Civilization VII reviews well but gets a kicking on Steam – who would have thought it?

While most of the world awaits the launch of Civ 7 those that ponied up for early access now have their downloads downloaded and many are immediately heading to the Steam Reviews section express their displeasure.

Now, Steam reviews are a troubled land at the best of time and my least favourite thing in the gaming world is review bombing and this is where that takes place. Rolling stones gather no moss and once a pile-on starts many legitimate points get washed over in a tide of “gamurrr” nonsense, so what are the early issues Civilization VII is facing and let’s caveat that the current Mixed Steam rating contrasts somewhat with the 81 on Metacritic from reviews outlets. So what is getting the goat of the players that the reviewers missed?

UI that’s what, or seemingly so anyway. Each new Civ game is like a sequel to your favorite movie. You have never come out of the theater knowing that from two minutes in, er Oppenheimer 2 The Revenge was going to be better than the first one. It doesn’t even have Cillian Murphy in it. The point being, things you don’t like are instantly more noticeable and you start making comparisons with games that have been polished over a decade, not necessarily remembering what they were like on launch – cue No Man’s Sky.

But many are dislike the look for the graphical interface for sure:

“The UI looks and feels like it was created in the alpha stage of development and was never refined / improved. The game’s new mechanics are pretty interesting but having to slog through this terrible interface makes it not worth the effort. Needs a few more months of refinement for the game to be enjoyable”

“Bare bones shouldn’t have been released in its current form needed more time to add basic features, ESPECIALLY for this egregious price.”

“A couple minutes in and it’s just… so blatantly unfinished, especially by Civ standards. The UI is total slop, everything looks super janky, the resource icons are like stock images from 1998. There is no discernible aspect of care put into the game, and that’s something I never expected from Firaxis. Comparing this unfinished mess to the Civ VI release is night and day. Civ VII needs a complete visual overhaul of the UI at minimum to even begin to warrant the atrocious $70 price tag. Sid Meier personally spit in my mouth and spanked my bottom with this game’s release and I did not consent.”

“My opinions are quite mixed atm. However for £120 its not good enough…
– Health bars don’t scale correctly and look out of place.
– Fog or war skin essentially does nothing, the black tiles are very depressing (bring back the beautiful clouds they cant be topped).
– UI and game play seem very janky on desktop, seems suited to console or mobile.
-No quick movement and combat.
– Annoying delays when using much of the UI.
– Very lacking information displayed, when attacking no info about the strength comparison and whatnot.”

The thing is a lot of the reviews also point to interesting mechanics and good core gameplay so its not totally bad news, but there are definitely issues with how the UI is performing. While bars and the like not scaling is something that will be patched up quickly I’m sure, people have paid a lot of cash to play this early, not beta test it for Firaxis.

The issue here us that in the cash-grab that is making players pay more for early access, when it goes wrong and people start slating the game, it can put off people who were going to buy it when it came out. I’m sure boardrooms sums are done somewhere that negates this, but the usual way this goes is a few months down the line we have apologetic studios and layoffs. Early access issues and rushed finishes have not, as yet in my memory, ever been mentioned in those press releases we all love so much.

I’m truly hoping this will not become another Cities Skylines 2 debacle as I have a large portion of gaming year already reserved to play it properly.

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