There are few things more daunting than attempting to win a game of Civilization by way of cultural victory… except maybe trying to play a complex strategy game on the Steam Deck. And while I’m still struggling on the culture victory aspect, I can say, playing Civilization VII on my Steam Deck was far less difficult than I imagined. 

In my review of Civilization VII, my biggest complaint was not really understanding some of the game’s more complex systems. The controls are a function of that misunderstanding. In playing a game as information-dense as Civilization, every function is mapped to a button, and there are a lot of functions. I tried my best to memorize it all but was grateful for the Deck’s touch-screen functionality, which let me forgo buttons in certain instances.

However, there were times when I occasionally encountered a bug where I’d click on a selection and nothing happened. It was never anything mission-critical. Sometimes the game didn’t want to register when I wanted to put a unit to sleep or ignored my attempts to establish a trade route I knew I met the criteria for. These complaints blend with my initial problems with the game’s legibility. M …

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