Sid Meier's Civilization® VII

So the actual implementation here is excellent and deserves 5 stars. It’s even better than the Civ 6 port, runs great, looks beautiful, runs just like the PC version with one glaring caveat. It’s locked to an older version. On PC it’s had a major update that significantly improves many game features and UI. Now that I’ve played that version, going back to this one feels like a major downgrade and noticeably less enjoyable. It’s still a great game and I would only ding one star from an otherwise 5 star game and port. However the other significant downside to this is that it’s locked exclusively to Apple Arcade. Civilization 6 is available for direct purchase and so I had bought it outright because really that’s one of the 2 games in arcade that I was actually interested in playing long term. Now that 7 is on iPad I’d like to switch over and I’d love to do the same here and just buy outright to play when I want. Ultimately that exclusivity to a monthly subscription that I only want one game from (I’ve already bought the other 2) is why I took the other star off my rating. When either of these changes I will update my rating. For now I will just cancel arcade and try to play via steam remote play instead.

The immersive complexity is almost too engaging. The game mechanics work quite well with so many potential paths to various kinds of success. The ship bug is quite annoying: one can’t attack a hostile ship except by range weapon, and land forces only take damage. One’s own ship is unable to engage. Please fix! That said, this is a fantastic game, replete with great quotes and historical context. For free?Thanks!

EDIT: They added multiplayer! My first match I played as Confucius against someone from China playing as Ben Franklin. Very cool! Huge shoutout to the developers and teams releasing this. Let’s start off by saying this is a deep game, so it might not be for everyone. I’ve played titles like this before and it still took me a while to get used to all the mechanics of this game. If you put in the time and learn it there is a beautiful complexity and balance of skill and chaos to a standard play-through You can also tweak the settings to be a sandbox, or more brutal. A flaw I found is that the controls can be downright frustrating at times, and in larger games that fact coupled with the scale can feel almost overwhelming (in particular, moving planes from a base onto a carrier can often require you to click again more precisely for no good reason, and a few other minor gripes maybe). That being said, the overall polish and depth here as a free offering for Apple Arcade subscribers rivals some of the best strategy games of all time. Graphics 5/5 Sound 5/5 Controls 3/5 Gameplay 5/5 Overall 7/7 (+2 adjacency bonus from history nerd)