Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Reviews
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
For every cool "a-ha!" moment in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, there has been something that has me on the verge of rage quitting. There's a fascinating, novel concept in Ancestors, but with so many bugs and other tedious issues blocking it, the joy of this survival game feels like it's constantly kept millions of years and a bundle of evolutionary feats away.
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 is ambitious and clunky and not much fun - and it's often quietly thought-provoking too.
A:THO ignores the mechanical DNA that make open world games and survival RPGs so much fun. There's nothing revolutionary about depriving you of map functionality and an adequate tutorial. This isn't an evolution so much as a freak mutation that will die off in the wild. There are other games that achieve what A:THO attempts; play them instead.
Ancestors is very successful when it comes to tell a story about evolution, but it's also successful as a exploration based survival game. You can play Ancestors as a therapy, thanks to its brilliant atmosphere.
Review in Turkish | 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.
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.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is one of a kind, but it works more in theory than in practice.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Ancestors The Humankind Odyssey is a unique game. You must guide your clan through time and evolution, which is fun with lots of experimentation. There's also a lot of frustration to be had however. Still, the game offers a special experience.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
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 Humankind Odyssey is a game which we embody the deans of humanity, immersed in the fascinating, extremely immersive and often moving adventure of the great story of life. However, Panache Digital Games has not completely managed to offer a game always technically up to the originality of his proposal. It is nonetheless a singular experience that arouses great sympathy and for which it would be a shame to miss out, especially if the few really disabling design flaws were to be corrected soon.
Review in French | Read full review
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey puts humanity's evolutionary past in your hands and leaves you to figure out the rest. The unstructured gameplay is more frustrating than compelling.
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.
Wrapping up, I would very much say that Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is worth a purchase. It’s a game I’ve had in my mind for a long time. I was very excited to play it when I first saw gameplay, and I must say, Panache Digital Games did not disappoint. For this reason, I’ll be awarding Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey the Thumb Culture Gold Award. Very narrowly missing the much-coveted Platinum award. The only improvement I would want to see is the ability to play with a couple of friends. Multiplayer would be a lot of fun, but because of the way some of the game systems work, I don’t think it would happen. Just remember this as you play: Apes alone weak, apes together strong and ape shall not kill ape.
The Biggest problem with Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is that it gets boring and repetitive really fast. It is a great audio/visual experience and the sense of discovery is quite fun at first but sadly the core gameplay just isn’t that interesting.
Review in Persian | Read full review
You control a clan of primates and the game was designed to make you feel as one while playing it. There is almost NO EXPLANATION or tutorial of how the game works, neither mechanics or how to progress. There is no game trigger to "push" you to do things. You can spend thousands of years eating herbs and drinking river water. As humankind evolution has been, it's your will to learn and explore that expands the game possibilities. The biggest condition to fully enjoy Ancestor is to master its gameplay and after that, build a flawless LINEAGE. Beyond that, if you like SELF-LEARNING and solving problems by TRIAL AND ERROR, you will immediately have fun with this game.
At full price, I wouldn’t recommend this game to anybody except people who truly love the idea of playing as prehistoric human beings trying to discover fire for the first time in the most tedious of ways. It’s obvious that Ancestors is a project made with a lot of passion and ambition. Personally, I found that those elements weren’t properly translated into video game mechanics that actually felt fun or gratifying enough.
Ancestors:The Humankind Odyssey is a mixed experience. The idea behind the game which takes you through 8 million years of human evolution is wonderful, but on the other side forces many limitations on the developers, and in the end you'll either fall in love with it or hate it.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey takes us on an incredible journey through the beginnings of man and his odyssey. In this game of survival and action, we will have to complete our evolution and brain enhancement to survive in hostile environments. In spite of its good ideas, it has a complex beginning and sins of certain repetitiveness that extends throughout the game, in addition to a handling that can give us many problems. Otherwise, a good option for those who want something different and with teaching
Review in Spanish | Read full review