Too many worthy games get lost in the noise. It's understandable. We've all got big backlogs that we're trying to work through, and new releases arrive practically every hour. But it means a lot of solid or experimental titles fall by the wayside. Humankind is a good example. Originally released back in 2021, some less-than-fanatical early reviews meant it was quickly overshadowed by strategy genre giants like the immovable Civilization 6 and Paradox's Stellaris. But as Amplitude confirms Endless Legend 2 is on the way, Humankind is well worth another look, especially right now. After a transformative update, it's now temporarily completely free to play, and then available at a huge discount.
Although it's fundamentally a historical Humankind has a smart twist. Rather than sticking to one culture throughout an entire playthrough, with each successive epoch you can swap to a totally new civilization. Quite frankly, it's not dissimilar to the new Ages system in Civilization 7 – rather than being locked to one society and play style, you're free to vary things up, and can combine different units and architectural styles as you go.
There are 60 different cultures you can play as and combine, and alongside building and general 4X game-style expansion, you can also wage war in turn-based battles. These feel reminiscent of a turn-based tactics game, or maybe something closer to a boardgame.
The new Humankind update makes significant changes to combat and how you manage conflict from the diplomatic level. For example, you now always have the ability to declare surprise wars – that is, start a war against a civilization even if it is not hostile to you – and you can flatly reject surrender proposals, regardless of any other circumstances.
Amplitude has just confirmed that one of its other great strategy series is coming back via Endless Legend 2. Seemingly in celebration of the announcement, and the latest update, Humankind is completely free to play until Monday January 27. If you try it out and decide you want to keep it, Humankind is also on sale with an 85% discount, so it costs just $7.49 / £5.99. If you want to try it out, head here.
Alternatively, try some of the other best RTS games on PC.
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