Sid Meier’s Civilization VII

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy

Players: 1-6 Competitive (Local Wireless), 2-8 Competitive (Online)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Civilization VII is a Turn-Based Strategy game released in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2, once again following the “4X” formula on a hex-based map, with players aiming to lead their nation-state to success through multiple ages either through military dominance, scientific discovery, religious proliferation, social standing, or diplomacy.

I reviewed the Nintendo Switch version of this game’s predecessor, Civilization VI, about six years ago, and when I did, I made it clear that I am not a fan of this series. I think it is impenetrable for new players wanting to learn, featuring clunky menus, and with a strategy that’s difficult to discern, with the game making it unclear how objectives are accomplished. Now that I’m playing that game’s sequel… I feel like much the same is true this time around too.

What does this resource do? Why isn’t the game letting this unit attack that one? How do I permanently eliminate this enemy settlement? How do I end the turn without having to “skip turn” for each individual unit? The answers to these and other questions I had could likely be found in a wiki, or somewhere within the in-game glossary, and some I would end up discovering through experimentation. But that so many of these important questions require searching for answers adds not only to the frustration of playing this game, but also makes playing through this already slow-paced, plodding game take even longer.

I do think that in some ways Civilization VII is an improvement over the prior game (this time, the Nintendo Switch version actually supports online play!). It’s clearly trying to streamline the process in ways that make turns go more swiftly. But I don’t feel like it does nearly enough. The menus are still clunky, information is still difficult to parse, and the controls are often unintuitive too – it’s not even clear when the game still believes I’ve selected the previous unit I was moving or if it was automatically deselected after completing an action. Is it wanting me to plot its route for future turns? If I accidentally did that, how do I undo that? Ugh…

The presentation here is still good, showing map tiles and units in 3D with some interesting animations, as well as giving your world leaders some nice animated flourishes too… though “leaders” seems like a bit of a stretch since this time some of the leaders you can select are historically figureheads or important figures rather than actual leaders in their own right – Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, Lafayette, and Machiavelli are all important historical figures, but none of them ever led a country.

In any case, the visuals are backed by a soundtrack that seems inspired by world music of various cultures, something that seems befitting this game’s themes. This is joined by some voice clips of the various aforementioned “leaders”, as well as a narrator reading flavor quotes when you’ve successfully finished some research. It’s all fine, but I really wish they put this effort into a more full-fledged voiced tutorial, something this game lacks despite numerous tutorial pop-up windows that often don’t give you the full picture of how things work.

Ah, but there I go again, getting back to my complaints about this game and this series as a whole. Look, I’ll just leave it at this – I do think Civilization VII is an improvement over the prior game, but a marginal one. It still has serious problems that make it hard for me to recommend this game to anyone but series fans, and if you’re a series fan you don’t really need a recommendation. If that doesn’t describe you, I suggest skipping this game.

tl;dr – Civilization VII is a Turn-Based Strategy game that gives players various ways to succeed, but is impenetrable to newcomers, features clunky controls and clunky menu navigation, and is poor at conveying information to the player. Unless you’re already a series fan, I suggest you skip this game.

Grade: C

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy

Players: 1-6 Competitive (Local Wireless), 2-8 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

Civilization VII was one of the launch games released alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 in 2025, coming out just four months after other versions of the game, and providing an early example of what players might see in a “Nintendo Switch 2 Edition” release, with the upgrade from the Nintendo Switch version of the game costing $10. Let’s see what that gets you, shall we?

I think it’s pretty clear right from the start that this is a huge improvement over what we saw in the Nintendo Switch release of the game. The game boasts improved resolution and framerates of 4K/30FPS or 1080p/60FPS in docked mode, though I don’t see any option to swap between graphics and performance modes. In any case, the improvements to both framerates and resolution are very noticeable, and make the game much nicer to look at.

This release also makes use of dynamic Mouse Mode, a no-brainer given the series’ PC origins. In practice I find the implementation of this a bit iffy. It’s nice to be able to move a cursor to select an individual element on-screen, but I find that this mode’s use in moving units seems spotty at best – the game often doesn’t seem to register me selecting units for some reason.

This release also removes restrictions placed on the Nintendo Switch version of the game when it comes to map size and player number, letting up to 8 players play on any map size in any age, assuming that your cross-play partners can also play those maps (in other words, those restrictions still exist if you’re playing with other players who are using the Nintendo Switch).

Finally, there’s definitely an improvement in loading times here – it takes 25 seconds to load to the main menu on Nintendo Switch, with an extra 1 minute 21 seconds to load a save file. On Nintendo Switch 2, those times are cut down to 15 seconds and 38 seconds. Plus, the game just overall runs morse smoothly as you’re playing it.

Overall, these improvements are a bit uneven, but they still collectively make for a much better experience on Nintendo Switch 2. I still have issues with the core game, but if you’re going to play Civilization VII, I definitely think you’ll enjoy it more on Nintendo Switch 2.

tl;dr – Civilization VII is a Turn-Based Strategy game that gives players various ways to succeed, but is impenetrable to newcomers, features clunky controls and clunky menu navigation, and is poor at conveying information to the player. This game plays much better on Nintendo Switch 2 than on Nintendo Switch, with improvements to performance, loading times, and dynamic Mouse Mode support. Even so, unless you’re already a series fan, I suggest you skip this game.

Grade: C+

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