Eurogamer: "The king isn't dead, but now's a good time to come at him." 2/5 stars

The_J

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Eurogamer has given 2/5 stars.

The conclusion reads:
"Civilization 7 is pretty and detailed and sounds fine (I caught that one tune from Colonization!). AI turns are perhaps the fastest I've ever seen, and its UI has enough potential to make some of my complaints feel patchable. Its design broadly works, and a certain kind of city-optimising fan may even love it. But its lack of character is endemic, the extent of its annoying habits and oversights shocking for a series of such pedigree. It's a dull, contradictory game, and instead of showing everyone how it's done, it's felt since hour one like a game that leaves the 4X throne empty."
 
Eurogamer seems to be an outlier. The other reviews are more positive than that. A good rule of thumb is to ignore the reviews on both extremes, the ones that say the game completely sucks and also the ones that say the game is total perfection. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.
 
I am way more interested in badish reviews that highlight the problems and confusion than the everything is good ones. Thanks for the share:thumbsup:
 
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Eurogamer seems to be an outlier. The other reviews are more positive than that. A good rule of thumb is to ignore the reviews on both extremes, the ones that say the game completely sucks and also the ones that say the game is total perfection. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.
You see I’m the opposite - I’d rather read an interesting outlier, be it critical or positive, than rely on a consensus.

In the case of the Eurogamer review, Sin is a writer I’ve rated for a long time so I know I can trust her reviews to be thoughtful, even if I don’t agree with them exactly.

The lack of personality is something I’m concerned about it with Civ 7, and a lot of the irritations and oversights seem to be common observations among many of the reviewers.
 
You see I’m the opposite - I’d rather read an interesting outlier, be it critical or positive, than rely on a consensus.

In the case of the Eurogamer review, Sin is a writer I’ve rated for a long time so I know I can trust her reviews to be thoughtful, even if I don’t agree with them exactly.

Sure, you can read outlier reviews. I am just saying that outliers both super negative and super positive are more likely to be wrong, by definition. That is what makes them outliers. But at the end of the day, all reviews are opinions. So the Eurogamer review hated civ7. That is their opinion. Others disagree.

The lack of personality is something I’m concerned about it with Civ 7.

Personally, I don't understand this criticism. IMO, Humankind lacked personality. Civ7 seems to have plenty of personality from what I have seen. But what does personality even mean? For me, personality in a game means the game has a certain panache where it feels interesting and fun. The other opposite of personality would be dull or boring. That seems very subjective to me.
 
The lack of personality is something I’m concerned about it with Civ 7, and a lot of the irritations and oversights seem to be common observations among many of the reviewers.
Lack if personality (character as reviewer calls it) is fully subjective feeling based thing. I do not know or even want to know anyone elses subjective feelings usually. Personality is feeling I have to develop and feel myself. Even I do not like video formats usually for explainig some mechanic things (over articles), video format offers chance to get feeling based information before hand thus allowing me to say this reviewer is totally wrong with high propability for me.
 
In 7, they burn down the library and the exact ... buildings you need to produce things that would make them happier.

and there's no unit list. If you park an explorer, you're never finding him again.

oh gosh. really? >_<
In CIV V it was hard to keep your people happy and pacified, so rebellion units would pop and pillage buildings
In CIV VI I don't remember the last time rebellion units appeared in my cities, and they are more prone to appear due to spy action then citizen unhappiness as it's very easy to get the necessary amenities to keep them pacified.
I guess the developers decided that CIV VI was too easy in this regard and back to CIV V we go:sad:
 
I know rebel units pillaged tiles in 5 and 6, and you could at least try to stop them. This review seems to say that random buildings are being demolished, even those that are supposed to increase happiness (!).

Was this a mistake on the reviewer's part? Because no other preview or review I've seen mentioned this.
 
A friend sent me this review a few days ago, and the odd thing is as I read it it felt as though every other point she makes is just a problem I had with 6. A few examples:

Angry Civ-izens would rampage across that same town, and might declare independence. In 7, they burn down the library and the exact fudging buildings you need to produce things that would make them happier.
I had a game where I had a city that was losing loyalty, and I had already done most of the things that you'd do in that situation (Governor, monument, civics, etc.), with an exception being a government plaza. The city got ~80% of the way through production and then just... stopped because the loyalty was low. Incredibly frustrating experience. Maybe this is more common in 7, and if so, fair point.

Eventually an unhappy town "rebels" by seamlessly joining another, potentially allied empire. You can't contest it without warring on that empire. You can't grant independence or trade it away.
Also a problem I have with the loyalty mechanic in 6. I suppose technically you can just trade away cities on a whim in 6, but that is so rarely worth it even when you're having these issues. And I would seriously hope that the happiness mechanics in 7 are more in depth then the loyalty mechanics in 6 (can you tell I don't like loyalty in 6?).

But you can only redistribute resources after acquiring a new one, just as you can only change social policies after researching a new one. Most goods become useless in the third age until you build a heap of infrastructure, making my trade specialty almost as laborious as its interface.
This one is at least acknowledged to be a problem in 6 with policies. That system could be interesting in a simpler game, but with newer civs being as complicated as they are, it just adds to the tedium. At least in singleplayer it prompts you to change policies when the opportunity arises. But if you're in multiplayer, you run into:
Information is absent or buried away in submenus, while microscopic icons - another issue - deliver poorly organised, irrelevant news every turn.
Civ 6, especially in multiplayer, likes to push a ton of important info as notifications just above the next turn/action button. However it additionally fills it with dozens of notifications like "Look! This volcano erupted! Isn't that crazy?" when it's on the opposite side of the planet, or "hey, you're running out of housing in this city!" when that city just exists for an oil deposit. By the end of the game the notifications from a single turn fly off my 1440p screen with only 1-2 that I care about. So, even though technically it's telling me these important things, I end up missing them anyways because I'm autopilot dismissing all of them. Speaking of things I end up missing because of this UI:
It's the same for natural disasters, which add a chance that some farms will remain damaged for hours because you didn't manually check every settlement.
Because in 6 the UI spams you with natural disasters you don't care about, the ones you do care about end up being like this. I suppose based on the provided image this might actually be worse in 7, as in 6 the terrain changes (pillaging/removing improvements) is easier to see and usually what I use to tell a natural disaster has happened.

To be fair most of these things I've pointed out aren't really alluded to in the intro/conclusion and so might be just nitpicks, but I am curious if the she considers these problems unique to 7, and if so why.
 
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