Sid Meier's Civilization VII is finally out today on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC as both long-time fans of the 4X strategy series and newcomers are hopping into the latest experience from Firaxis Games and 2K. It's been a few years since I've been completely immersed in a Civ game, to be honest; my last experience was with Civilization V several years ago, and only briefly played Civilization VI. So Civilization VII was the perfect jumping-in point for someone who had no idea what to expect from its new features and mechanics. Thankfully, it's all pretty awesome so far.

Upon booting up Civilization VII, the changes are immediately apparent. Instead of starting in the early ages and slowly rolling over your progress into new ages, Civilization VII instead allows players to pick from three distinct ages: Antiquity Age, Exploration Age and Modern Age. Each age can be played in isolation and completed without necessarily rolling into a new age, making games feel much quicker than ever before.



This is perfect for someone like me who doesn't have much time anymore to invest hundreds of hours into a single Civ game, and I'm sure the same can be said for others who will appreciate the faster pacing of campaigns in the latest entry. After selecting your leader - which, at launch, features a diverse range of options from Confucius to Benjamin Franklin - and an appropriate civilization that best harnesses your leader's capabilities, you can then tweak the game's settings even further, to my surprise.

After picking Machiavelli (because why not? And also, he has tons of bonuses to currency skills), I was allowed to tinker with what kind of game I wanted to create, dictating the pacing, difficulty and even speed/rate in which things happen. Now, instead of waiting multiple turns to establish farms, grow crops, create scouts or amass a powerful army, I could do so in just one or two turns, or instantly if I wanted a really fast in-and-out type of experience. I'm grateful that these options were there because it adds an incredible amount of replay value to Civilization VII, maybe moreso than any other prior entry.



I opted to go for the default settings for most options to see how well everything was scaled for a standard game in Civilization VII. For the most part, it seems to be slightly faster than your usual Civ campaign. Sure, the turn-based system only allows for so many things to happen per round (and expanding your civilization with farms, new buildings and other resources can take several turns), but I was surprised at how quickly things like bartering, forming alliances and quickly escalating conflicts to war happened in the span of two hours.

This is all thanks to the excellent new Influence system where you steadily gain Influence points to use in dialogue, engaging NPCs and other leaders, also extending to other actions in-game. There are three options to select during interactions with leaders: one that costs a lot of Influence points but yields you to the most rewards, one that's neutral and doesn't cost Influence but you get less rewards, and a third which is basically your good old "screw you" option that also costs Influence but not as much as keeping the peace. Machiavelli, as you can imagine, had a pretty good standing with the third option as economic power is formidable (and fiendishly evil) in Civilization VII.

The one thing I have to get used to is the new UI. Firaxis Games have somewhat streamlined the user interface to be a lot simpler and less complex to navigate while still retaining the heart and soul of the admittedly complex Civ games. It was a tricky balancing act but I think they pulled it off here. The UI is fantastic, but playing on console (as of writing, I'm playing on Xbox Series S) takes some getting used to. I'm still not entirely confident that I can navigate the UI as successfully as I would on PC, though I really appreciate the effort from the developers here to make it far more compatible and easier to play on consoles than ever before.



The biggest surprise in Civilization VII for me is how welcoming everything feels without really sacrificing any of the awesome, deep mechanics that veteran players will find appealing. You can literally make the game as simple and breezy as you want, but if you want to dig deeper into the trenches, crunch numbers and values, and spend a very long campaign dominating other civilizations in large-scaled conflicts, then you can do that too. The art style and animation is really appealing too; character models look fantastic in that cartoon-ish way that only Civ can pull off.

So how did my first game go? As you can imagine, a rusty player like me didn't have a very smooth time. My first challenge was just overcoming the new UI and getting used to the layout. Then it came to memorising the various strengths and weaknesses of my chosen leader, and how best to utilise his economic advantages to get as much money as I could. Of course, I then had to expand my civilization, make allies with neighbouring kingdoms, and barter resources. By the end, I was sending out scouts to unlock the entire map, making friends and enemies with every second leader, and failing to acknowledge that I didn't have the military strength needed to really fend off invaders (but had plenty of Influence to at least talk my way out of some conflicts). So, basically it's a Civilization game and fans will probably be quite happy with how it turned out.

In reality, my very first outing had me land in a strange archipelago, scout out new land, and run into a wandering army, only to confidently send out my miniscule selection of troops to get taught the most important lesson of the game: it's probably not a good idea to rush things.

Dug into a lot of #Civilization7 these past few weeks, so I thought I'd make a quick cut of my very first experience of the game where I was swiftly taught two important lessons: pay attention and be smarter. Not very Machiavellian of me. pic.twitter.com/hRYVq8gaiw

— Sam Aberdeen (@SamAberdeen1) March 5, 2025

As I continue to dig into Civilization VII, I'll be exploring the game's other features like multiplayer, accessibility and trying to determine just how welcoming it is for new players. So far, this is the most fun I've had with a Civ game in a decade (and probably ever). I'll still have to get used to the new additions and changes to the formula but for the most part, it's great to have a new entry in the series that dares to take some bold leaps and gear itself towards newcomers to the franchise.

Thanks to Xbox for the review code