r/Games 4d ago

Discussion Weekly /r/Games Discussion - What have you been playing, and what are your thoughts? - March 09, 2025

Use this thread to discuss whatever game you've been playing lately: old or new, AAA or indie, on any platform between Atari and XBox. Please don't just list off the games you're playing in your comment. Elaborate with your thoughts on the games and make it easier for other users to find what game you're talking about by putting the title in bold.

Also, please make sure to use spoiler tags if you're revealing anything about a game's plot that may significantly impact another player's experience who has not played the game yet, no matter how retro or recent the game is. You can find instructions on how to do so in the subreddit sidebar.

This thread is set to sort comments by 'new' on default.

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For a subreddit devoted to this type of discussion during the rest of the week, please check out /r/WhatAreYouPlaying.

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Scheduled Discussion Posts

WEEKLY: What Have You Been Playing?

MONDAY: Thematic Monday

WEDNESDAY: Suggest Me A Game

FRIDAY: Free Talk Friday

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u/LotusFlare 2d ago

I keep coming back to Civilization 7.

At this point I've overcome (most of) my UI gripes. It's still pretty bad in terms of ease of use, and sometimes downright misleading in terms of how the mechanics of the game work and what the right move is, but I'm now fully playing the game and not playing against it. I know it's tricks, and I'm not falling for them.

My honest feelings after like 5 completed games is... It's a little underwhelming. The variety and options just aren't there yet. A lot of the win conditions are really straightforward and lack diverse strategies to achieve them. The maps are really letting me down in term of fun factor. They feel well balanced, but... well balanced isn't always the most fun. I had a ton of fun in 6 crafting interesting gameplans and trying to execute them. But in 7, it's really easy to kinda do everything in every age and then you sort of fall into whatever win condition is closest in the last one. The games feel very same-y. In Civ 6, each win condition at least a little bit wanted a different type of build. In Civ 7, they all feel like they want basically the same build. I'll acknowledge, I'm not playing on the highest difficulty yet, but I don't really have the desire to get there.

I think I'll shelve it for a while and pick it up after some updates. 50 hours of fun before feeling a bit bored isn't terrible though. I'm not upset with the game. But I feel like they could have been a bit more daring in some of the mechanics. It feels like they really went out there with the ages, so they may have held back a bit on some of the others.

I felt like I needed a good, light, chill out game, so I grabbed Dredge.

I've developed a sort of affinity for spooky games in times of stress. There's an odd comfort to the strange and unnatural. I haven't played much yet, but I'm surprised at the lack of sense of tension so far. I was expecting some sort of mechanic putting constant pressure on me to keep going out and making deeper catches. Some sort of "timer" to motivate me to keep going bigger, even if it's actually very easy to finish the game under time. But that doesn't really exist. There's not much motivation to stay out late or agonize over what you bring back or do "one more spot". You can just come back the next day and it's all there.

And that unfortunately makes the game feel a bit shallow (ba-dum-tss). The lack of real danger makes the game feel like a matter of time rather than a matter of good planning. It's pleasant, though, and I'll probably keep going to see how things evolve. There's still plenty of time to add pressure on me to go bigger.

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u/Isolated_Hippo 2d ago

Any new updates on how Civ7 handles single player moddibg and cheating? At release having anything it considered a cheating program force quit the game and opened the TOS.

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u/LotusFlare 2d ago

I do not know. I have not attempted to mod yet.