Frustratingly fun. A supremely difficult game with no way to win. No matter what, you're going to die. But you don't stop having fun.

Played this game for almost 200 hours and still discovering new things. Partly because I am slowly introducing the myriad DLC and partly because this game is so purely immense. Nigh-infinite replayability. Extremely engaging. No two games will ever be the same, even if you go the exact same route with the exact same species. 10/10

Tl;dr Don't listen to the hate, if you want to try it, buy it. It is really worth it and with the four money-gouging DLC coming it can only get better.

Lots of change always garners a negative response from the gaming community, especially die-hard fans of series. Being a die-hard fan of the Civilization series myself I am delighted by the refreshing updates to the system that works so well. That might be because (and I wonder how many people will remember these) I stared on the Activision series Civilization: Call to Power. For me, transitioning to the Sid Meier's series at Civilization 3 was a refreshing change of pace, just as the changed religion, branching civics tree, and interesting eureka quests alongside the numerous updates to combat is an amazing change from the powerhouse that was Civ V.

The other point of hate I see and don't understand is that its not good for new players. Just as every other civ game it has intuitive advisors that allow people to learn as they play. It is perfectly viable for new players, and I cannot understand why people are saying this.

Finally, the bad AI is the last main reason to garner hate, and for that I refer you to the horrendous AI that was in Civ V that only mods could (marginally) fix. A lot of the glaring errors are now fixed after the fall update and as thus, the AI is probably going to be innately better than that of Civ V.