All I’ll say is if seasoned Civ veterans are starting the game and dropping it in a matter of hours, that’s pretty damning in my view.
You can say that you can’t judge a game like this after a few hours and in principle, I agree. But a lot of these negative reviews will be from users who have put 500+ hours into every Civ game that came before.
They know how this shit worked with previous entries and still chose to bounce.
I’ve not put loads of time into VII. I don’t particularly want to either. That’s because it sucks and I have better things to do with my time. And my dislike of it goes past the UI, which is only surface level terrible. My main gripe is the game feels soulless, like everything that made Civ games engaging and fun has been stripped out.
All the wonderful, emergent storytelling? Gone.
Leaders with personality tied to their Civ’s AI and gameplay style? Gone.
Building an empire to last the test of time? This game has made a joke of it.
Civ has always been a game about “number go up” in some fashion, but it always found fun ways to communicate/convey that. Civ VII is just a calculator that makes things on a map happen, and to hide the fact that the game has no personality it has a shitty UI that makes the under-the-hood stuff invisible.
When they fix the UI, the ugly truth of what this game is will be laid bare.
So in my view, a top to bottom remake is the only way to fix this. That’s why I think they’ll pivot to VIII more quickly. Maybe 18 months is a bit hyperbolic, but do I see Civ fans putting up with this for the next decade? Probably not.
