It’s quite baffling that it took Amplitude ten years to make a simple change in their combat system from a passive to an active command system and they’ve finally struck gold. All the hallmarks of a 4X strategy game are present, but there are three features that deserve special praise: combat, cultural evolution, and emergent storytelling. Undoubtedly Humankind’s biggest highlights lie in its refreshing gameplay systems.

As a consolation, though, Amplitude did add in an extensive character avatar creation and sharing system where players can customize their empire’s avatar, as well as their AI behavior, which does add an interesting community-sharing option for additional challenge and game longevity. The lack of extra modes limits player choice and flexibility in a game that prides itself on giving the player as much flexibility and options for their path in history. Multiplayer can support up to 10 players in a match, but the lack of additional multiplayer options, such as staples of the subgenre like hotseat and play-by-email, is odd, especially considering the game’s production values and the dev team’s pedigree.

Single-player only offers the one campaign mode, albeit heavily customizable in resource abundance and geographic features. While Amplitude packed their game with amazing presentation, the same can’t quite be said for Humankind’s modes. The non-culture specific ambient music, in particular, is amazing in its melodic composition and breadth of sound. The music is so good that it could give Civilization’s amazing score a run for its money. The audio design is also excellent with sublime and exquisite music and solid ambience and unit sound effects. There are a few annoyances and inefficiencies here and there, like trying to read unit info in and out of tactical combat, but on the whole nothing that seriously gets in the player’s way. Lines of cliffs and hidden passes can also be quite tricky to read and Humankind could really benefit with additional UI options to highlight cliffs, a la Gladius: Relics of War.įrom a UI standpoint, it’s sleek and responsive with simple and intuitive controls, collapsible menus, and a decent amount of tooltips that help the UI minimize any feeling of being overwhelmed. Though the maps are drop dead gorgeous and highly detailed, they can get pretty busy and hard to read at times, in particular the smaller elements, such as stone fields and woodlands that can easily be missed at a glance. It’s especially impressive to see how cities change visually over time as players advance through the ages, cities sprawling across the landscape, with new structures and districts conforming to the terrain in breathtaking fashion. Graphically, the game is vibrant, bright, and awe-inspiring, while still retaining a sense of realism in its visual design. If there’s one thing that Amplitude Studios always get right, it’s the presentation, and in Humankind, they’ve really outdone themselves. This simple victory point system is flexible, thematic, as it heavily accentuates Humankind’s emergent story-telling, and also refreshing compared to the more wargame-esque and precise victory conditions of Firaxis’ Civilization series. Empires do this by accumulating victory points called fame, performing certain actions and completing achievements, such as accumulating resources, building structures, fighting wars, and advancing their own scientific prowess. In Humankind, players take the lead of a small Neolithic human tribe with the goal of creating a civilization that will make the biggest impact on the world and be immortalized in history. Do Humankind’s offerings stand up to scrutiny and usher in a new era of historical strategy games? Mohawk Games’ Old World released with moderate success and now Amplitude Studios is taking its turn with Humankind. This year has been quite interesting for historical 4X strategy games, with plenty of new titles popping up to carve out their own place in the subgenre.

Humankind review