Once Human Reviews
A deep, surprisingly sticky, truly free-to-play mashup of what you like from a bunch of other survival MMOs.
Once Human combines simple but solid building and upgrading with some of the best, and weirdest, creature designs of the year to create a very enjoyable survival-crafting experience.
Neither Once Human's third-person combat or survival crafting are especially novel or exciting, made less so by reams of live service baggage and seemingly endless resources and collectables. But an idiosyncratic soul and great creature design keeps it from being uninteresting.
Overall, Once Human’s blend of action, survival/crafting, and MMORPG-like mission design kept me entertained and happily occupied. While some of the more challenging enemies are designed around multiplayer teamwork, the majority of the game’s content is solo player-friendly. Once Human can be approached and enjoyed in lots of ways. It needs some further refinement, but Once Human’s hybrid genre approach pays off.
Once Human's setting and gunplay have merits, despite some unoriginal ideas and systems. However, its faulty foundations, from the blueprint system and the building to the story-telling, keep it from truly standing out.
Once Human is a fascinating game. There’s no other way of putting it. It’s a multiplayer open-world survival crafting game with a Ubisoft-style quest system (go here, clear an outpost, find hidden chests), a Pokemon-like creature collecting aspect with Palworld animal-workforce undertones, with Rust - or DayZ-esque - PvP and seasonal wipes to boot. It’s an eclectic hash of all these games, for better, and for worse.