Less Than Half of Civilization VII's Players On Steam Are Happy With The Game

After waiting more than eight years, the latest installment of the Civilization franchise is finally around the corner. Although there are a few days until the global release on February 11, early access has been unlocked for those who pre-ordered the Founders Edition.

But the reception is not that pleasant, as the Steam review shows that, at the time of writing this article, only 47% of around 5k players gave this game a positive review — that’s less than half. 

The main complaint is quite easy to see - the UI design feels incomplete or unfinished. One player named sol puts it directly: “The UI is abysmal and seems to have been designed by grey aliens or some other soulless being.” Another reviewer shared the same feeling, calling the current game “bare bones” and needs more time to add basic features.

The developer Firaxis Games has noticed such universal feedback. In the letter to the community, they’ve shared three key areas to be worked on, with the top priority being “UI Improvements,” including ‘making UI interactions more intuitive, improving map readability, fixing areas of polish like formatting, and more.” Besides this, they’ll also implement features requested by the community, such as adding teams to multiplayer games, offering a wider variety of map types, enabling city and religion names to be customized, etc. Patch 1.1.0, which brings quality-of-life improvements, will be dropped in March. 

While players don't like the UI design, and some also mention that the game crashes frequently, the newly added mechanics and features do bring a fresh gameplay experience for the players. It looks possible that the review line will move upward once the blatant issues are corrected. 

If you missed the gameplay trailer for Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, you can watch it below: