CIV7 Glass half-full: Everything that's hard for the dev team to change is done really well (core mechanics). Everything that's done poorly is easy for the dev team to change (the UX).

The bones are there. The skin is not.

People who can look past the glaring UX problems are getting as sucked into this game as previous games (myself included). Of course the precise play style of this game is novel, so complaints about novelty are still present. But the mechanics are solid and fun.

Thankfully, every complaint about the UI (presenting info) and UX (interacting with that info) is solvable because the data is there, just poorly presented or not presented at all. For a strategy game, kind of a hilariously bad shortfall. But thankfully, it's one of the easiest things to add/improve.

The bad reviews are valid, but won't be valid for long.