Tag: games

Civilization VII is not a great game

It has been some time since the release of Civilization VII on February 11th, 2025. However, it is clear that time has moved on and the game is languishing almost like a middle child between Civ 6 and Civ 5. The idea that Civ 5 is within striking distance of Civilization VII on Steam player’s count, shows that a game from the early 2010s is showing its staying power with the fanbase in Civilization.

However, there is always need for corporations to put out feelers in order to get people’s interest, even when it is clear that the game is not up to par. Firaxis Games seems to have put little effort into responding to the community, relying on “journalists” to write up sycophantic articles. Especially in the beginning of the games release, many journalists were trying to play nice with the Firaxis Games, so they can get exclusive insights which would help boost their video channels as well as their websites.

However, since the release of the game, there has been very little written about Civilization VII. Even on YouTube, hardly any of the influencers are caring about it. Even the release of the newest path, 1.1.0 was not enough to bring players back into the game.

The game is currently not making splash on Steam.

While Steam does not represent every player who bought the game, Civilization VII is trailing Civilization VI by many thousands of players. No matter what the devs are saying about the game, the game is not selling well in comparison to Civilization VI, when it was released in October 2016.

Civilization VII is a game that is seeking an audience. What is that audience? Civilization VII is made for casual fans who do not want any micro. It also takes ideas from Humankind which were better implemented in that game. I think that the team who made this game were just throwing ideas together, without much consideration for whether they would be part of a coherent whole.

Civilization VI will remain the most popular game for many years to come. Unless Firaxis makes a Stellaris-style change to the gameplay, it is unlikely that any DLCs or expansions will revive this game.

Civilization VI was more popular at the same time in comparison to Civilization VII. This is a clear sign that Civilization VII does not have the staying power of previous games in the series.

Civilization 7 is the worst game in the series.

Civilization 7 is the worst game in the series. There are some who want to say that it has new ideas and not recycled ideas. I am guessing these are casual gamers or people who are easily swayed by marketing because this is basically SimCity Societies from 2007 in a Civ Game.

The issue is that the players who played the older games before Civ V have been seeing the changes and that it is becoming very much like Angry Birds and other forgotten mobile games, just a brand to put on mediocre gameplay and hide it with marketing.

The UI is terrible and when compared to Civ 1, it shows the generational changes and the maliase we are currently in this culture.

The Civ switching was a concern of mine earlier on and I see that Fraxis was lazy and put in a bunch of leaders who are not leaders but Great People.

The game does not have England in the game but hides behind a DLC and puts in a person, Ada Lovelace, who was not a political leader, phlisophical, or spiritual leader in any sense. The leader of England should be a King or Prime Minister. I would recommend King Charles II of the Restoration Era.

The Shawnee were put in the game for politics and yet Confucius can rule them. Do not use the CIV has never been about history. It has a tech tree which contains many of the most important technologies in human history. This is not a very good argument to using here.

The crisis system is lazy and does not provide context for what is happening. Having every Civ move into the same age is silly and makes the game too easy. There needs to be consquences to not being able to catch up in tech or economics. Having a reset does not make the game challenging. The Civ Switching doesn’t even stop the snowballing that they say they wanted to not have.

It is clear that the game has increasingly become attached to politics in America more and not just a game about history.

The map generation is terrible and worse than 20 year old games.

The positive reviews are people who generally enjoy simpler, easier games. While Microsoft is no saint of a company, they have made AOE 4 into a game that appeals to casuals and power users. They even encourage people to improve their tactics while also being a great platform for teaching history about multiple cultures, without being myopic about it.

Civilization 7 is the worst in the series. Civilization V was a strange experiment on launch but they did not railroad the player into 3 mini games.

Starfield Shattered Space Releases and getting back into the game.

Screenshot of the capital of the United Colonies, New Atlantis, on the planet Jemison.
A screenshot of New Atlantis, taken on the outskirts of the city.

The expansion for Starfield has just been put out into the gaming wilds and it is great to see Bethesda is still on trying to make this game great. While Starfield has suffered issues of reception among gamers, there is a base of gamers who still support the game and enjoy it. While many point to Baldur’s Gate 3 as a masterpiece and that Starfield was essentially a sign of Bethesda’s inability to innovate, these two games are not the same. Baldur’s Gate 3 was the sequel for a game that game came out 23 years before. Starfield on the other hand was a new IP and was creating its own style, Nasapunk and wasn’t trying to ride on the branding of another game. This isn’t to say that Baldur’s Gate 3 has been an inspirational game, but it is game that is really emphasizing its earlier aspects rather than creating something new. Starfield is attempting to be a foundation in the next Elder Scrolls game and I think it has many great ideas within.

Starfield: Shattered Space will greatly enhance the game and I believe that the story within Starfield still has much more to offer to players. I have started playing the game again and it looks like visiting House Varun’s planet is going to be a treat.