Sid Meier’s Civilization VII (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, £59.99)

Verdict: Less civilised

Rating:

The launch of a new title in the 34-year-old Civilization series is always quite something. It’s an event. A monument on the landscape of gaming.

But it’s also a kind of diminution.

After years of playing the previous Civilization, and watching it grow with multiple expansions and additional nations and extra modes of play, along comes a sequel that takes much of that away and starts from scratch. Again.

That feeling — of something lost as well as gained — is particularly acute in the case of Civilization VII. More than any other Civ release before, this one had me wishing that they’d just stuck with the previous incarnation.

It’s not that Civ VII is terrible. Its basic gameplay — progressing a civilisation through history at the expense of other, weaker civilisations — remains compelling. 

And its upgraded graphics are beautiful.

There are even some winning innovations, including the way in which history is now split up into three distinct ages, forcing you to adopt a new culture at the passing of each. This shakes up a game that might otherwise have been wearily familiar.

No, it’s more that Civ VII has been simplified to the point of... overcomplexity.

Information about cities and buildings and people that used to be a single mouse-click away has now been hidden in submenus within submenus. It looks cleaner, but it plays much, much messier.

The upshot is that Civ-alike games such as 2021’s Humankind and last year’s Ara: History Untold now seem less like pretenders to the throne, and more like monarchs in waiting.

If Civilization — or history, in fact — has taught us anything, it’s that dynasties fall.