➤ Dawn of Man, the review 🎮

Dawn of Man the review of which you are reading follows the path of the great urban-themed management systems, typical of the world PC, focusing on a particular period of human history, namely prehistory. Therefore, do not expect to take a civilization in hand and to carry it to the conquest of space, or even to manage who knows what technologies. Here you stop much earlier and at most what you can get is a well-organized village, made of stone huts with roofs of wood and thatch, inhabited by men able to cultivate the fields and sacrifice animals to the gods. .

Gameplay

Dawn of Man begins with the selection of the territory in which to build our village. The choice is not only aesthetic, but determines the level of difficulty of the game: the more the territory chosen is rich in resources, the easier it will be to progress and make our village grow. The elements to be taken into account are waterways for fishing, woods for wood and game, and mountainous areas for rocks and other raw materials. As in all titles of the genre, the goal to be pursued is essentially that of development. At the beginning there are few inhabitants and fragile and easily perishable infrastructures, and the first thing to do is to observe the territory and define the activities of the village. In general theinterface offers two possibilities of intervention for each job: direct selection, or the positioning of work areas. In the first case you have to click on the resource and ask for it to be collected, while in the second you create an area in which our prehistoric little men will automatically carry out the prescribed activity, automating the process.

The entire system of obtaining raw materials works the same way throughout the game, with the only discriminating factor being the availability of useful tools to obtain the advanced ones. For example, to cut down trees you must first have discovered and created hatchets, while to dig the rocks you must have pickaxes. In purely technological terms, the progression offered by Dawn of Man is purely logical and managed entirely by the player: each achievement yields progress points which, accumulated in the right number, can be spent to unlock new technologies. For example, at the beginning our men have very weak wooden weapons, useful only for hunting small animals and practically harmless, but with the progress of the game the discovery of new tools to collect and work better quality raw materials can be create more resistant and effective weapons, with which to attack stronger and more dangerous animals, such as mammoths, which yield much more in terms of food and resources (bones, skins and so on). The improvement of the equipment also allows you to reach the most remote areas of the immense maps, where obviously other materials are found.

With the passing of the hours the economy of our village evolves and from the mere exploitation of the surrounding territory our men are able to develop agriculture, pastoralism, manufacturing and all those activities that characterized prehistoric civilizations. The same happens for other aspects of society, such as religion. Our men thus go from worshiping a stick with skulls planted on it to elaborating a more complex religion, centered on stone structures like Stonehenge, erected using boulders dragged thanks to a system of sleds.

Easy

In strictly simulation terms, Dawn of Man does an admirable job of addressing the issues faced by early humans in order to survive. At the beginning we have to contend above all with predators, hunger and fatigue, but with the passing of the hours new difficulties emerge, like groups of marauders who want to raid the village. Unfortunately it is the military side one of the weakest in Dawn of Man. Basically facing the marauders is reduced to sounding the alarm, to bring together all the inhabitants available to defend the structures and resources.

Of course, fences can be built, watch towers, and dogs can be trained to have a first defense, but in general the attacks are managed as single events to be overcome and not as a structural problem to be organized against. The defect emerges above all in the long distance, when you are essentially left with nothing to do. There lack of goals in the long run it is another of the shortcomings of Dawn of Man. Of course, he is a city builder and therefore one of the main pleasures is to build and expand our village. Unfortunately, the era represented has obvious limits in terms of variety and possibility of evolution and in a few hours you can build all the constructible. Incidentally: the habitable buildings are few and in the advanced stages only one type is built, while the productive buildings are a handful, as well as the religious ones. Let's say that Dawn of Man runs out in about ten hours, with the various maps that only slightly increase the level of challenge, without changing the actual progression.

Of course, the formula more pleasure and everything is gladly replayed, but in the long run it becomes an end in itself, which always flows in the same way and does not even offer the aesthetic taste of majesty, typical of the genre. On top of that, Dawn of Man is really easy. Let's explain: at first it seems to offer a good level of challenge, but as soon as you get to the heart of development, the gameplay literally becomes a walk. There are gods interesting events, such as pasture epidemics or climatic variations, but there is never anything that jeopardizes the work done ... also because the game system tends to automate everything, with our prehistoric friends who are very efficient in getting out hindrance practically alone in almost all situations. The hope is that with future updates, events and dangers will be added, but for now this is the game and nothing can be done about it.

Comment

Digital Delivery Steam, GoG Price 20,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

Readers (1)

8.6

Your vote

Dawn of Man is a good management software, which however lacks in variety and which is really easy in the long run. It's not bad and while it lasts it always manages to offer interesting news, but it runs out in a handful of hours, making subsequent games redundant and devoid of objectives, other than repeating what has already been done. Give it a chance if the setting intrigues you or if you are looking for a pastime.