It has been two years since I last played Civilization VI and my impression about it back then was very muted. I love the series but was dishearten by the bad Nintendo Switch port.
Now they’ve fixed the memory leak and you can actually play the game without too many crashes. My game crashed only twice, and I didn’t loose any progress because it autosaves regularly.
Gathering Storm is a DLC that brings lots of new goodies to the game where the most prominent one is natural disasters. I though I would hate that feature, but it is actually quite neat. A volcano can erupt and destroy everything around it, but the volcanic ash makes for perfect soil. You take a chance when settling near a volcano, that you will benefit more from it, and will handle the eruptions when they occur.
It was a bit buggy as I had a river overflood every other turn, but apart from that I thought it was great fun. When the ocean rises and your nice seaside condos drown in ocean water you get an oh-shit moment, and start to focus on carbon recapture. I think that’s a nice addition to the game.
There is however a problem with just adding mechanics to a game without ever removing old ones. I have no idea how the idea of governors is supposed to work, I don’t understand how to make religion work in my favour and looking through the benefits of all city states is just too much.
I hated the idea of world congress. The UI on the switch was very bad, and it took half the game until I realised that I was voting “nay” on the things I thought I was voting “yay”. I tried to go for a diplomatic victory, but earning diplomatic victory points seemed sketchy and random, and I couldn’t find a way to find how many points I got. Even at the end, it didn’t summarise my diplomatic points, so I have no idea if I was close or far away from that victory.
With this last DLC, the game is overflowing with mechanics. There are so many mechanics that it becomes a hurdle to keep track of them all. I am one of those that cursed Firaxis for removing religion in Civilisation 5, but in Civilization 6 I don’t even understand how religion affects the game. It has become too complicated.
The UI on Nintendo Switch makes it even harder as the buttons don’t have tooltips so I don’t know what half of them does. It took me the whole game until I realised I could upgrade my governors. That was not clear to me.
They have fixed the crashes, but the game is still excruciatingly slow. Not just that it lags, I can take that, but I have to wait 1-2 minutes between turns on a standard campaign. I play the game while cooking dinner. It’s that slow. Sure, if I wanted a more smooth experience I could’ve played it on PC, but I’m judging the version that I am playing and it is bad.
The series has always had the imbalance with lots of action at the start of the game, and less action at the late game. With the DLC the ending became so dragged out and the lack of space race progression gave me no idea when the game would end. And then, poof, it happened.
I don’t think that is a very good gaming experience when the ending of the game takes you by surprise. “The End”
I rate this game as OKAY.
Replay 