State of the game xmas 2025: Is it a good buy at -35 % (and why/why not)?

[Smegger213]

Nope. Even at 35% off, I still wouldn't recommend to buy this game.
At the moment I have stopped playing it, mainly out of pure boredom.
I have now got nearly 165 hours played, but now I find it a total chore to play.
Once you get towards the end of the exploration age, the game just becomes a borefest for me.

I have decided to dedicate more time to the good few games that I got in the Steam Winter Sale.
Plus I have started a new game of Divinity Original Sin 2, plus will be continuing my play through of Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[tman2000]

Seconding the mods recommendation. Especially beezany's mods- Map Trix, Flag Corps, Resource Re-sort, and the city view one, I'm blanking on the name. They do so much for functionality and information availability. They tend not to break with patches, and she updates them quickly. Leonardfactory's Policy Yield Preview is my other favorite.

The game would be much worse without them.

The inability to mouse over resources on the map and get a tooltip on the resource's effect is game breaking. Resources are among 3-4 strategic choices you ever make in this game that actually matter.

 

[Evolena]

The inability to mouse over resources on the map and get a tooltip on the resource's effect is game breaking. Resources are among 3-4 strategic choices you ever make in this game that actually matter.

That's false.
No mods:

 

[IntelligentDisk]

The inability to mouse over resources on the map and get a tooltip on the resource's effect is game breaking. Resources are among 3-4 strategic choices you ever make in this game that actually matter.

You've been able to do that since the game came out.

 

[UWHabs]

You can most of the time, but sometimes it does prevent you. Sometimes when there's a unit on the tile, or something else you can interact with (ie it's a target for a unit move), the popup doesn't come up.

 

[Evolena]

Indeed, you can't if the unit is selected. If you clic again on the unit (or any way to have nothing selected), then the tile tooltip is available again. Not ideal, but still workable.

 

[Siddorm]

I have been playing demos of various games recently and I bought a couple of games in the winter sale, and my biggest barrier to enjoyment was generally the UI. For almost every game, the UI sometimes left me confused, uninformed, perhaps misinformed (although I wouldn't know that if I was confused). The worst UI was FM26 Demo. The best was Slay The Spire, which was the only game where the UI was easy for me to use and understand. I now realize how important a good UI is, especially for players that are unfamiliar with the genre or franchise.

 

[reddishrecue]

I voted for best place as it is. Even though the game was voted the best strategy game of 2025 and all the troubles that the game has gone through it still deserves a good vote IMHO. Civilization 7 is great and the devs have been giving us all this expansion content all this time since its launch. I appreciate it.

 

[Disgustipated]

It's a decent game. But I'm a civ fanatic, so I may be biased. The game is just weird. I don't know how else to describe it. If you have hard rules about what a civ game should be, then you may want to pass on this. But if you have an open mind, and can spare the change, go ahead. But I'm not going to say it doesn't have problems. The civ identity problem is the biggest issue. I often find myself not even caring that much which civ I choose into the next age. And this is a problem. I should really identify with my civ, and I don't. And I don't think there's any way to fix this. Civ switching is dumb, there's no other way to describe it. It doesn't break the game for me, I'm actually playing right now. But it's dumb. Civ 6 was far superior in this regard. Antiquity age is top notch I will say. The pacing seems just about right there. Modern age is the worst. Especially since it's a bit slow on my computer, it wasn't that slow upon release, so I don't know why it's slower now than 11 months ago. But I will say pacing issues are an issue in later ages. Something just seems off. I can't describe it. But the game can be fun if you give it a chance to be. Just don't expect too much.