Recent reviews by Peppsen

Almost dangerously good. If you like football and strategy games this is a freaking gem.

TLDR - it's good, not great. I cannot recommend in this state and at this price. UI & bugs sometimes make me want to rage quit. If you REALLY want to play CIV, play 5 or maybe 6. This can be better in the future though, wait a couple of months/years for updates and a sale. I'll update this if the free updates fix the UI and other bugs.


IT'S CIV - first of all, in general it does feel like CIV. The identity is still there with the added "one more turn" feeling when playing the game. It's fun!

AGES - I like how the ages feel really different from each other and it actually made me want to finish a game more than previous entries, note I have only played CIV 5 & CIV 6. The later ages are unfortunately not as good as the first age but I think it's partly because of other issues. See negatives.

INDEPENDENT PEOPLES - I like how they combined city-states and barbarians into one type. I think it works really well in the antiquity age. My only issue with it so far is that new independent people respawn every age and they are way too weak when they spawn, usually what happens is they get murdered instantly.

CITY GROWTH - I really like the way cities grow and are improved with growth instead of workers/builders. It works quite well and there are some neat strategies of replacing rural with urban later in the game.

COMMANDERS - commanders are a nice addition which can really smooth out warfare and does remove some micromanagement in the late game. It does take some time to get used to and the UI does hold it back a bit.

There are other small improvements here and there as well, like resources, cities/towns and scouts.
Also the game is stable for what it's worth, I haven't crashed :)


UI - this is by far the biggest issue with the game at this time and why I cannot recommend the game in its state. Not only does it look unfinished but it also has a bunch of design issues and bugs. I encountered multiple bugs with the UI; yields not updating, wrong screen getting stuck, health bars stuck, incorrect color, untranslated code etc.

Yields not updating is by far the most frustrating part when playing. An example of this would be changing a town focus and the UI not updating until you exit and then enter the town again, sometimes only after changing turn. There are many cases of this where the UI doesn't update properly and it can be extremely frustrating.

Another big issue is readability - hard to see where units are, especially when units are on top of each other. Sometimes one UI element is blocking another. It can also be difficult to understand which units you are at war with versus friendly units, especially when fighting other civs.

UI/UX is so incredibly important in a strategy game and the fact it both looks and feels bad is extremely disappointing. CIV 7 is a major step backwards in UI/UX. If this was a new title I wouldn't be as harsh, but it's just so much worse than previous CIVs. How is it this much worse than CIV 6!? I just don't understand what happned here..

AI - the AI is just as bad as other entries in the franchise so it's not really a surprise.

AI still do not focus targets - this is something I have seen implemented in Old World and it is a shame CIV has not added this. AI does not focus weak targets or coordinate attacks on one target.

AI does not know how to use commanders - it's nice that commanders have been added but the AI does not understand how to use them properly and often leave the commanders unprotected.

AI will give away cities in peace deals for no reason - this should probably be easy to patch, but the willingness for AIs to give away cities in peace deals is absurd. I can start a war, DO NOTHING!!! and then ask for a city in a peace deal.

AI will over forward settle - since there is no loyalty like there was in CIV 6, AI can now forward settle like crazy. Sometimes miles away from their other cities right next to another civ and then lose that city immediately because they have no chance of protecting it.

RELIGION - religion is quite underwhelming in my opinion. It plays a minor role in the exploration age and then just completely disappears in the modern age.

SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT - at this time I don't feel like the leaders or civilizations are that different. I was able to play the game almost the same exact way no matter which civ or leader I chose with only minor tweaks. The separation of leader from civilization makes them less unique and to me the game loses replayability because of this. The bonuses aren't strong enough for it to matter. I will possibly change my mind about this after more hours but I don't really want to play more with this UI..

BUGS - There are still a handful of bugs in the game that can frustrate gameplay, mostly UI related bugs but also other ones. Fortunately I haven't encountered any game breaking bugs but I have reloaded a couple of times due to annoying bugs. To compare, CIV 6 had fewer bugs on launch.

I feel more strongly about the negatives than the positives which causes the negative review. I do enjoy the game but I often stopped to laugh at the state of the UI or other issues in the game and just thought.. this is not good enough.. and at this price there shouldn't be these frustration moments. The game clearly isn't finished.

Good strategic card game to play with 3-4 friends. Best experience with 3 players.

+ Quick to setup.
+ Different ways to win the game, you can focus on different combos with different corporations each game. Nice replayability.
+ Very fun with 3 players because it feels quite balanced and we usually have a close contest.
+ Only one of your friends needs to own the DLCs to play with them.
+ Music is nice.

- A few bugs, including some UI glitches and the game getting stuck and having to reload.
- I can imagine that online multiplayer could be a problem with some of the bugs. If you are playing with friends and speaking in voice chat, it's not a big issue though.
- You take your turn in order and there isn't much to do while you wait, this can sometimes be a bit boring, which is one reason playing with more than 3 players isn't ideal.
- Not as much fun in singleplayer, AI is not great.

I recommend this game highly if you have a couple of friends to play with, if not.. maybe wait for a sale or get it in a bundle.

One of the best grand strategy games, if not THE best.
There are so many ways to play and so many countries to play as!
I've played 2000 hours of this game and there is still some features I haven't really explored yet.

A few negatives in an almost perfect game:
- The learning experience might sometimes be frustrating since some mechanics and features can be hard to understand, e.g. fort zone of control.
- Late game is usually quite boring in singleplayer at least, because you're usually the strongest nation 100-200 years before the game technically ends and world conquest is really tedious and in my opinion not that fun.

But if you can get past the annoying learning part of the game *and skip late game (maybe stop playing around 1700)* then this game is freaking amazing!

*I really don't like late game, I haven't heard anyone that does. But you might, so do try it.

Great game, a ton of ways to play

Best colony manager on the market, although there aren't that many out there. It's still a solid game with many ways to play and with seemingly endless outcomes. If you somehow get tired of the base game, there are a great number of mods to explore.

I don't really want to review a game I basically haven't even tried yet, but...
I can't load the game somehow and I have tried every solution posted on the forums. Can't recommend a game that's literally unplayable, I will update if it changes.

Edit: 5 months later and the game is still unplayable for me, I can't believe it. They keep telling me it's something wrong with my computer. I have 176 games, this is the only one I haven't been able to play

It has its flaws and so on but Total War is overall the best strategy game out there!