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Civilization 7 is out now for those willing to pay at least $100 for the Deluxe Edition, and these most hardcore of fans have already dropped thousands of reviews on Steam. So far, those reviews are just 44% positive, and the biggest pain point seems to be the long-awaited 4X game's bad UI.
Yes, there are also complaints about features and gameplay system changes - the exact same kinds of things fans get upset about with every new entry in the Civ series. But I'm not sure I've ever seen a AAA game get beaten down so vociferously and angrily for poor user interface design.
The issues with the UI won't be immediately apparent if you just spend a few seconds looking at screenshots, but this appears to be a death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation. Necessary information is difficult to access. Menu buttons are placed in awkward locations. There's not enough good feedback when you're making a selection. Crucial readouts sometimes overlap each other. There aren't as many hotkeys as there used to be. Text is sometimes misaligned. The lines through the tech tree jut out at awkward angles. The list goes on and on and on, so say thousands of players.
@CivGame This is very confusing. Harriet pops up with this denounce it says "the other leader" Who does she want me to denounce? I thought it wanted me to denounce her but if I click on reject Harriet acts miffed?!? #Civ7 pic.twitter.com/ll2AeWAe9HFebruary 6, 2025
This tweet, which drew an explanatory response from the devs on Twitter, might be one of the more egregious examples I've seen. "Denounce: accept or reject?" You can certainly draw some context clues from the numbers to guess what this does in-game, but that's a nonsense question that's impossible to parse at a glance. Apparently, in this situation the player is being denounced, but can choose to reject that action. Even in Civ, where the machinations of global politics are being abstracted into a set of numbers, it'd be nice to have a more concrete sense of what's happening.
Civilization 7 currently has 3,231 reviews on Steam, and even many of the positive reviews note that while the core game might be enjoyable, the interface is a capital-P Problem. The devs at Firaxis have directly responded to some of those reviews, noting that "we are aware of and looking into feedback on the game's UI."
Here's hoping that if the devs have fixes in mind they come in soon, so we can start judging the game on its strategic merits. In our Civilization 7 review, Andy notes that "though some tweaks around diplomacy and Ages fall short, a host of small reinventions – along with Firaxis' biggest gamble in tackling the tedium of long-running campaigns – pays off superbly."
