Civilization 7 Steam reviews hit new low, despite Firaxis' best efforts

Perhaps Civilization 7 is fundamentally broken. Firaxis can change the UI, rebalance the leaders, add new settings and game modes for multiplayer, and address the numerous other complaints players have made about the 4X sequel, but the Ages system is inextricable; it's the core of the game, and people, seemingly, just don't like it. A number of big updates have been released for Civ 7, but the prevailing sentiment, at least on Steam, is only growing more negative. With rivals like Stellaris, Ara History Untold, and Age of Empires finding various successes, Civilization 7's all-important user rating has just hit a new, inglorious low.

The Ages system is designed to address three central problems in Civilization and the broader 4X game formula. First, it cuts back on micromanagement. By clearing the map of extraneous units every time you advance to a new era, Civilization 7 makes an attempt to streamline the endgame, where, every turn, you'd normally have to cycle through all of your soldiers, planes, boats, and tanks and order them to wait. Second, the Ages system, on paper at least, allows you to be more flexible. Thanks to the various hard and soft resets that occur at the start of each new Age, you don't necessarily have to choose a victory type and then stick to it from your first turn to your last.

And finally, Ages are a way to experiment with – and inject some fresh energy into – the Civilization series wholesale. Firaxis has been making these games for 34 years. Rather than tweak Civ incrementally, I can empathize with the impulse to reinvent it completely. Unfortunately, despite a surprise update on Tuesday May 27, alongside various other patches and fixes, the monolithic strategy game is still sliding down the Steam score scale.

In the past seven days, Civilization 7's Steam rating based on recent reviews – that is, reviews posted by users during the last 30 days only – has dropped, for the first time, to 'mostly negative'. 1,314 player reviews have been submitted over the past month; only 38% of those are positive. While Civ 7's overall rating is still 'mixed,' it seems that the successive updates have so far failed to win players back over.

"The Ages system is garbage," one player writes on Steam. "No amount of UI updates, quality-of-life updates, or minor patches will fix that."

"I tried to enjoy this game," another player says. "It railroads you the entire time and just doesn't feel like a Civ game with the Age resets. I get that they [Firaxis] wanted people to finish games, but now I find myself just doing a single Age and it's the same in the end. Pretty bad. Just go play Civ 6 or 5."

According to Steam DB, in the past 24 hours, the highest number of simultaneous players that Civilization 7 has attracted is 11,707. Civilization 6 has reached a concurrent user peak of 47,484, while Civilization has hit 19,157. Excluding DLC and games that do not have enough reviews to be assigned a rating, Civilization 7 is currently the lowest-scored Firaxis title on Steam.

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