Recent reviews by HEAD ON, HARD ON

I am coming back to give this game a review after sinking thousands of hours over into both Civ 4 and Civ 5 and on the launch day of Civ 7. Having played Civ 7 for a few hours now, I can say that that those of us who truly loved and still love Civ 5 judged Civ 6 too harshly when it released. It changed some things that people liked, but I still found many of its new features truly enjoyable on launch. I had fun. I still preferred 5, but in 6 the art, the music, the innovations to unrest, espionage, religion, and--to a lesser extent--city development were all excellent. Heroes are cool. The roster is cool. Civ 7 has little that is as redeeming in it at launch and I wholeheartedly recommend 6 instead.

TLDR: Why wouldn't I play Civ 6 or Civ 5 instead?
I'm going to keep playing to see how a few campaigns play out, but I don't recommend this game at the moment and I think the complaints about the UI are overblown; there are more serious issues.

Things I like:
• the fundamental shift to creating legacies during each age is really cool. A problem with Civ that I have is that when it gets to the end-game people generally find themselves running out of things to do and wanting to automate a lot because it feels like a forgone conclusion when you're well ahead. I don't really feel like that's a thing here since each age is sectioned off.

• descendant of Civ 5's hexagonal gameplay so this is automatically in one of the top 3 civ games for me and beats out 1-4 easily

• Urban/rural and city/town distinction is a nice innovation and I think it's an improvement on Civ 6's districts system.

• probably best diplomacy so far. I like influence points! Diplomacy feels like a real thing rather than a gimmicky thing you use to screw over Deity AI for money.

• finally get to see own leader in diplomacy screens, best diplomacy screens so far.

• City expansion is clearly a lot more volitional now and it's tied into building things without workers. Might be a negative depending on how you view the RTS-style micro involved in worker management, but I like it.

Whatever:
• Army stacking is... okay? But it feels like we're regressing a bit back to Civ 4. Not a big fan.


Things I really do not like:
• Again, yes the menu is too big. That's not the main issue.

• While the diplomacy menus ARE the best they've ever been, they felt the need to dampen this aspect of the game by... completely cutting out voice acting when foreign leaders make an offer? Why? And both leaders just do weird "hhmmpf" grunts when they agree to a deal. WHO DOES THAT?

• No autoexplore on units. WHY?

• I can't find quick movement and quick combat seems to be a default now. Now idea why we don't have the choice.

• Seemingly no infographic charts during gameplay?

• Even worse, seemingly no MAP types?? I have found no way to change tile views to view religious influence, plague views, industrialization, etc.

• City-states/Barbs just DISAPPEAR in the age of exploration????????? IT'S WEIRD

• The Medieval and Industrial ages, which I thought were pretty distinct in other games, are just gone in this one for no apparent reason.

• Talking to Napoleon and seeing him as leader of the Mississippi instead of France is almost too blasphemous to suspend disbelief and it really takes me out of the game. Why whitewash cool native civs with the French?? Why Frenchwash cool other civs with the French??

• Pantheons being a really irrelevant mechanic in the ancient age really sucks. You've removed a core gameplay innovation from Civ 6 and Civ 5. This isn't revolutionary, this is regressive.

• Probably my biggest objection to this game: faith is just GONE and religion is rolled into the Civics tree. It's a watered down supplement to happiness and culture. In Civ 5 it was a cool alternative to straight up production and had lots of complexity to it, including the strength of religious pressure and unique units like prophets and inquisitors. In Civ 6, this was expanded to full on religious combat with competing civilizations and had a unique victory condition. This is *ALL GONE.* There's just missionaries. I hate this.

• Speaking of things I hate: "Spread Religion cannot be used on Holy Cities." Why is this a thing? So if someone is being an annoying missionary spammer I have no religious recourse to deal with them, I have to go to war. I have no idea why people are saying Civ 7 is more complex; it's really not. This is just taking choices away.

• Happiness is orange instead of yellow and it's extremely close to the slightly redder orange unhappiness. No idea why they got rid of the yellow/red split in favor of orange/orange but it's very hard to see which is which.

An actual hidden gem! While it does suck that this game will likely never get a sequel, it is very replayable and I see myself playing it years from now. Seriously, gratuitous gunship helicopters, some of the best turn-based combat I've ever played, hot steamy geriatric lesbian romance, what DOESN'T this game have? I know it's a bold claim to make right after Marvel Rivals and the re-released Marvel vs. Capcom 1 & 2 have all made a splash, but this is genuinely the best Marvel game I have ever played. Most of the original team is here with Blade, Morbius, Strange, and Ghost Rider (albeit as Robbie!) and the newer additions all fit really nicely. The teambuilding narrative that plays out between missions is fantastic worldbuilding. The roster is fantastic.

Does this reuse drawn assets from the first game? Yes. Do I mind? No, not really. I actually like that it retains much of the same 'vibe.' To be clear: there are less branching paths here than in the first game. There's only one protagonist and much of her story is already written for you. I personally liked the protagonist and the story quite a bit. It actually made me a little homesick for New York, so I can't not recommend it at this point.

it's like burnout but with smaller cars

Let me straightforward: This game is probably the best sci-fi RPG I've played and it's inspired me to take a look at the wider Cyberpunk tabletop setting.

I picked up this game on sale. I decided to hold off for so long because of the negative press around the game earlier on in its life, but was pleasantly surprised to see that update 2.2. launched just a day after I had started playing (four years after its release!). I've already poured 20 hours into this game in under a week thanks to my Winter vacation and the worldbuilding is so damn immersive. I started out the game expecting a typical punk environment where all the characters are unlikable at best and poorly-written at worst. And while the world is DEFINITELY a punk world, the writing is SO good at humanizing the problems of a corporate and late-stage capitalist dystopia that I even ended up loving some of the prototypical villains of the setting, even the corpos and cops.

'The Hunt' is such a fun and disturbing buddy cop mission and actually presented me with choices that caused me to pause. The cyberpsychosis missions feel ripped right out of Ghost in the Shell's police investigations. The corpos like Meredith are cool. I like many of the punks. Claire, Jamie, and Panam are memorable characters that I love. The only thing on my wishlist that this game lacks is multiplayer, but I suppose there's mods for that.

where is druid...

game of the year material, don't you dare f this up NetEase, my boy iron fist deserves this after that netflix show. ALSO PLS ADD DANNY RAND

This game is, for better or worse, the best port of DoA we have on PC and probably the best online experience we have in the series outside of DoA 2 on less officially sanctioned platforms. 5 has the superior gameplay to be sure, but the matchmaking on DoA 5 is awful and it's so hard to get matches sometimes. Would love a larger playerbase to return someday for 6, it's worth picking up most of the roster on sale!

just got this game, logged on and got my butt kicked by a mouse lady. also got a lot of free in-game currency. honestly a win all around