It's kinda hard to get a bead on this game since it seems like it could get significantly more complex later on. Or it might not. And I think this is what could make or break it for me; whether I've already found the extent to which the game's depth runs. It could potentially expand a fair amount more though, since you're supposed to be playing through those stages of Ape evolving into Man. I haven't reached even a tenth of the way through based on the million-year time span during which the game is set, and I've played for ten or so hours.
The game does a lot of things pretty damn well and it's mostly centered on how immersive the crafting, gathering, hunting and traversing the world are. There aren't any menus or the like for any of this stuff, you pick twigs off trees and the tree looks a little more bare, there's a button to zoom in on what items you are holding. Even the status effects, like being cold, bleeding, broken bones, etc. are visually represented on your character.
The user interface is mostly intuitive once you've figured out what buttons do what, and even during the stage of figuring out the controls it's like you're a monkey yourself figuring out your own motor skills, learning to grasp things, accidentally dropping or even breaking them. There's a pretty good crafting system in here, you grab two objects and smack them together until it changes the second object into something useful, but put too much power into it and you'll destroy one of them. A convenient sound cue tells you when to release the button, and you'd better get used to listening for it since it's ever-present in crafting, gathering, and even combat. It's fun to figure out what can be turned into something more useful this way, and every time I'd found something new it felt like I had accomplished something significant. It's kinda hard to figure out more combos later on though (it starts to feel like one of those adventure games where there's only a single solution to what you want to make), but the dreams you get while sleeping clue you in a little to some possibilities.
There's a kind of rudimentary building system too, I've managed to make a nest to sleep in and a small wall made of branches so far. You just stack a few things together and press the button to initiate construction. I just hope what you can build gets expanded later on, since I haven't found much else I can make.
Combat is fairly simple, it's basically fight or flight. Time slows down whenever a predator pounces on you, and you have the option of either dodging and running away, or attacking with whatever weapon you have in your hands. Both options could potentially get you killed, and you might even lose whatever you are carrying either through dropping it, or breaking it upon the creature. Even if you time it well you might not make it depending on whether your monkey is healthy or not. There are a slew of negative status effects after all, each of which can be treated with different food. Also you can't simply stick around near a predator since there's a fear mechanic; get too scared and you'll lose control of your monkey, which is tantamount to dying. I haven't found out if the player can initiate an attack yet though, I'm assuming it's part of the upgrade tree that I haven't seen, but I also haven't tried to throw rocks or anything either. I hope that this will be possible though, since there are a bunch of birds that I've seen around that I'd like to take down and eat. It feels awesome to kill something, the first time I managed to kill a boar after having slowly figured out how to make a sharpened spear over the course of the many hours I'd played it was the absolute height of my experience so far.
Jumping around on trees is incredibly intuitive, and feels great too. You automatically attach to the trunk or branch when you jump onto it, and it's very free-form. There's no map, so you'll often be climbing high on a tree to figure out where you are.
There are a few problems I'm already noticing though, and the largest one is the actual skill tree/evolution system. It's the only menu that the game has (aside from the start and pause menus, but those don't count), and you use it to gain new abilities, like being able to eat meat, holding things in both hands, and having the other monkeys follow your instructions. There's quite a complex system here, and I won't go into it that much, but you can tell they've tried their best to tie it into the rest of the systems the game has. There's just a big glaring flaw, and it's mostly tied to the generational thing they have going here. See, at some point you're going to have to start playing as the next generation (you basically skip time until the babies have all grown up), and then what happens is that you lose most of these goddamn points that you have spent ages painstakingly building up. You only get to choose a few to keep, so suddenly you don't have the ability to eat mushrooms, you can't sense things as far away as before, and your clan's chimps will no longer listen to instructions (even though some of them are still remnants of the older generation which did, so wtf is up with that?) It feels like a huge step back, and is very frustrating every time you have to do it. And you will have to change generations and evolve at some point, since that's the only way you can evolve abilities that you can't get any other way. I can see why they've done it like this, to prevent people from simply playing as the one chimp and then getting all the abilities in a single generation. And while that would probably be kinda retarded in a game that you're supposed to be playing over the in-game course of millennia, maybe the very idea of playing as many generations is retarded itself? Just a thought. It's not like I'm forgetting everything that happens in-between each generation, so all the stuff that would be new to one chimp is all shit I've already done before. I'd probably kill myself if I had to watch a single lifetime of these chimps in real time, let alone a million years of it lol.
Also, the survival aspect is a little too lacking. All you need is food, drink and sleep to survive. Some shelter from rain too I suppose. All of which can be found in your initial base. And the food and resources respawn super-quickly too; I once went on an expedition by myself for a day, and returned to find all the coconuts on the trees had returned, hell even the dead twigs on a tree had grown back. There's very little incentive to pack up your stuff and find a much better campsite. It's great to be able to do so though, since it's pretty awesome to explore new territory, get over the fear of being away from your base and find a settlement elsewhere with all your chimp gang backing you up. The devs have taken the phrase "monkey see, monkey do" a little too literally though since the rest of your clan don't do anything if you aren't around. They only eat, sleep and drink whenever you do it in front of them; I once came back after a couple of days to all the monkeys being near dead from starvation and thirst. There are no rival clans of monkeys either, at least not that I've seen yet anyway. This last point could potentially be a deal-breaker.
Anyway, I think I'll definitely want to play more, but only since there's a possibility that it might get harder and more complex. The moment that hope gets snuffed out is when I drop the game. What's there is worth playing though, even if only for a long evening.
Here's my playthrough of the game so far:
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey with ChevRage 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=civ0XGAbNT0Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey with ChevRage 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF0njkKXWG0Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey with ChevRage 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B_akMJDaEAAncestors: The Humankind Odyssey with ChevRage 4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwyGZYwu5xg