Sid Meier's Civilization VII

Civilization VII brings a lot of changes to the formula, but they don't feel entirely innovative or fully realized. The core of the experience retains its addictive qualities, and yet lacks refinement at launch.

I think the group at Firaxis Games had their hearts in the right places when they tried to overhaul this series, but so much of this lands with a thud, I cannot tell people to buy this game. There's plenty of things I like, but the bad outweighs the good. The condensed age system coupled with a modern era that seems to be condensed for the sake of simplicity is a huge disappointment. There are some good ideas, but this game needed another six months to a year of cooking. I hope patches and DLC can help this game out, or else I worry about what Civilization VIII is going to look like.

Civilization 7 has made a lot of changes, and while some were positive, the shortcomings made me wish I was playing Civ 6. That said, for anyone getting into the series for the first time, this is probably a great place to start.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII improves on areas of the franchise that would make any Civ fan excited. However, a feeling of incompleteness makes the game feel rushed and hard to engage with, leading to what may be an example of a game that was launched too soon but may become better with time.

With Civilization 7, the desire to streamline and simplify this legendary 4X series feels like it has gone a bit too far, particularly when it comes to the interface. It’s frustratingly inadequate at providing me with the information I need to play well, or even understand what's going on sometimes. Even so, it does have improved warfare and diplomacy, a bit of added narrative flair, as well as mostly gorgeous graphics and sound, so it can still give me reasons to keep clicking one more turn late into the night. There’s good reason to believe that with Firaxis’s usual pace of patches and expansions it can refine its new ideas and become everything it ought to be, and while what’s here right now is at least still a fun time, it’s also a bigger step backward for the series than we’re accustomed to when a new age dawns.

Firaxis combats the inherent bloat of the 4X genre with partial success. All of the big new ideas in Civilization 7 work well and it's tighter and more engaging than any of its predecessors. Nevertheless, your sense of connection still begins to wane by the midgame.

Firaxis delivers a solid performance, with an interesting gameplay loop that stays fresh and successfully makes micromanagement feel less cumbersome, encouraging even the most reluctant players to expand their empire by founding more cities. A real change of pace for the franchise, which ultimately wins us over. While the diplomatic system overhaul and the AI's more coherent playstyle stand out the most, we hope Firaxis will find a way through patches to make the structure of a match a bit more unpredictable, as a clear pattern emerges after around thirty hours of play regarding the overall flow of a game. This is the downside of the new model that divides a match into three ages: it works well with its soft reset but comes with its own set of issues. Still, it's a game we can easily see ourselves sinking over a hundred hours into by the end of 2025, whether in solo or multiplayer.

Civilization VII commits the greatest sin of all strategy games - it's boring. A few tweaks to the formula have worked out well for the series, but this is the moment for either a major revolution or the development of well thought-out mechanics that worked in Civilization VI. No more half-measures.

Civilization VII is great. Exciting. Frustrating. It's like a Rorschach test: how you look at it depends from person to person and moment to moment. Besides the obvious improvements, many of the game's flaws were perfectly avoidable, which leads us to conclude that this game is not finished. And we take issue with being asked full price for a game that is not yet finished. Our advice: if you're not a huge fan of the series, wait another year. If you are, prepare for a rough ride.

For now, though, I think it’s pretty telling that while Civilization VII certainly costs a pretty penny, I’ve already found myself going back to play VI when I want to play something that I enjoy. It’s simply not inspiring me, and given that this series above all others has, in a very real sense, shaped my lifelong interest in history, being uninspiring is perhaps the worst mistake Firaxis could have made.

A very disappointing sequel that features a few interesting new ideas but either streamlines the rest or leaves it out on purpose, for you to buy later as DLC.

In the end, Civilization 7 remains a Civilization game at its core. BUT: The new gameplay mechanic with changing ages is a double-edged sword. I'm honestly still not sure what to make of it after all this time with the review version. I see Civilization 7 as a solid foundation for what's to come in the future. In a year's time, this game could look completely different, let alone in three or four. But whether you're ready to embark on this adventure right now is up to you. You might love it. You could hate it. Or, like me, you could be caught between the two.

Civilization 7 is a very pretty and very chaoitc game. Brave but not thought out. It introduces changes that aren’t inherently bad, and they build an interesting foundation for a probably great game in the future. Unfortunately now we got an early access production for a premium access price.

Even if it has great looks: the interior of the latest instalment of the Civilization series is not very inspiring. Some good ideas are counterbalanced by a lot of bad ones. The biggest problem: it no longer feels like a Civilization-Game! Here, the developers have definitely made too many radical changes.

Right now, Civilization 7 is an incomplete and reduced version of the game, which is plagued by many issues. However, you can feel that under all this mess, a good game might be hiding.

You can't look at Sid Meier's Civilization VII without tears. I doubt that large-scale DLCs will fix the situation - this building needs to be demolished together with the foundation.

If it’s still capable of sucking you in for hours on end, this latest entry in the storied franchise too often feels like a game that’s engaging in spite of itself.