An MMORPG is not an easy thing to create. A whole new world (I’ll never get that song from Aladdin out of my head now) full of interesting characters and environments, quests that can last for more than the 5 minutes it takes to fast-travel somewhere, as well as a reason to keep playing once you’ve done all of these things. Once Human was released on Steam a couple of weeks ago, so I gave it a go to see how many of these boxes it ticks.
Once Human isn’t my first MMORPG, having spent a considerable amount of time playing New World, Elder Scrolls Online, and dabbling in Final Fantasy XIV. As much as I like each of those games, none of them seem to offer everything all at once in a neat little package the way Once Human does, albeit at a more basic level.
At its core, Once Human is a Survival-Crafting Open World MMORPG, and while that may not seem like everyone’s cup of tea, there really is something for the whole family here. I don’t recall ever enjoying crafting items and the like as much as I do in this game, and that has to be a testament to how easily it is designed to do so.
Starting off, Once Human centres around an alien organism called Stardust taking over the planet, turning the population into all manner of zombie-like creatures and more. It’s up to the player to combat these creatures, Deviants, as the game calls them, and restore order to the landscape. This is no small task, however, as these creatures can take any and all forms. I have had to fight human-style creatures that have human bodies but various objects as heads (I think a few of them have had things like pizza boxes or spotlights for a head).
“The overworld in Once Human has a very “this used to be alive” feel to it, in that the environments could have once hosted life, but since the Stardust infestation, have since moved to rot and decay.”
The creativity in enemy design doesn’t stop there either, as there is a wealth of creatures in Once Human that are in some form of the body-horror ladder. For example, I have seen spiders with lightbulbs on their back, a giant beast-like thing with party balloons surrounding its head, and more. Some of the enemies, especially in the early-game areas, are pretty same-y, as I recall fighting multiple of the same-skinned zombie-dude at a vineyard I visited. A lot of the time, in new areas, I push through just to see what kind of weird person-and-commonly-found-item amalgamation comes next.
The overworld in Once Human has a very “this used to be alive” feel to it in that the environments could have once hosted life, but since the Stardust infestation, they have moved to rot and decay. Abandoned homes and overgrown roads litter the landscape, which is not small by any measure. Thankfully, there is a fast-travel system in place, but there are a few drawbacks to it. You need to find Teleportation Towers if you want to fast travel, and they aren’t always near to your objective, so a long hike might be in the cards more often than not.
If a long hike isn’t your thing, Once Human has implemented vehicles fairly early on in the story. You get a motorcycle pretty early that is relatively fun to cruise around with, even if the steering controls have a bit of keyboard-controlled-steering jank about them. Later on, you can unlock cars as well and can customize them to an extent. The caveat to vehicle-bound travel is the need for fuel. Fuel is a precious commodity in Once Human, so the conservation of it is paramount.
Each area of the map is separated by distance, topography, and enemy level. Distance is a big factor in choosing to fast travel or walk/ride/drive, as the landscape does not lack for things to explore. There is usually a mini-location or neighbourhood to cruise through, enemies to combat and resources and loot to gather. Most of these areas are within close proximity to a fast travel point, but some aren’t, and that makes the trek all that more difficult, especially when your hydration level is low and your carry weight is high.
Speaking of hydration levels, there are a few bars at the bottom of your screen that you’ll want to keep a weather eye on, such as your hydration level and health bar. The former will tell you if you need to drink some water (obviously), which is linked to how quickly you can move around and if you can sprint at all. If your hydration is too low, it reduces your carry capacity in a way that makes your movement slower even more. So it’s well worth your effort to ensure that you always have at least some boiled water at the ready on a long journey across the map.
In the Survival genre, having a safe place to rest one’s head after a long day of combat and looting is essential, especially if one is low on health. This is where the building crafting side of Once Human comes into play. Truth be told, building my home from scratch has been the absolute highlight of my experience with this game, despite the few niggling issues I have come across.
First of all, your home is where you will craft your weapons and armour, cook your healing meals, and more. Each player can build their home wherever there is space to do so, and it can be moved and rebuilt at a moment’s notice. You start off with some very basic crafting items like walls and ceilings and make yourself a very barebones place to “live.” As you level up more and gain experience, you begin to unlock things called Memetic Ciphers, which you can then use to unlock certain points on one of four different skill trees for crafting.
When it comes to gathering resources to build your home and its various comforts therein (walls are made of wood, after all), the tried-and-true method of hitting it with your pickaxe until it’s gone is the way forward. Thankfully, unlike other crafting-style games (Looking at you, Animal Crossing: New Horizons), you only need one type of tool to chop down trees and break rocks and different types of ore, so they process is pretty streamlined. As it’s an open-world live game, the resources and things like that tend to respawn fairly quickly, which is nice, especially when you have emptied the immediate area around your home in your building endeavour.
There is a small issue with building, however, and it relates to the actual building process. There is a LOT of hit-and-miss when it comes to placing your structures. I can’t tell you how long it took me to build the roof on my home, simply because it became like a fever dream where I couldn’t get the pieces to line up properly despite nothing being in the way. They just wouldn’t rotate to the proper position. It was frustrating, to say the least, as I had the same issue when trying to place stairs and walls next to said stairs.
My biggest mistake when I was building my home, because regardless of how far in the game I get, I am always going to want to add more to my home, was going around some of the higher-level areas and seeing some of the most architecturally spectacular homes I had ever seen made of glass and stone. I had to go back to my wood-built four-story jungle hovel, wondering if I’d ever get THAT good at designing my home.
The weapons in Once Human are fairly straightforward in that there are categories like pistols, shotguns, melee, etc., and you need to find or unlock the blueprints to construct them in order to use them. This can be worked around by finding the weapon in the wild, but that’s not something you should rely upon.
Weapons and armour follow an upgrade system that allows you to upgrade them as long as you are the one who crafted them. If you find a brilliant weapon in the wild and use it until it breaks, then that’s it. You can disassemble it to get the blueprint, but you may not be at a level where you have access to the resources required to craft it yourself.
Quest progression is a mixed bag. The main storyline feels like it’s filler to introduce the game’s mechanics and get you to travel to new areas on the map. Each new area you go to will have a larger number of general side quests to give you a reason to explore further and gather more resources and exp. What I will say is that a lot of the side quests really lean into the bizarre nature of the world around you.
“…Once Human is a pretty entertaining MMORPG that allows you to build your own world as you see fit…”
As with all MMORPGs, there is a PvP aspect in Once Human, and you need to put yourself on a PvP server specifically to take part, which I think is a bit of a worse option than games like New World, where you can simply click a button to enable PvP and click it again to go back to PvE.
Likewise, if you decide to change servers or join a friend who started playing, for example, then your player will start all over again from scratch. I feel like it would be a much better system to have your level and quest progress follow you to a new server, but your home and everything you’ve built will need to be done again.
Being a live service game, Once Human has a season that lasts for about 6 weeks, and after the six weeks are up, the server gets reset, and you need to re-do everything you’ve built. Luckily, all of the blueprints you’ve collected over the past six weeks, as well as the blueprint for your home, do not get wiped, so you can easily rebuild. Since the first season wipe hasn’t happened yet, it’s tough to say if this is a good thing or a bad thing, so time will have to be the judge of that.
As a live service game, Once Human will also receive periodic updates to fix glitches and bugs and add other features, such as controller support and timed events, the latter of which are being implemented as we speak.
If the idea of a season wipe is terrifying to you, then you can always check out the Eternaland section of Once Human. Once you reach a certain point in the main story, you unlock Eternaland, which is a private server that is free from the season wipe and allows you to maintain your home for as long as you choose. Two different virtual currencies are in place to allow you to purchase upgrades for your home as well as accessories for decorating and farming.
At the end of the day, Once Human is a pretty entertaining MMORPG that allows you to build your own world as you see fit, even if the actual building of it is cumbersome at best. Despite the combat being relatively straightforward, there is enough grotesquery and desire to see what monstrosity comes next to keep me going to the next neighbourhood. Not only is it fun to play, but Once Human has brought out the MMORPG enthusiast in me in a way I didn’t think was there.
