Once Human - Closed Beta Review

Once Human is a New Weird open-world survival game, set in a supernatural post-apocalyptic environment. While it is primarily a multiplayer third-person survival shooter, Once Human also has elements of stealthy melee combat, puzzle solving, and an in-depth narrative. While this game shares many similarities to the MMO genre, such as a guild system, an open world where I constantly saw and interacted with other players, and challenging group content, I hesitate to call Once Human an MMO, since the developers themselves don’t call it an MMO.

Recently, I was able to participate in a 5-day Closed Beta session, where I was able to learn more about the game first-hand. While there were two server options, one for PvE and one for PvP, I decided to take the PvE route, since this was my first experience with the game.

After a brief cinematic, I'm brought to the Character Customization screen. The character customizer starts with six presets, but the customization options are actually pretty robust. From hairline, to facial bone structures, this almost felt like a Korean MMO with the level of changeable detail. I spent about 5 minutes trying to make my character look like Tom Cruise before I finished up and hopped into the game.

Tutorial

The melee combat in Once Human is action-based. There are critical strikes and weak-point damage, which definitely came in handy during boss fights. Similar to other action-combat games, my character's evasive maneuver consisted of a dodge roll, but unlike some other games, there didn’t appear to be any fatigue or limit to the amount of times I could roll.

I continuously came across different types of puzzles that unlocked doors, showed me a map to some treasure, or just provided some additional loot. I really enjoyed all of the hidden treasures and platforming puzzles sprinkled throughout the game.

The quest-tracking system in Once Human was quite good. The objectives were shown clearly on the map, and I was easily able to tell what my goals were at any given time.

The setting, the music, and the ambient noises were so eerie. The art style and attention to detail in the world really helped me to immerse myself in this environment.

After receiving my first gun. I learned that holding right-click allows for third-person aiming, while tapping right-click changes into first-person mode. It was also very easy to cycle through weapons using the scroll wheel, whenever enemies entered melee range. There was also an extremely useful Backstab attack. When I crouched behind an enemy, I could press F to perform a one-shot stealth kill. I really enjoyed using this stealth method of killing whenever I felt that an area was overpopulated, or if I was running low on bullets.

During the tutorial, I was introduced to the alternate reality feature called Spacetime. Entering Spacetime mode allowed my character to see additional NPCs and objects in the Spacetime realm, however using Spacetime made my character lose Sanity over time. A character's Sanity, Hunger, and Thirst are some of the Survival game elements of Once Human, and I learned more about them as I progressed through the game.

Sanity is lost slowly over time whenever a player enters Spacetime mode, and Sanity is also reduced whenever a character takes damage from Deviants. This is important, because reducing Sanity also reduces the character’s maximum HP. There are certain items and medicine that can restore Sanity, but when the character's health bar reaches 50% Sanity, you’re actually given a random buff, called a Whim. At this point in the game, I had a Whim called Marathon, which increased my Physical Damage dealt by 30% periodically.

Open World Survival

After completing the single-player tutorial, I entered the shared open-world of Once Human. The first thing that I experienced was a pretty significant drop in fps. Now this could be due to several factors, including the game being in a beta state or my own personal hardware. But I’m going to assume that it was probably because this was the first night of Closed Beta and everyone was entering the same shared server all at the same time. As the night went on, and I moved further away from the shared spawn-point, the optimization began to improve.

In the open world, the first thing that I learn about was Memetics. Memetics are used to unlock crafting and gathering skills. I was able to learn Camping, which completed the first Task in my Chapter One Journey. Along with the Main Quest, Side Quests, and Dailies, the Journey Chapters in Once Human act as an additional tutorial to help guide players through certain features that the game has to offer. Completing each Journey Task as well as the Journey Chapter itself rewarded experience, currency, and materials.

As with many Survival games, since I didn’t spawn with any tools, my character used a rock to chop down some trees. This method was incredibly ineffective, only granting me 2 logs per swing, but towards the end of my time in the beta, I was able to craft tools that granted about 20 logs per swing, so it was a nice sense of progression. While looting the surrounding area, the game alerted me to my Hydration meter, which affects my character’s movement speed. When Hydration falls below 30%, my character is unable to sprint, and above 70%, my character will always have a movement speed buff.

My next task is to mine some Gravel to get my Camp up and running. Again, using a rock to mine ore is pretty ineffective, but my tools improve drastically as time goes on. Now that I have my logs and my gravel, I’m ready to create a Camp. The Campsite in Once Human acts as a moveable respawn point, and also provides some ability to craft food, drink, and early-game gear.

While gathering some materials, my character’s Energy level drops, and the game informs me that Energy affects healing and gathering. When my character’s Energy goes below 30%, gathering materials takes longer, and with High Energy, my character gains an increase in Maximum HP and damage dealt, so it’s definitely a good idea to maintain high Energy levels for these additional benefits. After some additional looting, gathering, and establishing my camp, I was able to craft myself a nice set of starter weapons and some armor.

Next, I decided to place my Nexus, which allowed me to build a Territory. While a Camp is a small makeshift respawn point, a Territory allows the player to build to their heart's content. It’s also the place where players can store all of their additional materials and create facilities for crafting. Territories are also used for Fast Travel, from anywhere on the map, and to any previously discovered Transportation Towers.

Over the 5-day closed beta period, I played for about 40 total hours. Throughout the playtest, I was able to finish building my Territory, I constructed a motorcycle, killed a couple of bosses, crafted a few new guns, and generally had a fun time exploring the world and progressing through the main quest.

So, let’s talk about the Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The combat was very fluid and responsive. Between stealth melee killing, sniping, or using tactical weapons like grenades, combat felt very smooth.
• Exploration of the world was fun and rewarding. There were hundreds of Points of Interest on the map. Some of them were locations of quests, some had a set of objectives that could be completed for additional loot, and some were just loot farms, which was nice when I was running low on a specific material. There were also several puzzles, minigames, and secret stashes hidden all throughout the enormous map.
• Enemy diversity was pretty good. There were the Deviants, which I found all throughout the game. There was corrupted wildlife, such as alligators, wolves, and bears. There were also human faction enemies, such as the militant Vulture gang and the Rosetta scientists. And the boss fights provided fun and interesting endpoints to each of the zones.
• The game had an amazing tutorial system, as well as a slew of in-game guides to help players learn about the various systems within the game. This was extremely useful for me, and I really appreciated all of the information that was provided in-game.

Cons:

• As stated previously, at the beginning of the playtest, there were very significant fps and performance issues, but those issues seemed to be resolved as the test went on.
• Other than that, there were only a few minor things that bothered me, such as certain ladders not working, or my character taking damage from mobs during cutscenes, but I feel like these were just beta bugs that could easily be ironed out before the full release of the game.
• One other thing that I would really like to see them implement is some kind of Looking for Group or queue system. As of the Closed Beta, the only way that I was able to find a group was by posting in Discord or going around to other Twitch streams. Since boss fights were instanced, and being in a group was so much better than playing solo, I feel that it should almost be a requirement for this game to have some kind of system where I could click a button and either find another player who is trying to do the same content as me, or just be put in a group to complete group content. Any way to connect with other players in-game would make Once Human much better.

Concerns:

• Monetization. This is just speculation, but I feel very strongly about pay-to-win monetization, so I felt the needed to bring this up since we’re still waiting on Once Human's official monetization policy. There was an object in the game called an S-Vessel, and these could be used to Secure the Full Rewards from bosses. If you don’t use an S-Vessel after killing a boss, you will receive “Basic” or worse loot. I always had plenty of S-Vessels on hand, so I was always able to secure the higher quality loot from boss kills, but this was over a 40-hour period in a game that didn’t seem to have endgame content completely fleshed out yet. So, my concern with this specific item, is that it could be more rare in the real game, or that players might have to spend more of them in order to secure higher level boss loot. If this is the case, and the best loot drops from bosses that players can run endlessly, then this gives an incentive to put these items in a cash shop. I’m really hoping that this doesn’t become the case, especially since the main draw of this game will be open-world PvP and territorial domination. If players are able to purchase S-Vessels, I believe it could ruin the integrity of PvP in this otherwise extremely fun game.

And that was my experience with the Once Human Closed Beta. I’m really looking forward to the next beta session, as well as the full release of the game. I think that this Once Human has a lot of potential. The gameplay loop and the core of the game is already there, the developers just need to fill the enormous map with more content, and maybe add a few quality of life improvements. I think that Once Human and Starry Studios have a bright future ahead of them, and I’m really appreciative for the opportunity to test out the game in this early stage.

But what do you think? Were you able to play during the Closed Beta, or did you check out any streams during the playtest? Let me know what you thought of the game in the comments down below.