The negative reviews almost scared me off, but I'm glad I stuck with it because I've been enjoying Civ 7 immensely. I've been playing Civ since the very beginning, and Civ 7 feels like a natural progression from 6. The ability to change your civilisation throughout the ages feels like a breath of fresh air (you do have the option to NOT do that and stick with the civ you started as), but I wish there were more achievements. Civ 6 had hundreds of super-specific achievements, and 7 feels lacking in that regard. Imagine my disappointment when I put a Stone Head next to a temple and didn't see a "Legends of the Hidden Temple" achievement appear at the bottom of my screen.
I am enjoying the ability to level up the leaders and unlock new abilities. It's been a nice change and encourages replays as a leader, as well as granting you some pretty nice buffs for leveled leaders. Navigable rivers has been a godsend, being able to put a city inland and still access the ocean has been a MASSIVE improvement and has fundamentally changed city building.
City-states maintain their usefulness and the ability to peacefully absorb them into your civilisation is fantastic, but man do they grow slowly unless you spend diplomatic capital on improving them. When you become a Suzerain, you become more responsible for the city-state growth than in previous games; it almost feels like they refuse to grow on their own unless you force them to. I wish they had more autonomy in their growth, but I guess that's why we have mods.
Speaking of mods, the robust modding scene for 7 is fantastic. Modders are once again carrying the game, adding all the fixes and buttons for things we wish we had in the base game. I'll be real, without modders, Civ and most other popular games wouldn't survive as long as they do, so having a huge library of available mods to tweak the game and get it just right has been great. Big shoutout to the modders for keeping the game fresh and letting us do what we really want.
I'm gonna touch on the DLC for a second: wait for the sales. As it is with most Civ games (any game with DLC, really), DLC pricing can be a comedy routine most of the time, so wait for them to go on sale. The DLC is great, but man, those prices will drive the air from your lungs. Wait for a sale if you want to snap them up.
Anyway, this has been a long enough ramble. Would I recommend Civ 7? Yeah, but do your due diligence and read some reviews. Even if a lot of them are negative one-line reviews, they all tell a piece of a story, and its a story you should read before buying the game. This is a positive review based solely on my own experience, and I haven't touched on a lot of stuff that other people have problems with. You owe it to yourself to form as complete an opinion as possible before deciding to spend your money.
