21.10.16

Thought I'd load Civilization VI up for a quick try. And as expected, it took the entirety of my evening. It was plenty fun though, and not too similar to the previous one.

As far as I played (Civ games never drag into the late ages for me, for some reason.), I'd say that it's an improvement in terms of gameplay. In no particular order, I like that:

• The AI is smarter.
• Districts force more attention to city placement.
• Diplomacy victory was removed. (It was too one-sided.)
• Culture now has it's own tree.
• Faith is slightly less useless.
• Districts force some degree of city specialization.
• Good strategies are (probably) less obvious.
• And probably more stuff. No glaring downsides for me.

Now, what I didn't like one bit, was the UI and settings side of things. The most glaringly obvious and serious problem was that very often, crucial parts of the UI overlap. I'm not a fan of the art style either, the minimap was too small, visual cues are a downgrade so I have to spend a bunch more time making sure I didn't miss anything. Some wonderful menus that Civ V had seem to just have been removed, etc. The game is also missing multiple settings available in the previous one that, while not crucial to playing it, simplified things.

So, overall, I think it's a step up from the previous game, because it's not really missing anything, yet has added stuff. It is, however, not more pleasant to play because it isn't as accessible. But I wouldn't hold that against it too much, as it's much easier to fix than gameplay would have been, had it not been as good.