Civilization VII Switch Review

Civilization VII Switch Review
Version Reviewed: Nintendo Switch

I stumbled into the Civilization series late into the modern era with Civ 6 on Switch. I was laid up in bed on New Year’s Eve and spent ushering in 2019 playing as Australia going for a science victory. I was hooked, and despite not knowing how to play, and more often than not losing out to the AI, I persevered to learn all the intricacies of the game, mastering Australia and its economic and production powerhouse. Civilization VII enters a new era yet again, taking all those strategies and builds I spent hundreds of hours perfecting and throws it out the window. What’s it like? Establish your settlement, have just one more turn, and prepare to be diplomatic as we review Civilization VII for Nintendo Switch.

Civilization VII is a 4X strategy game that sees you balance military might, economics, and diplomacy in a turn-based strategy game that lets you play your way. Want to conquer the globe? Sure. Want to do that as Benjamin Franklin? Why not. The Civilization games have always been about the player. You can win without military might too, like hoarding cultural artifacts for a cultural victory or reaching for the stars for a scientific victory. Really, the sky is the limit, and because of that, it’s almost infinitely replayable.

Civilization VII seems to have people divided, however, as Sid Meier lives by “The rule of thirds” meaning one-third stays the same, one-third is improved, and one-third is new, and I’ll try to cover as much of that in this review. The good news is, in my opinion, that wonderfully addictive “just one more turn” style of gameplay remains intact in my opinion, and despite my aversion to change, I do feel like Civilization VII paves the way to be the best Civ yet. It’s a more streamlined approach, forgoing builders to allow you to build your cities and towns and the districts within while keeping adjacency bonuses and adding in certain building combinations for even more yield. Cities can be expanded by using settlers to create towns, which will in turn feed resources into your cities, and eventually, you can convert them to cities, and develop them further.  You can even select town specialities like producing food and coin for your main tow instead of focusing on population growth, or providing additional healing to units as a wartime forward operating base. This change is one of my favourites, giving the player greater control of what goes where and making me feel like I had more ownership over my civilization. Each tile in your city can house 2 improvements, like a bank or a blacksmith, and you can build over them as you evolve your game into the victory you’re chasing.

Speaking of the game evolving, Civilization now only features 3 eras: The Antiquity Age, The Exploration Age, and the Modern Age, each with its own style of building and units. With each change in era, you can shape your civilization by evolving your current race or moving to a new one. I started my first game as the Egyptian leader Hapshepsut, then evolved into a Ming Dynasty style during the Exploration age, while keeping Hapshepsut as my leader. You can earn leadership points that carry across when changing eras and depending on your actions in your era, you may also unlock certain specific races like Siam for building a certain amount of temples. It does mix the gameplay up, but I do feel a bit mixed about this one, as I would have liked an option to keep “fixed” leaders.

There’s also a lot more going on with Civilization VII, with constant dialogue boxes popping up every 10 or so turns getting you to make a decision as a leader, do you tax the baths for some early gold? Or boost your culture by making them free to all? There are so many of these that help shape the game and even turn the tide at times. I also had one that asked a math question which I had to guess. 20 or so turns later, an exhausted mathematician found my answer to be correct, awarding vital science points. Diplomacy also features heavily in Civilization VII with leaders proposing things like joint festivals and open markets which give both participating leaders bonuses. You can also use influence points to get more bonuses or propose your own. Barbarians are also eradicated from Civilization VII, instead giving you independent states that allow you to befriend, and sometimes convince to join your empire, or even let you become suzerain, granting you gameplay bonuses and allowing you to levy militaries by dispensing influence points.

Overall, gameplay seems to flow and engage better, and I found my games (even the ones I lost) to fly by, making me lose track of time and absolutely engrossing me in this fantastic strategy game. This is also largely due to the new graphics engine, which seems to be better optimised on Switch to have a solid performance in the first 2 eras, and a comparable performance with Civ 6 in the late game. There are lots of intricate details on each tile, like a steam crane hauling lumber, or even the pottery kiln firing away and you can zoom right in to see your sprawling city in all its glory. Zooming out sees buildings disappear maintaining performance while you take a look at the bigger picture. Unfortunately, I ran into some issues with scaling when playing in handheld mode, with the UI scaling making text descriptions disappear, making you aimlessly poke around menus hoping to select the right option. These issues mainly affect distributing leadership points, or selecting research and is still playable, but can lead to frustrations. While performance remains steady on handheld, the UI does a lot to hinder your game, and at times when opening up dialogue boxes, can block 60% of your screen. Touch screen is support which can make things easier, but handheld while playable, isn’t the best way to play Civilization VII on Switch, which kind of defeats the purpose of the console at times.

The Switch also has some console-specific bugbears like only being able to select “tiny” or “small maps.” They are still rather large, but as a fan of the huge true start earth map from Civ 6, I could feel the restriction at times. The game also had one or two crashes to the Home screen per game. Usually after an extensive period of time like 4-5 hours straight, and thankfully autosaves do a good job of catching you back up. The lengthy loading screens from Civ 6 also return including a hefty 3-4 minute load time when changing eras, which was also where my game would crash. I also had instances in the late game where the music would suddenly crackle and cut out, most likely due to a memory issue.

This is a shame because once again the Civilization music drives that immersion home. The soundtrack, composed by Geoff Knorr, Roland Rizzo, and Christopher Tin features tribal chants and majestic woodwinds before evolving through the eras to beautiful orchestral scores and brilliant choirs that somehow manage to capture mankind’s savagery and desperation as tanks roll towards a city capital. It’s fantastic in every way, and while I will miss the wonderful Civ 6 rendition of  “Waltzing Matilda” I still can’t help but feel like I’m a part of something greater due to the epic soundtrack. This is accompanied by Gwendoline Christie of Game of Thrones fame lending her voice as the narrator in Leui of Sean Bean, and she does a fantastic job describing wonders and quoting some of history’s greats.

For my conquerers or politicians after accessibility options, I’m pleased to say as you start the game you are prompted with colourblind options as you load in, you can adjust the font scale, and there are subtitles. However, it is very easy to lose units from a visual perspective, as they are sometimes made invisible and represented by a tiny icon on the screen. Handheld once again fares worse, with a much smaller viewport and scaling that doesn’t quite work. Placing city tiles can also be hard to discern, so as always, I recommend further research to see if Civilization VII is for you.

In terms of value, I paid significantly more than retail for early access for this review and I think it was worth every cent. There’s so much gameplay here, there’s still the crazy amount of fun, and despite a few questionable changes, overall I feel like Civilization VII is a fantastic continuation of the series. I think I ended up having close to 600 hours clocked up on Civ 6 on my Switch, and that’s not including my playtime on the Xbox Series X. I feel like with the constant wave of updates coming in the next few months, there’s going to be plenty to do. As always, reviews are subjective so I encourage respectful conversation around it. Do you agree with what I’ve said? Do you love it, hate it, are indifferent? Let me know.

As for me, I’m now at the end of my review for Civilization VII.  I have war weariness, my settlements are in revolt, and my economy has crashed… and I’ve never had so much fun. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just have one more turn…

So, What’s it like? Civilization 7 is like Civ 6, with some well-thought-out changes… and some questionable ones.

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