Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Reviews
A novel premise wrapped in an awkward and repetitive survival slog.
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.
Ancestors is ambitious and clunky and not much fun - and it's often quietly thought-provoking too.
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
Equal parts baffling, frustrating, and thrilling
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an unfulfilling survival game, one that never provides a compelling reason to see its journey all the way through.
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.
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
My most confident recommendation of Ancestors goes to casual gamers
Although a great game, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey falls short of perfection.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a fresh take on the survival genre, one that takes us through the steps of human evolution, but falls short of its potential with a gameplay loop that becomes monotonous really soon.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is like no survival game I’ve played before.
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
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 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.