For years, the gaming world held onto the belief that sprawling grand strategy games simply couldn’t be translated well to home consoles. The consensus was that the console market wouldn’t support such complex titles, so attempts to port these games were minimal at best. This belief explains why consoles didn’t see a mainline Civilization game for two decades.
With Civilization 6, after a long hiatus since 1999’s Civilization 2, the series made a cautious return to consoles. While its controls weren’t as naturally intuitive as they were on PC, they were competent enough. Now, Civilization 7 is breaking new ground by launching simultaneously across all platforms, which looks to be a wise move. This version immediately delivers a solid console experience, owing largely to significant improvements in controller support.
It might take some adjustment for newcomers to large-scale strategy games on consoles, but Civilization 7’s control setup is impressively intuitive. Building upon its predecessor, it has fine-tuned its interface to be more console-friendly.
One of the standout enhancements is its action-cycling mechanic. Players can quickly cycle through available actions for each turn using a prompt on the bottom right of the screen. This feature streamlines managing different tasks like commanding units, selecting Civics, handling crises, and city development, ensuring players utilize their turn to the fullest.
Remarkably, most of Civilization 7 can be navigated with just a few buttons. Players press “Y” or the triangle button to cycle through options, select with the left stick, and confirm with “A” or cross. This setup feels intuitive and accelerates the game’s pace, making this iteration feel more dynamic than previous entries.
While playing on PC with a mouse and keyboard still feels more natural, console players are getting a very comparable experience.
Perhaps the most welcomed addition to the console controls is the radial menu, accessed by pressing LB. Half of this menu provides access to essential game screens like policy menus and tech trees, while the other half lets players jump straight to diplomacy pages with opposing leaders. This new feature successfully streamlines Civilization 7, benefiting both newcomers and veterans of the franchise and the 4X genre.
Despite these improvements, there are a few features from Civilization 6 on consoles that didn’t make it to Civilization 7. Particularly missed is the right stick shortcut to instantly summon the cursor to the camera’s focus tile—a small but much-missed convenience. In the current game, clicking the right stick just re-centers the camera on the cursor, a change that isn’t quite as handy.
Civilization 7 is proving that with the right tweaks and updates, grand strategy games can indeed have a place on consoles, offering players a fresh and engaging experience.
