Man… Whatever.
Finished, not completed, the game. As you can see in the next pic I've reached the final evolution (top right corner) while having discovered 71% feats.
To be honest, the final evolution on average player will happen when you reach cca 66%. Average as it can happen with less % if one will grind generations or more % if one will ignore generational mutations.
Anyway, I won't be going 100% for sakes of completion. No use and I've had enough of certain grinding mechanics in it.
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Pros:
- The game is an unique entry in the stale survival genre. The random generator is used only for generational mutations and it's a bit rigged based on your playthrough thus if you fight a lot, the next mutation won't be random but will give you an attack boost for example. The map, trashmobs and collectibles are all handplaced! Also, you're playing not one person or a group, but generations of a tribe.
- I hate survival genre, but this game is different enough to make me state I hate outdated survival games, but not fresh one(s).
- No microtransactions nor DLC planned.
- Unexplained HUD elements at start seems horrible design, once you deduct what's what it feels like superb minimalistic thing in such a game.
- Default PC controls are fantastic. A minor annoyance is use of backspace in evolution menu but that can be remapped.
- In more than 40 hours of my playthrough the game never crashed. There are still some bugs, but no crashes is a nice touch.
- After two initial tutorial tasks the game goes silent and tells you absolutely nothing. It's you who needs to discover what, how and where. At first you get confused, but if your inner curiousity kicks in, you'll adore each and every new thing discovered.
Cons:
- If you're hearing impaired, DO NOT buy this game. You need to hear a chime to succeed in any "minigame" (Dark Souls is QTE 2.0, this here is QTE 0.9) otherwise the game is a torture.
- The bloody stalker cat always appears when you don't want to see it. Due to random generator you might kill it with one "spear", but sometimes you'll fight it over and over so it dies and doesn't bother you for a while… Till the game spawns another. This means enormous timewaste on sharpening branches, in 10 hours of playtime you'll be sharpening at least an hour.
- Another stupid grind is bonding (grooming). Also an hour of 10 you'll be repeating this mundanity so you can have kids. WTF!
- No hairworks means fur looks horrible. An utter misdesign in a game full of furry creatures almost a decade after TW3.
- Activating a node in neural net lasts for far too long (holding mouse till doomsday). This should have been at least 5x faster. A mod please!
- The game advertises mushrooms. LOL. Use k+m, seriously, I have no idea how anyone could play this with mushrooms.*
- Right, you have to eat, sleep, mate… But there is no need to pee nor poop. Dafuq?
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Mentioned the game has some bugs. It's only correct to list those:
Upon starting the game, says press A. You're suposed to press Space. Oddly, if you exit the game to main menu, it does say press Space, but not if it's initial start.
While deliberately falling from trees (holding C) sometimes you drop on nonexisting point of a tree instead on a ground. Stuck that way, you need to press S (to move down the tree) then past a step you can again start falling with C.
After 100 hours with a game this irritating bug never saved my skin, if only it did. And it's annoying while you're grinding breaking bones feats by getting hurt.
Sometimes there is no option to groom a fertile female, you need to do that because the game is all about making babies. In fact that female is comletely stuck, you can order her to follow you but she won't move. An easy fix is to switch to play her and she'll start moving and have an option to groom anyone.
Trashmobs and apes can get stuck on or in the ground. When trashmobs get stuck it's not a bug but a feature - you grind intimidate skills and neural energy easily. Aka always lure trashmobs near water stream, there is a big chance they'll get stuck on boulders there thus you can grind neural energy to max through intimidation without dodging till doomsday.
When your apes get stuck under surfaces, damn if it's a fertile female or a kid you want to carry. In such case you can order them to follow you then move far away from the campsite so the game despawns/spawns the ape near you (as seen ages ago in Mass Effect, not seen ever in outdated Gamebryo games with doorblocking NPCs).
After evolving within evolution screen (E) it's not possible to browse through evolution feats in that same screen. Exit to main menu then continuing the game fixes this annoyance.
A previously unlocked neural dot is impossible to activate again past new generation or evolution with neural energy. Due to meteorite's nature (unlock of a random node) it's possible it triggered the bug, but I can't be sure. In my case it was a food poisoning dot which is pretty much irrelevant, but I'd be furious if this happened to my combat or movement skills. The only cure to this is to backup the savegame frequently then revert to it if shit happens, I wasn't doing that sadly, but after my neural tree got bugged I did it frequently.
The location of savegames to backup:
C:\Users\<yourprofile>\AppData\Local\Ancestors\Saved\SaveGames
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Should you buy the game? I say yes. But only if you have nothing else to play or just want to see a survival game that isn't nearly as boring nor annoying as other survival clones of clones. Besides, this one is strictly singleplayer!
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* - as you can see in comments on DSOG's review, I'm not the only one who thinks this game is supposed to be played with k+m and not mushrooms:
https://www.dsogaming.com/special/reviews/ancestors-the-humankind-odyssey-review/
