There is a moment in a movie or a song where the music, visuals, and emotion come together just right to give you goosebumps or a buzz under your skin. The opening cutscene for Once Human did it for me. The pop of neon pink and purple against a muted, almost grayscale background is accompanied by a melancholic piano composition and narration. It was an amazing way to start a game that kept surprising me.
Once Human is a Free-to-play multiplayer survival game that takes place in a world decimated by an inter-dimensional apocalypse known as Star Fall. This mysterious event brought about Star Pollution, creating interdimensional beings called Deviations. Deviations distort reality and, in extremely strong forms, they exist in rift spaces and slowly poison the land, corrupting all living things. As a Meta-Human, we can withstand the pollution and fight the deviations. So it falls to us, and all the people on our server, to save the world.
The End Of The World Never Looked This Good
For an F2P title, Once Human is surprisingly massive and detailed. Right after that amazing opening, you are dropped into a character creator with a lot more customization options than I was expecting. That, with my reaction to the opening cutscene, should have told me to shelve those expectations.
Once Human is beautiful, from the aforementioned character creator to a rich environment. There are distinct towns filled with area-specific monsters, like doctors at a hospital or farmers at a vineyard. There are beautifully designed bosses and elite enemies that have unique attack patterns. There are distinct friendly deviations that boost your combat abilities. To top it off, this game has amazing sound design. I don’t just mean the sound effects that fill the world or herald monsters; it’s also the (currently limited) voice acting when it kicks in and the music.
Examining The System
There is a lot to do within Once Human, especially within its crafting system. Everything that you need, you build. First, you explore, collecting resources, and finding parts and blueprints. Then, at one of the many available work tables, you disassemble, prep, craft, and upgrade materials into needed equipment- from smelting ore to building your shelter, cooking, and crafting armor or weaponry. Once Human allows you to shape your game experience.
This crafting system could have become overwhelming. However, Once Human has one of the best tutorial systems I have come across in a while. You can learn the game mechanics steadily between the story and side missions, development objectives, and available towns. If you need further help, you can always check into Once Human’s World chat. However helpful it is, it depends on your server and not the game.
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Then, as expected from this genre, you take your tools, explore some more, and loot defeated enemies. The amazing melee animation is just the start of a satisfying Combat System. It is very easy to hit enemies but rewards precision and observation.
One of the best things about Once Human is the puzzles scattered around the game: a riddle that required using the correct emote to unlock treasure and a portal-based environment puzzle where I had to escape a dimensional rift. I was incredibly stoked to discover them, not only because they gave me a break but also because they were genuinely well-designed.
Another impressive detail is how quickly the developers have been resolving server issues and bugs. Also, even though the game is online, with a lot of players on each server, it runs pretty smoothly with limited lag.
The Challenges With Multiplayer
That doesn’t mean that Once Human is perfect. I have had at least one random bug during each session. For example, half of my controls stopped working for around 10 minutes. All I could do was desperately avoid enemies till it randomly started working again. The biggest bug my friends and I faced was with the Social Features. It took us over two hours, and three restarts before the game let us join a team. Then we realized we couldn’t do anything together.
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Despite being in the game for over 17 hours, I have yet to get to the part of the game that allows PVP. So far, the story has been completely single player, and the only place a friend was helpful was with the more stubborn elite enemies, the major boss battles, and marking what they find on the map. You can do everything, including the first major boss alone, as long as you prepare.
Another social feature that just didn’t work for me was the Whisper system. It is meant to be a way to leave notes within the world that can provide advice or clues. However, I have yet to be able to open one. I just get stuck in an animation where the character opens it.
The Single-Player Pains
Once Human has way too many independent menu screens that have different hotkeys. One that tracks inventory and gear, another for social features, and another with tasks and objectives. Honestly, I am still pretty confused about where I can find everything and am over-reliant on game prompts to open the right menu.
Once Human is good, but not great. Every single feature has an incomplete or problematic element. For example, there are incomplete cutscenes/interactions outside of the story missions. Some, like the side mission leading you to Daytona Hospital, are fully voice-acted. The others will load up scenes with incomplete animation and no sound at all, not even music. Also, they have some really interesting lore but the storytelling is a little bit vague.
My most nitpicky complaint about this game is that there are just too many players for the crafting system. You are required to set up a home base and use camps to create temporary respawn points. So, you need to have space to build the elements you need. However, there are players and their camps everywhere. It is very frustrating when you have to spend 5 minutes trying to find some empty space to set up a camp. It also detracts from the overall story of being the few working to save the world.
But, In The End
As I said, Once Human is good even if it isn’t excellent. It’s satisfying to play, and there is so much to do; it doesn’t feel like a grind. It is a game I am more than happy to jump back into because I want to see how they build it out. More than that, I want to see how the developers will improve it based on the feedback.
BTW… Is it weird that this is the second game we reviewed with the same story inspiration: Zenless Zone Zero Review: Innovative, Familiar, Satisfying
Once Human is a strong survival title that only just falls short of being a great game. With a robust crafting system, visceral combat, and beautiful sound design, this is a satisfying game that you can really sink your teeth into.
The Good
- Beautiful graphics with a distinct design language that is consistent across the map and menus
- Excellent tutorial, with a steady difficulty ramp that helps you understand the core aspects of this massive game quickly
- Massive map with a lot to explore and do
- Cool lore and story that blends a variety of inspirations creating cool monsters that blend Eldritch Horror and Machinery
- Amazing Music and Sound Design
- Incredibly Satisfying Combat with amazing animation, especially Melee attacks
- Pretty well-balanced system of farming/mining/crafting
The Bad
- Buggy social features, especially when trying to coordinating with friends.
- One of the communication systems within the game, the Whisper system doesn’t work
- Limited Multiplayer gameplay with teams only being helpful with bosses or elite enemies. I cannot comment on PVP gameplay
- The game has a lot of random little bugs that are still getting ironed out. 2 annoying bugs that we hit were when the game stopped responding to commands and when the missions did not update requiring replay
- Too many independent menus for different gameplay features make it hard to keep track of elements
- The current story and need for territory means that the number of gamers on the server is an annoyance
- The game has a few incomplete features like incomplete voice acting outside story missions. Some scenes are fully voice acted whereas some are completely silent with no facial animation and complete silence
