As a reminder:

1. I did not fully complete the game as the amount of hours needed to actually get to late game is tedious and time consuming. If you'd like for me to play the game fully, I can make a full fledge review of the game once I make it to the end of a scenario.

I also now know you can switch characters over to new scenarios with small caviats of just having blueprints and deviations to use when you switch over.

2. I mean no disrespect to any content creator when talking about the sponsorships they take. But I do think people should know that making a WHOLE video to sponsor or promote a game that you're reviewing can make the reputation of content creators fall a little bit. Make that bag, but these kinds of videos can make it feel less personal or entertaining to watch when reviewing a game.

3. I also appreciate to those who are enjoying the game! I think it's solid, but needs some love in certain areas of the game in order for it to flourish as the devs intended it to be. Maybe the console release may help them out, but I will have to wait and see.

I was scared at first with the monthly wipes, but thankfully its just ur inventory and level that wipes.  Your modifications and weapon/gear progress stays, so the fresh start actually works and doesn't feel like you lose hard earned work.  This game is definately more rewarding after you finish a wipe or two, because you leave one wipe and come out more prepared for the next.

200 hours and just remembered their is a story in the game .

1. Tutorial: The introduction/tutorial was recently revamped into this s**t show that is currently live in game. They had an actual tutorial with voice acting before...

2. Menu: It's a mobile game menu fiasco. It's an endless menu loop. You open a menu to open a menu to open a menu, etc. It's been like this since launch.

3. Deviants: Yeah, right on point. They recently had a palword collaboration where it was a capture creature/deviations with "gym" battles. lol

4. Gun/Gameplay: I can see your point on the repetitiveness on the guns feeling generic, especially at the start or towards a new player. Once you unlock different mods and blueprints, they have different mechanics. For instance, marking a target with a weakness debuff with one gun then switching to another (your primary damage) gun that does a different mechanic like frost icicles that explode, bullets that explode on impact, bullents that bounce off of targets and hit other enemies, etc. However, yes, the game is basic.

5. Housing: This is One of the two reasons people still play this game. It's one of the best housing systems out there that doesn't require a monthly sub to play.

6. Grind: The grind is real. You have mods that change your build and that range from mod level 1-17. 17 having a drop rate of 0.17%.

7. Scenario Reset: While yes, each scenario does reset your level and your gear, you do keep mods and blueprints for weapons/armor unlocks. You also have a storage where you can import materials and deviations from the previous scenario, up to a certain limit. Or, there are permanent servers where you don't reset and you continue past the scenario's end.

8. Bosses: Yup. It's just repetitive. You also need to farm them and silos (which is Once Humans version of dungeons) for mod boxes. Mod boxes is an extra gambling system that has the percentages of dropping levels 1-17 mods. This is the endgame loop. You repeat this every scenario and new scenario.

9. Story: It was very bad before and the new, heavily A.I. influenced dev team, re-wrote the entire thing and it's even worse than before.

10. Your price: The game is free, but look at the cash shop and updates. It's a gambling (gacha) box every 3-4 weeks that cost $120 for an outfit or upwards of $700 to get the items in them. The generic outfits cost $20 and the housing skins for foundations cost $40. While yes, the game is free, it's heavily monetized in the cosmetic department for characters and housing; they consider the new cash shop releases as new content. The actual updates/content that they have released has all been re-skinned scenario re-releases, like lunar revelry, where it's what you are playing now, except there is a giant red moon, you loose sanity outside your base while the moon is out and you get attacked by clones. The only exception to an actual new map that included a variety of new monsters was Way of Winter back in 2024, two years ago...

--- Last thing: The aesthetic of the game has changed. The cash shop releases have turned the game into a barbie simulator diminishing the aesthetics of a post-apocalyptic game. It went from a cool game that had Lovecraftian themes to dudes running around in dresses.

The story used to be that you were an experiment that escaped the lab, and you find another experiment that is V who used to be human. I preferred that story more ngl, the girl forgot her name was also a lab experiment and she helps you because you’re alike in that way etc. It had proper voice acting and everything.

Once human player here you do not have to make a new character for each scenario you can stay in your  scenario and after the end it merged into a permanent server, which you can choose to switch your character over to a new scenario you don’t need to make a new character each time and if you do decide to create a new character, mods and cosmetics carryover to each character all you need to do is focus on leveling up your new character

As someone with 900+ hours in Once Human, I think this is a fair review in some areas, but I also think it's missing the perspective of someone who's experienced the game's endgame.

I agree that the story is weak. The rewrite didn't do it any favors, and the facial animations and cutscenes can feel awkward. I also agree that the UI is still an endless chain of menus (It is a Chinese game and they are known for doing this), and the new-player experience needs a lot of work.

Where I disagree is the idea that the game is mostly just a "time waster."

Once Human is one of those games that gets significantly better the deeper you get into it. The early game does a poor job of showing what the game is actually about. Once you unlock higher-tier blueprints, mods, gear sets, Deviations, and harder scenarios, the build crafting becomes the real endgame. That's what has kept many of us playing for hundreds of hours.

I also think judging the bosses on the easiest difficulties doesn't tell the whole story. On Novice they're meant to be accessible, but on Pro and Nightmare, some of the fights require coordination, mechanics, and proper builds.

The game absolutely has flaws many many of them. The story isn't great, the tutorials need work, and the UI could be much better. But it's also a free to play game that's not pay to win, has a huge amount of content, receives regular updates, and has developers willing to experiment, even if not every experiment succeeds.

You gave it a $10 value, and honestly I think that's underselling it. If I've gotten over 900 hours out of a free game while only buying a couple of Battle Passes, I'd say it's offered far more value than many $70 AAA games I've played recently.

Does Once Human have problems? Absolutely. The story is weak, the menus need work, and new-player onboarding needs a major overhaul.

But this is also Starry Studio's first game, and unlike a lot of AAA developers, they're still experimenting and responding to feedback. Not every change is an improvement, but I'd rather play a free-to-play game with real potential than another $70 live-service slop game that launches half-finished and nickel-and-dimes players.

11:00 everytime you restart you don't completely lose everything. All your stuff from that character goes to Wishland and you can spend a currency to bring stuff over with you to you new character so nothing is ever truly lost. You also keep all unlocked Blueprints for gear as those are permanent.

So say you start a new character, you'll have the option to see your old tools, materials, Deviations etc and bring stuff over to help accelerate your progress.

I quite like the game, and you're right that i don't pay much attention to story. the way I approach this game is I think of it as a sandbox survival game. you can build anywhere, gardener class you literally can plant stuff anywhere, you can even grow materials. chef class is getting really good as well. so we basically progress through the maps for different materials to reach that Tier V stuff. and the game got pokemon (gotta catch them all) element or pal world, we do have collaboration with palworld last time so we have palword deviants.

you can go to SCP scenario and the gameplay is completely different. they nerved your damage and armor. you have to change the way you play the game and rely on deviants to fight along side you. yes you have to catch the deviants with a ball. then you can assign 3 deviants to be your companion/protector.  literally hovered around you and attacking stuff.

after they changed the whole gameplay a few months back, even the veterans had to relearn the whole game from the beginning cause some of us can't even craft ammo. we had to unlock the tech tree again. but after figuring stuff out, yea things are alot easier now for newbie. it used to be quite hard. now for us veterans...there are just way too many stuff and literally running out of inventory space quite fast whenever we move around the settlements.

Once Human is constantly adding new cosmetics to the shop and it has some major issues.
Primarily the devs dont balance weapons well, nor do they fix bugs. The bug issue in Once Human isnt something only inconvenient, for example underwater building in prismverse allows one player or group of players to ruin the server for EVERYONE in it. Literally one group of players can ruin the server for everyone by building a base underwater, as then it becomes undamageable. There are tons of these exploits/bugs in Once Human and the players only get threatened with bans, they never bother to actually fix the exploits. Same with the weapon balance. For plural months after launch Jaws pistol could chain stun players repeatedly until death, and bingo hit absurd damage, 2 hitting even tank players. They finally fixed jaws, but since the last time I played, Bingo is still by far the only meta option because the TTK is a fraction of the time it takes to use any other weapon. Nothing else is viable. Everything in Once Human feels like this.

As someone who played since cbt, back when theres was no deviation system implemented, base is ocassionally being invaded by deviants and the building space is circle instead of square, and the recent "retcon" the tutorial area and story, the progression is quite a journey.

I have love-hate relationship for this game but overall, its still a solid game despite the changes and the devs are trying hard to pleases all players but some of the time its doing harm than good.

But give at least the game a try because its still fun for me 😅

I played this game a decent chunk back when it first dropped but so far haven't finished any of the scenarios or anything. It feels like the end result of if everyone in the office said "Hey wouldn't it be cool if-" and threw the last part of everyone's sentence into a game design document.

Despite that I don't think it's necessarily a bad game if you just want to kill some time with something casual, it's just all over the place. For better or worse, this game personifies chaos from the ground up.

The dungeons and bosses have extra features, attack patterns, or extra phases. Really hard to get to that point of the game if your running solo and dont have much knowledge on the builds

Thanks for the video i needed time to find a recent not promoted review, i had to search in a language different from mine and now I'm following you 💪🏽 so wasn't a waste of time. As i listened you also play vr games? Do you treat also quest games or only pc vr?

Season wipes are a thing of the past, yeah they still happen but you dont have to do it just stay on your server and it will go perm, been on mine 7 months,  also that was not 1st person mode, you have to go into the settings and select it and the whole game then plays in FP 👍

The map has a feature that will show where any ore you choose can be found.

you should understand. what are you playing for. are you chasing mod? and you chasing cool building design?are you hunting for material or furniture formula? are you chasing deviant with 3-4 traits? are you chasing to breed strong animal companion for beast master,or are you want to use dual food buff like chef or you want to gardener and create rare crops that can boost your food buff, or are you chasing quest only? , or you want a beautiful scenery to put your base and build it to be beautiful or just basic . there are pve and pvp and permanent server and season server.

I missed Once Human, the audio soundtrack give chills to your skin.  Too bad my pc can't keep up after the updates.
Best in Once Human, creating your own house, utilities etc.  Also the Story game progress and the NPC has its own story.

In my opinion the variety of the different scenarios is what makes this game unique. You really do need to try the other scenarios in order to get a "The Full Experience" of this game. I do strictly the PVE scenarios, and I've logged over 2k hours in the game. The base building, the build crafting (armor/weapons), and the unique scenarios are the core of what makes it fun.

haven't played this game for almost 2 years.