I heard this from so many people that I bought it, and ultimately sought a refund. I had similar problems with its UI that I did with Civ VII. The row of 15 unlabeled icons, a parade of numbers. Font pairings that do not work together. It was hard to see the likely good game underneath.
I wish Humankind was a better game because its presentation is so good.
I especially like that they’re still making substantial improvements. It’s quite the contrast to Civ V having game-breaking bugs which were never patched.
Yeah, I know it’s a complex game but we had a big multiplayer game deadlock a couple hundred turns in and that kind of soured everyone on the franchise.
Specifically by Soren Johnson, lead designer of Civ 4, so naturally OW has Civ 4 vibes. I will say that Civ 6 and OW seem to appeal to different audiences, so if you absolutely loved Civ 6 plays then OW might not be to your liking.
I am playing this right now and love it, though the learning curve is steep even for a Civilization veteran. This is what Civ VI or VII could be if they didn't try to dumb down the game to increase the audience.
I would recommend everyone play their first OW game on the easiest difficulty, regardless of their experience with Civ. It is a fair bit more complex and Civ skills do not directly translate well to OW even though the two games look graphically similar.
I wish Humankind was a better game because its presentation is so good.