before you can find it.

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7.5 / 10.0
Aug 28, 2019

I started to criticize the game for not giving me the answers to its frustrating moments, but then I took a step back and realized that is all part of the game.  There is no going back to try again with your lineage. If you fail, you have to deal with your failure. Sometimes it's a simple mistake that you can recover from. Other times, it's a critical mistake like killing off your last male and being left with only females and the generations cease to be. It just goes to show how closely actions and consequences go hand and hand.

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Spaziogames
Top Critic
6.5 / 10.0
Aug 29, 2019

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is one of a kind, but it works more in theory than in practice.

Review in Italian | Read full review

The Digital Fix
James Eckhoff
Top Critic
5 / 10.0
Sep 1, 2019

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a beautiful, ambitious game of evolution. Unfortunately, the sheer initial difficulty, repetitiveness, and discouragement associated with some of the mechanics and replayability will likely limit this title to only those most dedicated to seeing the game through to the end. For a lack of better words, it feels as if this game needs to go through a bit of evolution itself in order to smooth the roughness and make players want to journey through this odyssey.

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GameWatcher
Top Critic
6.5 / 10.0
Aug 26, 2019

An interesting experience that will divide players.

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Gamersky
金闪闪老里
Top Critic
7.5 / 10.0
Aug 26, 2019

Despite some repeated combat and the boring management system, it's fun to play as a gorilla and explore jungles.

Review in Chinese | Read full review

4 / 5.0
Aug 26, 2019

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.

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7 / 10.0
Aug 26, 2019

A survival game that feels like a puzzle and plays a bit awkwardly. Overall, a brain-burning but enjoyable experience.

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8.5 / 10.0
Aug 26, 2019

Ancestors is a fantastic translation of evolutionary concepts into a game. It presents a fully-realized world that forces you to pay attention to every last detail if you want to survive.

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Aug 26, 2019

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an impossibly ambitious game, attempting to summarize the whole of human evolution into the span of a few hours—and succeeding to a surprising degree.

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6 / 10.0
Aug 25, 2019

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an ambitious take on the survival genre that is hampered by poor design choices

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4.5 / 10.0
Nov 10, 2020

Like Spore before it, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey falls victim to its own ambition and fails to be engaging. Too much focus is put on the exceptional amount of immersion, that none is spent on making the game fun.

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6 / 10.0
Mar 11, 2020

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey aims to tackle the evolution of mankind from our animal forebears, a hefty task for any one piece of media. While the goal is incredibly admirable, Panache Digital Games puts too much on its plate.

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