The launch of a new Civ game is always messy. Long-time fans grapple with new changes to a beloved and complex strategy series, alongside the usual flood of initial complaints that greet any big new PC release, from performance problems to usability issues. And then a few months (or years) later, everyone is like, okay actually this is great now. But Civilization 7 seems off to a particularly rough start, compounded by first impressions coming largely from players who had to pay $100 to get early access through a Deluxe Edition.
With almost a decade between Civ 6 and Civ 7, which launches in full on February 11 across PC and console, there’s a lot of excitement and expectation riding on the 4X strategy sequel. And a lot of the new features, from streamlined resource management and societal development to crisis events and being able to mix-and-match leaders and civilizations, are all being received pretty well so far. Civ 7 isn’t a bad game. At its core, it might even be a great one. But there’s a lot of surface level stuff getting in the way.
Current Steam reviews for the game are “mixed,” with less than 47 percent being positive at the time of writing. Yikes. Many point to a general feeling that the game is “unfinished” and not ready for primetime, with the UI being the biggest issue. While not as critical in a shooter or action adventure, poor menu layout, navigation, and how information is conveyed in a dense strategy game like Civ can be a death sentence.
A mega thread on Reddit has been compiling a bunch of things players are frustrated with, from city icons blocking unit icons to some menus being full of empty space while others lack important information or generally look unpolished. “I’ll have to be honest here. The UI in civ 6 is better,” wrote user Lammet_AOE4. “A 9 year old game manages to get a better UI over this brand new game.” Some players think part of the problem is the game being designed with more of a console focus than its predecessor, leading toward suboptimal UI design choices for PC players.
While the Civ 7 Steam page is awash in negative reviews, most are from devoted fans who don’t seem to take any pleasure in pillorying the latest entry in their favorite franchise. “I’ve been playing Civ for about 20 years, it was one of the first video games I was ever exposed to,” reads one of the top ranked reviews. “There is SOMETHING here. The environments look great, the game feels less cartoonish like Civ VI attempted to be, and there are exciting mechanics and ideas here worth exploring in the long-term. But calling this ‘unfinished’ is generous.”
Others have been much less generous. “A couple minutes in and it’s just… so blatantly unfinished, especially by Civ standards,” another fan wrote. “The UI is total slop, everything looks super janky, the resource icons are like stock images from 1998.” A third wrote, “I actually love a lot of things about this game but it’s a pile of SLOP, clean it up, ya’ll.” Civ 7 currently sits at an 81 on Metacritic, which while generally positive, is the lowest for the series in some time.
The developers at Firaxis have been paying attention and responded to the complaints in a blog post on Thursday. “Over the last few days, the team has been poring over your feedback, including our most recent Steam Reviews during the Early Access period,” the studio wrote. “As stewards of the Civilization franchise, we hold ourselves to a high standard and always strive to create the best game possible. Civ would not have come this far without you, and your opinions matter greatly to us.”
The team outlined key areas it’s looking to improve, including UI, a March quality-of-life update, and player-requested features like more multiplayer options and map variety. “Our top priority is improving the UI,” the update from Firaxis reads. “We need some time to digest all of your feedback, but some areas that we’re already looking into include making UI interactions more intuitive, improving map readability, fixing areas of polish like formatting, and more. We’re committed to getting this right, and will share more details as soon as we can.”
So far at least, Firaxis’ parent company, Take-Two, doesn’t seem bothered about the initial negativity from the first wave of fans, although it knows there’s work to do. “We think that as people play the game longer, the sentiment improves because with every launch of a new Civ, the team pushes the envelope a little bit and our legacy Civ audience is a little bit nervous about what they initially see and then they realize, wow, this is actually really incredible, and they dive in,” CEO Strauss Zelnick told IGN this week. “We know we have a couple of issues. We have a bit of an issue with the UI, for example. We’ll address that. So I wouldn’t say the early access release is perfect in every way.”
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