izigame.me

I'm recommending this game because I got about 40 hours of fun out of it and the changes it brings to turn based strategy empire builders are very interesting. I probably wouldn't buy this game at full price, however, as it does become stale quickly (I say quickly because this is a genre where hundreds of hours in a game is normal). If you're a fan of turn based strategy games, I'd recommend buying Humankind if it's on sale just to experience the innovations it tries to introduce. If you're not familiar with turn based strategy or expecting hundreds of hours out of this game, then it might not be the game for you.

Pros:

Humankind introduces creative and innovate changes to turn based strategy gameplay. Civ is fun, but parts of it can feel monotonous and many games in the genre just simply copy systems from Civ without making changes. Humankind brings a breath of fresh air to the genre by renovating many of these systems. For example, you choose a different empire every single era (so 5 times throughout each game) allowing you to customize the path of your empire rather than focusing solely on a single win condition like is often in Civ. Combat is transformed into mini battlefields, with several "turns" of combat happening in a single game turn. This allows much more to happen during combat and also allows units to be stacked until a battle happens, making battle more interesting and reducing micromanagement.
The graphics, art, and narration are very pleasing which is important in a game where you spend a lot of hours staring at and listening to.
Early game is really fun, the pre-city phase is fun to explore and fighting for territory in the beginning feels challenging but rewarding. I'm most excited to play Humankind when I start a game and go through the first few dozen turns.


Cons:

Mid-late game drag on and quickly become boring. This is a big issue in the genre, and Humankind seemed to try to fix this by trying to condense end game by pushing together technology and designing exponential growth so you don't feel stuck. The result, however, is that victory becomes pretty clear in mid game and the second half of the game is just countless technologies/buildings that don't feel very special as much of the game has already been decided.
Unintuitive UI and mechanics make the game pretty hard especially for new players. This is why I might not recommend this game if you're not familiar with Civ. To be fair, Civ also struggles with this, but it's even worse in Humankind because the UI is not well designed. I find myself having to google where to find different information screens within the game, never really understood trading even after finishing several games, and still don't know which buildings lead to other buildings later on.
While interesting, the new systems that Humankind introduces just aren't developed enough to actually work. It's very cool to see innovation in this genre, but a lack of thought/planning means that these innovations quickly become frustrating. Ultimately, after a game of Humankind, I find myself wanting to play Civ again to avoid the problems that arise from these different systems. For example, combat is sometimes frustrating with the "capture the flag" component, war support ending wars early is annoying to play around, and trying to city plan with a small and unclear production screen and tree takes too much time.


Overall, it's unfortunate that a game with so much innovation in the genre ends up being lackluster in the end. I don't want to leave a negative review because there are many fun parts of Humankind and it's not a broken/bad game, it's just not what a lot of people were hoping for and doesn't stand up to Civ. Probably not worth full price but if it's on sale and you want a few dozen hours of playing around I'd recommend picking it up.