I've left the review as negative, but the game is more good than bad, yet there are some outstanding bugs and mechanics that don't follow the genre.
Once these bugs are fixed, I'll change the review to positive.
- there are many many references to old game mechanics that are no longer the case, internally. Memetics are still referred to, yet they're now tech points.
- in the Endless Dream scenario, finding wolves, bears, and similar combat animals is extremely difficult, especially before level 45+. An entire class is based on animals that produce resources and/or help in combat. Rabbits in combat aren't very effective. :D
- Randomly, animals stop breeding in your territory, despite all conditions being met. There are manual workarounds, none of which should be required.
- Crop water/light conditions can only be seen by hovering over seeds when inside/interacting with a storage crate, not in your inventory. That's not right, it should show those values no matter what. Currently, it gives the impression that the game intentionally punishes the player for ignorance, because when you have the seeds in your inventory you can't tell what they need before they're planted.
- When planter water levels are set to 80%, and 80% is the max for the ideal range, the plant growth is penalized. If within the range, there should be no penalty, yet, there is. Penalize at 81%, not 80%.
- Gardener: when adding catalysts, it is VERY buggy. There is nothing to indicate it in game, and the UI lets you select any amount, but you can only actually add 3, and it improves the chance by exactly 6%. That's it. You cannot improve it otherwise, and considering how incredibly bad the entire class is compared to Chef and Beastmaster, this just adds insult to injury. There should be no problem adding as much catalyst as you can make up to 66-75%. Also, subsequent grafting attempts are DECREASED, which makes this all even worse. The updated percentage is NOT visually updated consistently, so even after you add the catalyst, the display of the chance won't update for many server ticks or until a full UI refresh of the object interaction. Very buggy.
- Biomechanical Contamination should not start until 20 units, rather than 10. 10 is overly punitive, given this is a class defining feature. And why reduce it to zero percent? That's not a reduction, that's just straight up disabling it.
- Beastmaster. You can't add certain mutagens, and there's no apparent reason for this. For example, on the alpha wolf granted at scenario start, you can't add both Frostborn and Fireborn to the same animal. Why not? There's nothing in game that says you can't, yet, the game prevents it. Also, you can't PULL mutagens out of animals, which you should be able to, even if that means killing them.
- Whistle summoned animals need to have offensive/defensive modes, with them only attacking the target that their owner is attacking, while Defensive. Currently, they kill EVERYTHING, even other animals that you're trying to capture, and refuse to stop attacking dreamers, even when they dreamers are not activated. Additionally, there should be a global keybind for 'retrieve', because having it bound to BOTH vehicle summon and animal retrieve is incredibly bad, especially given how difficult it is to control your animals in general, being unable to retrieve them is just frustrating beyond words.
- Tranquilizer throwing needles are terrible in two ways, yet required for every Beastmaster. Unless you know that mushrooms produce neurotoxin when harvested by a Growshroom (nothing in the game indicates this), it's pretty much impossible to find mass quantities of the substance. And you need mass quantities because the needles miss 99% of the time, despite being fired accurately. If missed thrown needles could be recovered within a few seconds (like arrows) then this would not be a problem, but given how difficult it is to find neurotoxin, PLUS how bad aiming/accuracy is, this is a perfect storm of fail. Oh, and "Sea Hares" are no longer in the game, so that source is gone.
- Stack decay. Oh boy, this is a big one. In most other games, the entire stack does not decay, and the timer is shown for the top item only. Not so in this game, and it's very bad. The stacking mechanic needs to be fixed such that decay only occurs for the TOP item in the stack, and then the timer resets for subsequent items in the stack. Today, you can cultivate 999 Bellflower, have it at 38 days in the fridge, and merge a single bellflower that's about to expire and the entire 1000 bellflower vaporize into spoiled food, instantly. This is a bug and must be fixed asap. Create a spot within the composter if you want a 'fast rot' slot to create spoiled food.
- Old World Cash should not have weight, currently its one of the heaviest items in the game and it makes no sense.
- When custom servers set no backpack load, the game still calculates initially loading players as overweight, and this does not update until the player interacts with storage and moves an item. This is extremely inconvenient (and lethal) if this happens when you're out in the wild. The red overburdened icon appears at login, and will not remove until the server recalculates weight. This needs to be fixed and is a bug.
- Custom server initial backpack loadouts cannot be edited the same as other server configs. It's inconsistent and the disparity is frustrating. Just allow them to be adjusted like any other setting. Right now you can remove a single item and edit it, but the total quantity of items in the list can't change, which makes no sense, so your only option is to delete and recreate the entire list, which.. can mean a considerable amount of lost time & effort for something that is a UI bug.
- Toy requirement for Deviations doesn't appear to be possible to satisfy. If it is possible, it's not intuitive. Toys placed on or near the Deviation/tank never satisfy the requirement. Lights, temperature, power, all straightforward, but not toys.
- It should be possible to persistently mute startup audio, so that the player doesn't have to click the mute icon every single time the game client starts. OR you should permit the mute icon to be a hotkey, and display the keybind on the startup screen so players can just press that. OR the startup audio should be a slider that can be set to zero, just like all other audio sources/channels. The max volume startup is ear damaging.
- You have a massive bug right now trying to sign up/pay for a custom server. If you try to "sign in" or "log in" using google or any of the other OAuth providers, it never works. You can try it yourself, anyone, right now. Clear your browser cache/cookies, go to the https://pay.neteasegames.com/oncehuman/topup page (this is the correct page as of Sep 2026) and click on Custom Server. It will ask you to login. If you choose any of the suggested/recommended login providers, THIS WILL NEVER WORK. It will throw an exception regarding an incomplete character or other nonsense which has nothing to do with the actual BUG. The BUG is: the only method that works is if you choose "USER ID LOGIN" , NOT Account Login. Account Login (the default) does not work, and likely never has worked. User ID Login works perfectly, and is the only way to purchase a custom server, today. Massive bug, epic fail. Fix it. I almost gave up on trying to give you money for a custom server because this sign up process is so incredibly bad/buggy and has likely been broken for months/years. Verified on three different browsers and three different operating systems. It's your site that is broken.
- And finally, your "report a bug" feature doesn't actually let you report a bug. It currently points you in a circle to an AI chatbot that does exactly nothing. If you want bugs to be reported, fix this.
