Civilization VII

Sid Meier’s Civilization is the OG of turn-based strategy games. For the most part, the series has delivered some wonderful experiences to its fans of all ages, almost always focusing on the core elements that made the game great: Famous leaders, every turn possibly being an important one, and allowing for different strategies based upon the leaders chosen or how the player wants to proceed.

The possibilities are numerous, but the Civilization series has had a difficult time recapturing the magic that made the games incredible. Sid Meier’s Civilization VII unfortunately continues this trend of being a “fine” game that just isn’t ready for greatness.

On the surface, it plays almost exactly like you’d hoped

Full disclosure: I believe that this series peaked at Civilization V, a game that has consumed so much of my time and proven to be just a wonderful experience every time I dive into it. There are plenty out there that believe the fourth chapter of the game is perfection and, honestly, I love that one too.

The series has never managed to surpass either of those games, and VII’s challenge was mainly to make people forget about the cartoonish characters of VI or the attempt to change things up by going into space for Beyond Earth, which I was just not a fan of because most of the choices presented to players had almost no impact.

Civilization VII has opted to embrace simplicity while offering some notable changes. The most important point with this game is that it is gorgeous. The terrain has incredible detail—honestly some of the best the series has ever seen. The armies, buildings, water; all of it is just gorgeous.

My PC can handle max graphics, so that is important to point out, but even turning down the graphics still gives players some pretty beautiful visuals that make Civilization games stand out. The leaders are also quite impressive and are far less cartoonish, one of the biggest things that kept me from truly embracing Civilization VI. I still think the models of V are better, but it’s splitting hairs overall. If they’re not the best, they’re second best at worst.

The game’s core mechanics are still there: Build out your cities, create your units, defend territory, and decide how you want to try and win the game. Economic, Military, Science, and Culture victories are all there for the taking, as is domination by destroying everyone on the map.

If the max turns have been reached, the most points wins. It’s a tried and tested formula that still works here. What’s changed is the journey to get to the final turn. Some of the mechanics have been simplified, such as religion and diplomacy, to help out new players in the game. On the surface, this seems fine, but I’ll get into why that’s also a bad thing later on.

One of the things that I actually really like is that players can pair up any leader with any civilization, which is a huge change for the game. In past games, your leader was bound to a country and that was it.

For example, I love playing as Elizabeth of England in Civilization V. She has great mid-game strength and gets an extra spy. However, I cannot move Elizabeth off of England and play her as a different country. I know that traditionalists of the series have been calling for this while others want to maintain historical accuracy, but the series needed this for at least two games and we finally have it. It might mean a lot of weird combinations, but that’s what spices things up.

The music in this game is also brilliant, and that’s no surprise. The last several Civilizations have had gorgeous arrangements that change as the game does. It is quite easy to just get lost in the music and, ultimately, you’ll fall in love with a couple of specific leaders just because of the music that plays when you’re leading them to victory.

There are a lot of changes, and I think that’s the biggest problem with this entry

Changing for the sake of change usually leads to failure, and while the points I made above make you think that I enjoyed this game overall, let me pull you back down to Earth.

I cannot stress enough just how much I hate the UI in this game. I have no idea what they were going for, but it straddles the line between “overly complicated” and “an absolute mess.” Some of it makes sense, like the leaders being in the top right and having quick access to them, but they simplified the wrong things while complicating others. I despise the menus for technologies, age advancement, and just about everything in the top left. It’s tough to find specific information and, simply put, this needs a full overhaul. That’s a terrible start for a new game.

Speaking of simplification, I don’t know how the developers pulled off simplifying a game while making it absurdly complicated at the same time, but they did. I’m a Civilization veteran, and some of the mechanics I simply do not understand. The game’s tutorial/AI tries to explain, but I’ve never had to go into a game’s Infopedia more than this title. I look up some of the things the game stresses, only to find that there’s barely any information in there and, in some cases, the information is convoluted and only leads to further problems.

While I love the visuals that this game offers, I hate the fog of war. Admittedly, this is a small thing for me, but the shiny VII logos on all the edges of the map annoy me. I want an actual fog like we’ve had in past games. I think the shadowing on explored territory I don’t have vision on is fine, overall, though it doesn’t really match the feel of what the fog of war is. It’s not a yin and yang that I think they were going for, but more an oil and water situation.

The leaders themselves I like overall, but there’s a thing that drives me nuts with every interaction. It’s 2025, and voice acting has never been better. Almost every interaction with leaders where points have to be used to do things such as opening borders, markets, offering military aid, etc. Those situations should feel important. You’re making an agreement with another nation, and the leader stands there looking at you the whole time. The entire interaction after you’ve made the moves gets summed up in one word from both leaders:

“Hmph.”

That’s it? Two legendary leaders are making an agreement and there’s no, “I accept your offer,” or even just, “This will do?” No, it’s a grunt at best, and it’s such a wasted moment. Give these leaders more lines! Make me remember what they say when they’re on your side or turn down an offer. Don’t just have them shrug their shoulders and mumble. It’s an insult to them, the players, and the actors portraying them. Do better, please.

Going back to the issue of simplification and complication, I don’t see how new players are going to be itching to jump into this as their first Civilization game. The UI isn’t doing any favors for veteran players, so the poor people who are picking this up as their first Civ title might get scared off by the jumbled mess that’s presented. It's just baffling how this system doesn’t really fix anything while making some of the choices in Civilization VI seem incredible (when they weren’t.)

There are some mechanics that I’m torn on. Barbarians have been a staple of the series since the beginning. While I think they needed an overhaul, I didn’t want them to be eliminated completely—but that’s what happened.

The new mechanic is Independent Powers; basically small outposts or villages that aren’t City-States, but still cause problems early on. The change comes in that you can beat down these powers into submission and force them to ally with you, or you can wipe them out just like old barbarian outposts.

I would have preferred a mix of the two, where the barbarians actually evolve and become their own mini civilization, or turn into a City-State if left alone for too long. Yes, Civilization VI had barbarian clans, but it still needed love. I don’t think they got it right this time around either.

A weird thing with this game is that the modern age seemingly got ignored in comparison to the earlier ages. I don’t know if this was by design because of wanting to simplify certain parts of the game, but it just feels like things are missing. One of the satisfying experiences of playing prior games in the series is to get to the modern age and seeing all the great technologies and science-based options you can open. Also, in past games, moving from one age to the next was pretty seamless. You usually got a pop up that said, “Welcome to the Industrial Era!” and that was that. Some of the things in your city landscape changed to reflect that, and that’s fantastic.

In this game? The only word that comes to mind is abrupt, especially to the modern age. This is what happens when the ages are condensed into just three: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. Simply put? It doesn’t work, and it’s a big reason why I’m not going to put much time into this game post-review.

Is it worth buying, though?

Civilization VII retails on Steam for $69.99 for the base game. The deluxe edition is an extra thirty dollars at $99.99.

Right now, my answer is a resounding “No.”

This sounds like a bad game. Is it really that rough?

I’ve been railing on this game for most of the review, but let me give a broader picture: I think this game needed six more months to cook. It feels rushed and when you rush a game, bad things happen. Admittedly, I didn’t experience some of the graphical issues that seemed to pop up for players post launch, so that’s a positive for me. Granted, I do not have an AMD Graphics card (I use an Nvidia 4070 Ti) and it seemed that AMD GPUs had the biggest problems.

I don’t think this is a “bad” game by the standard definition, though. I can see some of the ideas that the developers had and, honestly, it still feels like a Civilization game. I think it’s probably around the same quality as Beyond Earth, which means that perhaps some patches and DLC can help it out down the road. But that means players will have to pump more money into it or hope the modding community can fix some of the mechanics, and that’s where my issue lies: If I’m saying these things regarding the launch, then that’s a problem and I have to write about it accordingly.

My hope is that this game follows the path of rough launches like No Man’s Sky where it gets that extra time to cook and becomes a solid or great game. I want this series to continue because I love it and have had great experiences with it. But this one’s getting uninstalled and I’ll perhaps give it another chance in a year. There are going to be veterans that enjoy it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. New players should look at older titles to get into the series, such as IV or V specifically. They’re well balanced and provide a great challenge without somehow being complicated with a simplified age system.

Let’s wrap it up, shall we?

I really want to like this game, I swear. Despite all my issues, I still had fun at times. I think the early and mid game phases are solid once you get past the terrible UI and convoluted progression system. An overhaul of the UI would help this game so much and I cannot stress that enough, but that’s going to take some time.

There’s some things to like, such as the mix-match system with leaders and countries, forming alliances being a little easier, and still being able to go into an all out war against leaders in history that can make this game fun. I think eventually it gets there, but right now? I’m uninstalling and going back to Civilization V.