Sid Meier’s Civilization VI (PS4) Review – All Hail The Mighty Sid

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI (PS4) Review

When you talk about the turn-based 4X genre, you can’t have the conversation without talking about the Sid Meier’s franchise. The Civilization franchise has always been a benchmarker in the 4X world and with the expansion and port of the sixth iteration making its way to the PS4, Civilization VI proves that Sid is still going strong as the leader in the genre as Civ VI is easily one of the best 4X games I’ve ever played and its console port is nearly perfect, making for a compelling and completely engrossing experience.

Civ VI follows suit with its predecessors in getting you to expand your empire through the ages, one turn at a time. Your choice of empire building is tied to your choice of the worlds greatest leaders, each of whom come with their own specific skills, special abilities, and unique unlocks to make each dynasty build feel different and challenging. There are a number of different maps you can also use so you’re never repeating the same build each time. The unique builds always give you a great challenge but I do stress building your own games and keeping the maps manageable in size seeing as it is turn-based. Nothing worse than wanting to come to the aid of some of your forces under attack and seeing that it’s going to take 37 turns.

You Can’t Measure Hours in Turns 

The massive appeal of this game is not just that you’re getting a seemingly new experience each time or the variety of ways in which you can play. The biggest appeal of Civ VI is how easy it is to get lost playing it. Hours slip past and you’re still trying to make sure your newest colony is surviving and ensuring the economical alliance you struck with the Canadians is still thriving. Quite frankly, I’m playing while writing this. In between turns, I’m hopping over to my laptop to plug away at this review, so if that doesn’t tell you how utterly consuming this game is, I don’t have a better example.

In addition to the regular game, there’s an online component if you think you can beat people on the interwebs in the struggle of survival and expansion. There are also several scenarios you can try out if you’d prefer a timed experience and not throwing your entire weekend away. Again, this just adds to the incredible amount of gameplay and replayability that Civilization VI offers.

The 4X genre is full of terrific games that will suck up hours of your time. Very few make the transition from PC to console so effortlessly. The game looks great, the music is very relaxing and surprisingly not obnoxious considering how many hours I sat and played it, and I have almost no problems with the game at all. The only knock I guess I could dig up is that while they did a good job putting the controls to the PS4 controller, it’s still very clearly meant for PC. It’s such a minuscule thing but there were a few occasions that I wished the controls were laid out differently.

Basically, if you enjoy 4X games or are a Civilization fan, you have to pick this up. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. It’s already on your list and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI is already in the download queue. If it’s not, you’ve got time right now to remedy that.

Next week I’ll tackle the Gathering Storm expansion pack to Civilization VI. With the level of enjoyment I’ve been having and the terrific gameplay I’ve experienced thus far, I only expect the best from the new pack. Check back in and find out if the add ons are worth their weight in gold.

***PS4 code was provided by the publisher***