Just wrote worst review of the decade

[trev1972]

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, OP.

The question of immersion is extremely subjective when it comes to Civ, a game which has traditionally allowed the player to lead an immortal Washington's America starting 4000 BC. Is that really less jarring than Ben Franklin leading the Romans? To some, yes; to others, no.

As for the other qualms, yeah, I guess. Different strokes and all. You can't please everyone. Now, can any review presume to speak the One and Only Truth to be pronounced about a given work? Nope, not at all.

So cheers. Maybe you'll rebuy in the future, if the game has veered in a direction favored by your tastes. Or not, and you'll return to older Civs or just move on to other games, or gardening. That's okay too. Good luck.

Personally, i would agree that its different strokes etc, but while the point is accepted on 4000BC USA, the mix and match leaders combined with the ability to transform into a completely unrelated civilisation- reminds me personally that i am playing a board game and removes the admittedly already tenuous link to history, it makes it harder to pretend i am leading a civilisation.

I think if there is ever a point where enough civs exist to play historic transformations (the only example i can see right now being romans->normans->french) and a way to fix leaders in the set up to historical civs then maybe i could live with it.

I still think the dissociation of leader from civ was to make it easier to sell small dlc packs, but hey a lot of people are clearly enjoying the game so if this game is a success i guess they will lean more heavily into this direction.

 

[AD1730]

a game which has traditionally allowed the player to lead an immortal Washington's America starting 4000 BC. Is that really less jarring than Ben Franklin leading the Romans? To some, yes; to others, no.

My view on this is that the new system is, at best, accurate as the old system and, at worst, far less accurate.

It didn't fix the problem of Civs starting much earlier than they really did (Rome wasn't founded in 4000BC, that came over 3000 years later, and that's just one example). It didn't fix immortal leaders. But, it did add in a whole slew of new issues (mismatched leaders/civs, awkward "historical" civ transitions, civs not fitting in the era in which they were placed).

I really don't think there's an argument that the new system is more accurate. Given that one system was a fiction players accepted from the beginning of the franchise, this system is likely far more jarring.

 

[Sherlock]

OP: Thanks for the review, it was thoughtful and helpful.

 

[TheGrayFox]

Complaints about the legacy path milestones being too specific and forcing you down the same path every time are bizarre to me. How is it any different than the previous victory conditions?

because now the game is split into three short rounds and there are arbitrary victory conditions for each of them.

In civ 6 you have to build a spaceport and do the satellite, moon landing, mars mission, and exoplanet expedition every time you get the science victory. There's no sandbox, you don't set your own goal, if you want to see the science victory screen you need to do exactly what the game wants you to do. Same with domination, you could own 99/100 cities on the map but if that last one is Kupe's capital on a 1 tile island in the middle of the ocean then tough luck, you are not a winner until you sail out there and take over a completely irrelevant city.

In past civ games, there is a long 10-15 hours of campaign depending on gamespeed before you even have to stress and worry about victory conditions and those victory conditions flow naturally from simply playing the game well. You're right sandbox is the wrong term for what's being described because there are set goals and conditions to win in a Civilization series but you're missing that something is definitely being lost splitting what used to be a long form campaign game into three much shorter, seperated, and defined game rounds each with their own very restrictive and particular goals.

 

[Albertan Civfanatic]

I did 2 playthroughs, the first as Augustus and the Second as Tecumseh. My first playthrough was me just being lazy and playing the game to get its flavour. Not trying to satisfy any victory conditions. The second playthrough I made a concerted attempt to satisfy the legacy paths. Its honestly not that different from how I would otherwise play. Building a library and sending a trade envoy to foreign territory is not really straight jacketing at all.

 

[UWHabs]

I do think a lot of the core features of this version are more controversial than in previous editions, so I'm not surprised that people don't like it. I'm definitely curious to see what people's takes will be once they get some of the UI issues sorted and people have a better feel for the game.

 

[misesfan]

I really think they should have changed gears - switch the leaders not the nations at the end of an age! Steal from Old World - a much better game - instead of Humankind.

 

[Isengardtom]

I really think they should have changed gears - switch the leaders not the nations at the end of an age! Steal from Old World - a much better game - instead of Humankind.

I disagree. I actually don’t “feel” the change in civs that much. It’s more that my civ has different bonuses now which means different strategies. But thanks to the wonders, unique quarters ,… your civ remains largely the same in terms of look on the map. You’re just gradually overbuilding your buildings to the new look

If I would have to change leaders every age that would be much more jarring, for me anyway

 

[pmarc]

I think they moved in a lot of ways that are similar to Old World, like for the rural/urban improvement layout, the event system, etc. That said, Old World works particularly well because it restricts itself to a more narrow spatial and temporal scale, which makes things like 1 unit per turn and unstacked cities fit better.

 

[Kev1916]

I really think they should have changed gears - switch the leaders not the nations at the end of an age! Steal from Old World - a much better game - instead of Humankind.

100% Old World is a tremendous sand box game with lots of immersion, copying from Humankinf ROFL

Civ switching and ages with three mini games on tiny maps are IMHO best suited for young casual players , you can level up your Toon and grind for outfits

Anyway Endless Legend 2 is on the way

 

[TheGrayFox]

I really think they should have changed gears - switch the leaders not the nations at the end of an age! Steal from Old World - a much better game - instead of Humankind.

I've been playing Old World again and its remarkable how many genius changes to 4x formula were made that Firaxis could've jacked

The fact that we got civ swapping instead of nested tooltips will never cease to amaze me

 

[Zaarin]

If I would have to change leaders every age that would be much more jarring, for me anyway

This. The implementing of civ-switching feels very elegant. Leader switching would feel much more like Humankind, where the AI retains no sense of personality or identity across ages.

 

[aelf]

Bough the game and refunded it. After 30 min.

Don't tell me that I have to play it though to know if I like it or not. I knew immediately that I didn't like civ 5. I loved civ 6. Civ 2 and 3. Even after countless of hours on civ 6 people were telling me that civ 5 is best version ever, so I gave it several tries. Its not. Still don't like it. So no, you don't have to play a game for x amount of hours and x amount of playthroughs until you find it enjoyable. Its either good from the get go or it isn't. Civ 7 isn't.

Lets me go a bit in depth as I didn't on my review on steam page.

I play games for the feel of it. For the fantasy of it. Either that be football manager where you take charge of a team and bring it to glory, or take a civilization under your command and build it up to be the greatest. This manifests very early in the game. With good games, and civ likes, you very early on get attachment to who ever you are playing as. You feel a sense of responsibility, joy, excitement. There is no such thing in civ 7. You can't connect your feelings to a random leader, leading a country that isn't his.

All reviews and plays I've seen on youtube have been telling me how this isn't a bad thing. They are sponsored shills. There is no way in hell, this is a good thing. It totally disconnects you from the immersion. You are basically playing a puzzle game they've set up and try to win on conditions they've set up. You are no longer playing for building a great nation and conquering the world, rather, you are just mix-maxing stats on this small island (yes, it feels like an island), to achieve certain points and reach goals of the game. Civ feel is about a sandbox game, where victory goals are the ones you set up for your great civilization. But no, now you have to get x amount of this and that, during each age and it calculates your score. I'm telling you, its a mix-maxing puzzle game and you will realize this very early. (And don't come to me telling me that civ games have always been about min-maxing, because they haven't). Not only that, they figured out, why fudge up immersion only once in the start of the game, lets fudge it up 3 times during game. Also, lets fudge all the hard work the player did and just fudge up his stuff couple times during game.

So they fudged it up this much and thought, lets fudge up immersion even more for everybody. And then they decided to add a tutorial to the game that pops up non-stop over entire screen. (It has to be over entire screen because game is designed for controller platforms like switch). Not only does this ruin your first impression of the game, it also overloads users with information that they would usually gather over a longer period of time. There is no fudging need for tutorials in games. If your game isn't self explanatory and simple in the start, you have failed at game design. Which they clearly did.

As you probably already know, the UI is terrible. I understand why it's terrible, but I really don't care about this. What gets my juices going is all the people who says that once the UI is fixed and tooltips and such, game will be great. It won't. Bad UI is just a symptom of a larger fudge up. And people focusing on UI and blaming UI for reason the game feels bad, just don't want to realize that the actual game is bad. So they are blaming UI and saying how everything will be fine once this is fixed. And they do this because they still have hope that this fudge up can somehow turn around and become a decent game. But deep down they know the game is terrible.

Graphics doesn't make the game. Everybody is praising graphics, and they are great to look at, as a wallpaper. But they messed up hugely. Everything blends into each other. Specially when you are zoomed out a bit, its really hard to distinguish units, buildings and environment. They have no idea about object separation.

Then there are people playing the game and are clearly enjoying the game on youtube and in reviews on steam. So how can game be bad? They haven't realized it yet. The hype and euphoria is still huge and people are blind to constructive criticism. The real test comes a couple months later. Is the "just one more turn" still there then? Is it there after a week?

0/10, worst crap I've played in this entire franchise.

Ok.

 

[Kev1916]

One of the reviews on Steam I thought summed it up really well re Civ Morphing is below
Sadly I was really hoping they would get rid of the insidious loss of immersion.
It's neither realistic or engaging , it's not your world or your game you cant re-name anything - It just Screams END of mini game one it's a closed shop then cut to loading screen



""How was it *not* going to be jarring, though?

That's one of the core problems I had with Civ 7 since it was announced, and it's a problem I had seen in HumanKind as well, years prior.

It was always going to be jarring... unless your civilization has a gradual progression into a successor state each time (say, from England to Great Britain, or from Rome to Byzantium), then it basically by default is going to be an abrupt switch. The switch would work if you went from Rome to Byzantium and gradually the uniques changed, losing colliseums for hippodromes at one point, then legionaries for cataphracts a little while later.

But that clearly wasn't what Civ 7 was doing. Instead, in the span of a single turn, Rome becomes Normandy, Eygpt becomes Spain

The only thing I didn't realize until watching Advanced Access players react was that *city-states* were affected. That's a non-starter, and something the design team should have known better than to do. City-states disappearing at the Age progression point renders city-states kind of pointless unless you interact with them immediately at the start of an age.

And yeah, exactly like with HumanKind, civ-switching is a core mechanic that touches on many others... you can't really remove or fix it, because the moment you do, you have to fix everything else that also got affected by the change. HumanKind never could balance the gameplay or fix the immersion problem because, well, how do you remove civ switching without starting from square 1 again?"

 

[Civinator]

Bobolove, your post helped me to understand better the new slogan "Build something you believe in" that had to replace the old traditional slogan "Build a civilization that passes the test of time".

It was clear that the old slogan is not fitting any longer, as with the switching of civs (at least concerning the civs in era 1 and 2), the player has to throw these civs into the garbage can. Those civs cannot pass the test of time due to the current game mechanics of Civ 7.

Now with those "fantasy leaders" in Civ 7 the player at least should build something he is believing in. Believing something means not knowing it.
If the game for a player has so big differences from history that the player cannot tolerate this, he is even not able to follow the wishy-washy slogan to build something he is believing in.

On the other side, if the player is believing that the leader "Charly" is leading civ X, even when the leader "Charly" in history had absolutely nothing to do with that civ, Firaxis thinks, that these players, who cut off all connections to history in the game, can build something they believe in - others cannot.

 

[pmarc]

It does surprise me that one would put Civ6 and 7 at opposite ends of a scale in terms of gameplay preference; for me the gameplay (not necessarily the aesthetics) of this one is closer to Civ6 than Civ6 is to any previous installment.

 

[bladex1200]

Bobolove, your post helped me to understand better the new slogan "Build something you believe in" that had to replace the old traditional slogan "Build a civilization that passes the test of time".

It was clear that the old slogan is not fitting any longer, as with the switching of civs (at least concerning the civs in era 1 and 2), the player has to throw these civs into the garbage can. Those civs cannot pass the test of time due to the current game mechanics of Civ 7.

Now with those "fantasy leaders" in Civ 7 the player at least should build something he is believing in. Believing something means not knowing it.
If the game for a player has so big differences from history that the player cannot tolerate this, he is even not able to follow the wishy-washy slogan to build something he is believing in.

On the other side, if the player is believing that the leader "Charly" is leading civ X, even when the leader "Charly" in history had absolutely nothing to do with that civ, Firaxis thinks, that these players, who cut off all connections to history in the game, can build something they believe in - others cannot.

I mean to be fair, the premise of "Building a Civilization that passes the test of time" was always a fiction. Basically no ascendant civilization in its modern incarnation has passed the test of time (except maybe China? disputable depending on how much you think there's continuity between dynasties) and has morphed in such extreme ways as to be unrecognizeable to those who inhabited it a thousand years ago in borders, language, government system, etc.

I do wish leaders were tied to Civs per era and you got a new leader for each era you progressed in, but I feel that if one is talking about connections to history one is hopelessly deluding themselves with the idea that prior Civ games were historical without mods. Seeing Abraham Lincoln wearing a sheepskin hat and coat in Civ 3 was never historical, even if it was endearing and funny; neither was Joan of Arc persisting into the modern-day as a football hooligan. Civ 4 just straight up does away with era progression for leaders and just pretends the leader is existing in a historical vacuum from the civilization they're leading, which while less distracting is no less ahistorical.

 

[misesfan]

This. The implementing of civ-switching feels very elegant. Leader switching would feel much more like Humankind, where the AI retains no sense of personality or identity across ages.

So switching an entire civilization is less jarring than switching a leader of the civ? I must be stupid, because that doesnt make any sense to me. Someone also said that they dont 'feel' the switch in civilizations as well. Having your armies removed, your cities converted to towns and your diplomacy influence reset is not an abrupt change? I dont get it.

It would be much a smoother transition if your leader switched. New leader means new diplomatic traits and influences. New leader can reset the effectiveness of your military without having to remove units willy-nilly. New leader can give civic changes without having to capriciously change cities into towns.

The civ switch is completely capricious in my opinion. Changes in ages could have been made much more smoothly and strategically by switching leaders between ages instead of civs.

 

[AD1730]

So switching an entire civilization is less jarring than switching a leader of the civ? I must be stupid, because that doesnt make any sense to me. Someone also said that they dont 'feel' the switch in civilizations as well. Having your armies removed, your cities converted to towns and your diplomacy influence reset is not an abrupt change? I dont get it.

It would be much a smoother transition if your leader switched. New leader means new diplomatic traits and influences. New leader can reset the effectiveness of your military without having to remove units willy-nilly. New leader can give civic changes without having to capriciously change cities into towns.

The civ switch is completely capricious in my opinion. Changes in ages could have been made much more smoothly and strategically by switching leaders between ages instead of civs.

It comes down to if you viewed Civilization as leader-centric or civ-centric. I've always seen it as civ-centric, so I agree with your stance on this. I would have much preferred leader-switching and likely would have bought a game with it. I fundamentally disagree with civ-switching as they've implemented it, along with many other things, so I'm not buying this one.

 

[bladex1200]

So switching an entire civilization is less jarring than switching a leader of the civ? I must be stupid, because that doesnt make any sense to me. Someone also said that they dont 'feel' the switch in civilizations as well. Having your armies removed, your cities converted to towns and your diplomacy influence reset is not an abrupt change? I dont get it.

It would be much a smoother transition if your leader switched. New leader means new diplomatic traits and influences. New leader can reset the effectiveness of your military without having to remove units willy-nilly. New leader can give civic changes without having to capriciously change cities into towns.

The civ switch is completely capricious in my opinion. Changes in ages could have been made much more smoothly and strategically by switching leaders between ages instead of civs.

I would argue the jarring nature is that not all Civs have switches that preserve verisimilitude, whether because the more-historical options are going to be gated behind DLC or because there's simply not great options for them in-general (e.g. Mississipians got wiped out, who should they transition to in the next era? what about US indigenous cultures that today exist on autonomous reservations, should there be reservation civs or should the US be their transition in the Modern era?), not the Civ-switching itself.

China has a pretty natural civ switch, you're switching dynasties from Han to Ming to, eventually, Qing. Rome transitioning into the Normans is perfectly logical within the confines of a gameified simulation as the empire did break into multiple states over the course of its existence (lacking Italian city-states as a transition option definitely hurts here, but even if they did exist you should also be able to become the Franks or the Byzantines for the Exploration era).

IMO the game is hurt by its DLC and content model more than it is by the civ-switching mechanic in and of itself.