Humankind - SEGA's new turn-based strategy preview

Starting from 1991, the year of release of Civilization, turn-based strategic games have taken up more and more space within the videogame world. Despite being a very particular genre of games, the saga has reached its sixth chapter (released in 2016) with an ever-increasing fandome. If we talk about multiplayer strategy games, Civilization has hardly had any rivals to date. During the August 2019 Gamescom, SEGA has announced a new title, already considered the masterpiece of the developer company Amplitude Studios. humankind will be released in 2021 and, as anticipated, will be the new direct rival of Sid Meier and his famous series of games. Although there are still a few months left until its release, players have been given the opportunity to test the game in Early Access on the cloud gaming platform Stadia. We have tried it and we are here to tell you about our first impressions.

The new era of strategy games

As explained by the developer company, in this first smattering of the game, users were not given the opportunity to use the multiplayer mode. In fact, a special introductory campaign was created to help understand its full functioning and its setting. Many mechanics present will remember Endless Legend, the previous title of Amplitude. In particular we are talking about the construction of cities, present within the various continents and constantly expanding to obtain resources. As mentioned earlier, it was immediately compared to the Cvilization saga. Let's go now to see, therefore, all the similarities and differences that we have found in humankind.

The story of Humakind, and therefore the beginning of our campaign, will be set in prehistory, or the birth of the first peoples as we know them. As in Civilization, the main purpose of both titles will be to create an increasingly advanced civilization, But the differences lie precisely in the "ways of winning". As all fans of this genre will know, some games can last hours, if not days. This is why it is considered by many to be a type of game "niche“, Being very long and demanding. One of the substantial differences that we find between the two titles will be precisely the type of strategy to be implemented. As for the famous title, all bets took place in anticipation of the end of the game, thus aiming to achieve the famous victory conditions. In humankind the story changes, as the new interesting element called "fame" has been added. Accumulating fame will allow you to achieve successes and failures in the course of the game, as well as having a noticeable effect on the development of the game. It will in fact be the amount of fame accumulated to determine the winner of the match, and no longer the various objectives to be achieved.

Graphics and gameplay 

Being a fairly static game, it doesn't need large components to run smoothly on various computers. The graphics are very simple and essential, but nice and full of small details. Surely very similar to all the other titles of the same genre, but justifiable by the fact that there is little room for graphic change (always about civilization and conquests we speak). At the moment humankind it has nothing to envy to the big names in the sector, but we will have to wait for the official release of the game for a complete judgment. The inclusion of the online multiplayer mode, as we know, is one of the weaknesses of many titles. We hope that we will not encounter any problems with the creation of lobbies and with the various servers. In addition to this, being also available for Google Stadia, the Internet connection it will be one of the fundamental points to be able to play smoothly. During this Early Access we did not encounter any connection problems, but this too will be evaluated once the online mode has been tested.

In conclusion we can tell you that the expectations for this new title are very high. Surely lovers of this genre of game can begin to breathe a sigh of relief, as at least we are not facing a complete failure. We just have to wait a few months for the official release of the title, which we remember will take place not only on the Google platform, but also on Steam and Epic Games. Our only expectation at the moment is the presence of a dubbing in other languages, or at least subtitles that can simplify the gameplay, which is already quite complex.