I Played This Once: Civilization VI

I got this game for free, and it wasn't even worth that.

Sid Meier's Civilization series was really the original benchmark for 4X grand-strategy games. The first Civilization came out way back in 1991, when PC gaming was first getting started, and is regarded by many as one of the classics, although it's certainly dated by now. Plus it spawned the famous 'nuclear Gandhi' memes.

But (and this happens to so many sequels, especially as they progress further past iteration after iteration) Civilization VI is just absolutely not a worthwhile successor to its forebears.

It hasn't been all bad. I have heard that Civilization IV was the peak of the series. (I apologize for the roman numerals but that's the game title). I've never played IV, but it's pretty universally well-acclaimed as a very solid game.

But in an era where the 4X game market is really very competitive -- the market obviously doesn't bring in the revenue of triple-A, mainstream releases, but conversely, strategy games don't require nearly as vast infrastructure to produce. In effect, it's easy to make them. And so to rise to the top (or near the top) of the genre, the quality has to be quite good. Why would you play Civ VI if you could play EU4?

Let me backtrack just a bit. In Civilization VI, you pick a real-world nation and lead it from the Stone Age all the way through history into the near future. That is quite a compelling gameplay idea, but the execution is just not there. The turn-based gameplay is boring and clunky, especially when it comes to combat. The hexagonal map is overly simplistic and inhibiting. The way the game handles religion mechanics is 1) terribly unrealistic and 2) rather offensive to people of any religion at all.

It's more frustrating in that, as I said, the core gameplay concept isn't bad at all. Building a nation from scratch? Developing culture, technology, and discovery? This game has the potential to be really, really good, and there are little things all through it that speak to this potential. But at its core, it just falls completely flat.

I have one caveat: the soundtrack is FIRE. Christopher Tin has somehow fallen into this weird niche of writing soundtracks for RTS/strategy games; he's done music for Civ IV and VI, Old World, and Offworld Trading Company, among others. (That's not all he's done, but it feels like a surprising amount of game soundtracks for someone as talented as him.) In any case, the soundtrack to this game -- especially the main theme -- is so good. It got to the point where I was just waiting in the menu listening to the music because it was more fun than actually playing the game.

1/5. Don't ever play it but go look up Sogno di Volare right now.