izigame.me

I definitly can't recommand this game and it makes my heart bleed
In short the game definitly has a lot of potential... but that's it.
I really enjoyed the game, starting back with the first open devs
But the overhaul experience is filled with frustration

---STATE OF THE GAME---
- Before realease (open devs) :
The game seemed very promising. It was fun, beautiful but very prototype-like
- At release :
lots of promises were unfullfiled and the game did not evolve this much since the open devs. The modding tools did not exist, multiplayer was unplayable due to stability issues, solo was barely playable as well and some aspects of the game were just rushed. Patches quickly released, but stopped beeing released quite early as well, while major issues like multiplayer stability stayed unsolved.
- Today (as in the today of this evaluation) :
Since then, there have been some "major" updates, the release of the modding tools, 2 DLCs (~20€), and some very minor content released (linked to event)
DLC/ For the DLCs, there is not much to say honestly. In my opinion they are plainly bad and only serve the prupose of showing that the game is not dead yet. They really don't offer much interesting playing content, but they do have great visuals
UPDATES/ For the updates, I cannot express of disapointed I am.
The greater part of those updates were focused on fixing the game, but there's still so much left ! Some of them aren't even bugs, but design problem that were already mentioned before release
Some basic "quality of life" features like summing up the benefits of 1 constructible in a city just got released 1 month ago.
And most of all, the mechanics and balance of the game are as they were released initially : broken, uncomplete and rushed

---BUGS---
Bug-wise this game is a mess...
I think I haven't played a single game with a major bug forcing me to reload the game multiple times
The worse comes of course with mulplayer, where you can get desynchronization every turns and have game breaking bug, forcing you to drop the game
I won't expand too much since its obvious, uninteresting and very common today, but yeah, there's too much

---BALANCE & MECHANICS---
There's so much mods did improve, and it's definitly balance
I especially value the Vanilla Improvement Mod if you are looking for more enjoyable game
Culture wise, it's simple : if you're first you pick the best, if not... good luck
I you win in this game, you'll win more passing each eras, because you can pick the best culture each time
In this game you have to balance your ressources to win : Industry, Science, Food, Money, Fait, Influence, Stability
Err, sorry, I need to rephrase that, you have : industry, industry, industry, industry and industry
Of course I'm half-joking, but the ressources in this game mainly revolve about industry, because it is the core ressource allowing you to gets them all
Meaning that if you get a builder culture, you can do everything efficiently.
If you get a scientist culture, you're super efficient with science, but not so great with the rest.
If you get a militarist/expansionnist culture, you're strong now because of the better units, but useless if you don't wadge wars
And this could be interesting to be honest !... if it was well balanced
Because right now, industry surpasses all
Diplomacy&Trade&Influence&Religion&Pollution features are just unfinished
Some of them are oversimplified with very few means to know how to plays with them
More often than not, you're just witnessing what's happening
TRADE/ Trade have cryptic prices, with almost no fluctuation and no means of blockade or micromanagement in any way. The only way you can interact with it is either "yes me allow trade you this" or "me want this" or "me pillaging everything"
DIPLOMACY/ Diplomacy is not bad, but you can't say it's well done either. You cannot interact with someone to give or claim something, and it's very lacking
Trade shouldn't be limited to the merchants, but should also be diplomatic, with money exchanges, units, cities, ressources
POLLUTION/ The pollution feature must have been added as joke, because of how rushed it is. It is not interesting, it just slows the game and/or have oversized consequences : like "oh no i'm polluting lots in this peticular era ! everything instead of the heavy-polluting-industy can work properly here now" yeah no
RELIGIONS/ Imagine wanting to be the leader of a religion, having great influence over entire continents, being rich from taxes and having countless allies and strong foes ? Well go play something else, here you'll have eiither to invest massively on religion for small bonuses, and lots of resistance from others (even wars sometimes) or you could follow another's religion and gain the same bonuses, yay
COMBATS/ To be honest, the game really shine here
Combats are really fun and interesting
But again, it's so unbalanced !! Somes IAs/Cultures can have somes huge bonuses, it's almost gamebreaking
If a player goes all in at war from the start, it can be unstoppable in laters eras due to how powerfull their units will be
And here, with this system, if you win, you'll win even more !

---AIs---
...
I hate this
I think the unbalance of the game is the main cause of this
As for the difficulty you can choose between "oh no i accidentally won again" or "wow they have 5 times my entire population in their army each turn"
And the fact that you can know how the AI will react to you from the start of the game is really annoying after a few games
It would be Endless space or Endless legend, I would get it : each race is designed differently, so you can't do everything with the Cravers for example. But in Humankind, you'll change culture, and you want to do what is relevant at the current time
With the personas : there's just no random, there are designed to play one way and only bet on that based on their static preference. When playing against Agamemnon or Boudica for example, you'll have nothing but wars, even if it cripple them to death, and that's just frustrating.

---MULTIPLAYER---
I haven't played much against other players, but I've tried in cooperation
But playing in multiplayer is possible, but you'll have to suffer constant reload to fix the constant desynchronizations
Personas returns to vanilla constantly, you can't load a game without mixing all IAs
There is not a game without a major bug, you'll have to reload constantly
And oh let me guess, in multiplayer, you would hope for grand battles with many nations fighting each others ?
Well nahh, let's just stay with a basic 1v1 combat system and a 1v1 war system, even in alliances

---
So those are my thoughs
I haven't wrote them all, because I already spent to much time writing this
I hope this will give a good idea however
I you're still unsure about buying it you can always wait until a free weekend to try
It's not a bad game after all, but an unfinished, unrefined and incomplete game that'll remain as is
Do not expect any noticable improvement, even with other titles, the major DLCs did not touch the core design, but added more layers of flavous on top of it (sometimes for the worse)