Sid Meier’s Civilization VII Review

Reviewing a game like Sid Meier’s Civilization VII is easier said than done. If you haven’t played an entry of this 4x staple, it’s an incredibly nuanced turn-based strategy title where no two campaigns feel alike. In a typical Civ game, you take control of your civilisation (hey, that’s the name of the game) and lead it from pre-history to the modern era, establishing new cities, setting social policies, trading resources, and waging war as you go. With each campaign taking around 15 hours and so many variables going into how it plays, you might start to see the challenge of reviewing a game like this. So, I just want to slap a big ol’ disclaimer that the below thoughts, ruminations and failed attempts at humour are all derived from the 40ish hours that I put into the game before writing this review. As such, it feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface despite putting the equivalent of a work week into it. That being said – I do have thoughts.

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first. This particular entry to Sid’s grand works has been subject to some controversy online, mainly because (gasps) Firaxis has shaken up the formula for the (checks notes/title of the game) seventh release in the series. In the previous titles, you would select a leader tied to a civilisation, such as Napoleon leading the French. However, in Civilization VII, you now select a Leader (who remains constant through the three Ages that you play), and then, with each Age, you select a different civilisation. This ends up with some funky history jazz playing out, where you could hypothetically have Benjamin Franklin leading Persia as they attack their neighbours for resources, Ming China as they traverse the seas looking for new lands, and finally, Prussia during a space race.  

This deviation in the quite literally time-tested formula feels a little kooky, almost a bit wrong at times, like microwaving ice cream to make custard. And although it’s not what I expected to be chowing down on, it’s still pretty sweet. I quite enjoyed toying with builds and looking at ways to either dominate the world through devastating ability/unit combos or finding synergies to save it by being good at reading or whatever it is scientists do. Would I have preferred the old leader system? Yes. Does this new system seriously detract from the experience? Not really. It’s kinda weird, but I’m down with it if it means I can get more of that Sid crack.

One of the biggest reworks in Civ VII outside of the Leaders is how ages work. Instead of a seamless progression, every era is a soft reset. This means you could be in the middle of an intense war, moving in on a rival’s capital, and suddenly – boom – the era is over. When you rejoin the map in the new Age, everything has gently reset and you’re back at square (hexagon?) one. While you get to keep your territories, the resources have all changed, independent states disappear unless you absorb them, and your relationships with other players are mostly back to neutral. I’d best describe it as a campaign feeling like a collection of loosely connected mini-runs. Experienced players with years of muscle memory will need to retune their instincts, and honestly? That’s not such a bad thing. If a game has a 7 in the title, it should be reinventing itself. It’s not like FIFA, where you get the same game with new team sheets… although now I think of it, maybe having Catherine the Great lead America is exactly that. Despite disliking the Age changes in my first campaign, I found it more enjoyable once I started tracking progress better and monitoring my objectives and the time it takes to complete them with greater attention. 

The Age of Antiquity feels the most like Civ as you may currently know it. It’s a mad dash to claim land, fight for resources, and explore your home continent. Both fighting and establishing new cities have seen an overhaul while most units don’t progress into the next Age. Instead, your Commanders take all the glory and retain their skill tree unlocks throughout the campaign. Utilising these Commanders is a significant upgrade when it comes to waging war. You can pack regular units into a Commander and move your armies as a group before unpacking them in front of your former allies’ city and pillaging all their grape tiles or whatever you felt was necessary at the time. Having a centralised unit that can order attacks while boosting the troops around them is such a good idea, and it really helps improve the flow of battle. 

When we get to the Exploration Age, things start to change more dramatically and the rules of the game go from feeling familiar to something more alien. During this age, a new continent is revealed on your map, which introduces new civilisations alongside untapped resources. The focus is on settling new land which is, again, a departure from the previous entries. Instead of planting a collection of cities around the map, you now establish towns, which can later be turned into cities or kept as towns that focus on a speciality, like increasing food or happiness. Out of everything that Civ VII introduced, I felt this was the most intuitive. If the last few sentences don’t make any sense to you, fear not! Civ VII is overall more approachable for new players than I found V or VI to be. The tutorial explains all of the elements, including settlements, really well, and the Civilopedia knowledgebase is easy to open and browse in-game.

While settling towns and making happy fishing villages sounds pretty chill, there’s a healthy pinch of bleakness in the game’s colonial themes, especially in the Age of Exploration. Plenty of the advancements and civic choices you make in this Age are paired with sombre lines read by Gwendoline Christie, adding a much-needed dose of the real world to the digital pillaging. It’s a tricky balancing act when the theme for a whole section of the game is to colonise a new continent while trying to keep things fun. While the narrative balances it well, I do have to question the jovial soundtrack that looped as I laid waste to the new continent as a Xerxes-led Mongolia. The music is overall great, but it doesn’t shift as dynamically as it did in VI, with some misplaced flute solos accompanying all-out war. 

As for the final Age, I found this to be the least compelling. Sure, I still couldn’t put the game down when in the flow, but my runs meandered a little towards the end. Usually, by this time, in previous titles, I’d be deep into the diplomacy screen. However, Civ VII has downplayed the leader interactions and diplomacy. I can understand that they needed to refocus certain gameplay elements to fine-tune the new direction, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss being able to steal the Mona Lisa or trade prisoners for uranium. It feels like they’ve dropped some of the complex systems to make this entry more approachable. To reiterate my opening sentiment, maybe I just had a couple of slower campaigns at this point, so I started longing for old strategies.

One other aspect that feels like a miss in the modern era is the ending of a campaign. When my Vietnamese-led Japanese empire eventually did launch a manned space mission in 1887 after a mostly peaceful and subdued run… the game just ended. One little animation and some score breakdowns later, and I was back at the home screen. It felt underbaked after having invested so many hours into the game just to have it wrap up so abruptly. I was always a sucker for the “one more turn” mode where you could infinitely play out your save after victory conditions had been met. Having it missing in this game is a shame. Hopefully, with time, this will make its way back. 

Would I have preferred the old leader system? Yes. Does this new system seriously detract from the experience? Not really. It’s kinda weird, but I’m down with it if it means I can get more of that Sid crack.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that you can now play an Age by itself. You don’t have to run the Antiquity to Modern gauntlet and can just pick up a new game at a later stage. When you do this, you get points to spend on advancing your start to give the impression you haven’t popped up out of nowhere. It’s an interesting addition and one that I think will be great to revisit when testing out strategies. At its core, Civ VII is still very much the Civilization we know so well. It’s addictive, and it looks and plays incredibly similar to previous titles, but the new aspects can feel like a handbrake turn. It’s like going to a friend’s house to play Monopoly and finding out they have a homebrew rule where houses are removed every time you pass GO. The new rules and features introduce bold new ways to play the game but sometimes feel like they need some more tinkering. The cynic in me thinks this will be one of the better Civ games of all time once all of the DLC lands and we have new leaders, empires and play conditions (like Civ VI’s fantastic Rise and Fall). Until then, it’s still some damn fine gaming, but with a pinch of reservation. 

One final note for all my deck heads out there. The game runs and plays fantastically on Steam Deck. As with any game of this sort, it’s best on a desktop set-up, but I did play most of the game on the deck sprawled across the couch like a slug lord. I experienced very few dips in frames out of the box, radial wheels for menus make it intuitive, and the load times were surprisingly fast. Civ VII has definitely earned its Steam Deck verified status.

Final Thoughts

Civilization VII is an excellent turn-based strategy game. As a Civ game, it looks and feels the same as its predecessors but with enough changes to leave long-time fans with something new to learn and hopefully cherish. At times I felt at odds with the decisions, but I always come back to the fact that I still enjoyed my time and will absolutely keep playing this game long into the future. 

Reviewed on PC // Steam Deck. Review code supplied by publisher

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