Spoiler Free Review:

Right off the bat let me get something out of the way. I’m ignoring Paradox’s insane decision to raise prices right before the sale. My review isn’t based on that horrible policy, rather on the game itself. But still, don’t buy it until they fix their pricing…

To the game!

This one was super difficult to get a handle on. Over all I feel disappointed, but I still have been playing nonstop, and time just goes by. Many times, I’ve come to realize, “Oh crap, it’s 2 am!”

Stellaris is a 4x game which aims to be the definitive science fiction game, providing freedom in customizing your empire, it’s traits, policies, and planets. Regardless of that overall goal, the longer you play the game, the more repetitive it becomes, and the more obvious the flaws become.

Here is the breakdown:

• Combat: Lame, it’s just a numbers game. Whomever has the biggest fleet wins. Reminiscent of Civ3 army of just tanks. You got the numbers, you’ll win no matter what.

• Technology: is all the same regardless of species. You don’t get to choose a technology path, instead technology research is thrown at you randomly to choose from (in 3 categories). What’s frustrating, is that if you’re mammalian, insectoid, reptilian, etc – all tech is the same.

• Economy: all that matters is energy credits and minerals, and the only way to really get a good economy is to colonize planets. A 4x game becomes an expansion only game, and you only have 2 relevant buildings instead of the 3 dozen or so the game offers.

• Diplomacy: When other empires ping you for a trade deal, migration treaty, etc – it isn’t obvious what they are asking for. Many a time I joined a federation when I didn’t want to, instead of agreeing to what I thought they were asking about. Diplomacy itself becomes a popularity contest, and doesn’t really change anything on how the game is played.

• AI: Stupid…. Enemy empires don’t attack, and when they do they choose worthless star systems. Winning wars against AI is the easiest thing to do.

• War: You get 100 war points to spend, these include liberation, ceding a planet, obliterating a species, etc. – the only purpose I can think of is that this makes the game take longer, but besides that it isn’t realistic, and only slows down play.

• Game Ending: Basically, you win the game by colonizing 40% of all habitable planets. You’ll always end up with 2-3 empires or federations. End game crises is a joke – just another big fleet and by the time it happens your fleet will be 3x bigger. All that time building an Empire and all you get is a feeling like, “oh, was that it?”

Stellaris does offer multiplayer, but due to the length of game it’s hard to actually find someone to stick through it. The game itself though in multiplayer is good – no lagging whatsoever. Can't say the same for the people I’ve played with so far…. I’ve been mostly playing single player on this one and haven’t felt a strong need to branch out.

Stellaris also offers DLC, the content of which hasn’t been overwhelming. New species, new missions, but it all really doesn’t matter in the end do to the other problems I’ve already mentioned (wow, a new portairt!). Right now, I can’t recommend any DLC purchases. The one DLC I haven’t tried yet is Utopia – which will always you to build megastructures (ring worlds, dyson spheres). I’ll update this review once I’ve had a chance to give that a shot.

Controls and Graphics:

Controls are with a keyboard and mouse, and honestly just the mouse. Doesn’t take any time to get used to, and once you learn special shortcuts things will fly by. Graphics are great, playing at max settings. Planets have individual animations; fleet combat graphically is wonderful to watch; star systems have wonderful variety. Excellent rendering of the space environment.

Final Recommendation:

Overall, I want to say I can’t recommend Stellaris due to all its flaws. But I keep playing it anyway, and I keep playing it for hours on end. So yeah, I do recommend Stellaris, just be aware of what you’re getting into.

Stellaris:
Rating: 6 out of 10. Barely Recommended.

BONUS MATERIAL (for Star Trek fans):

OMG! The Star Trek New Horizons mod is amazing! And totally worth getting. All the problems still exist with Stellaris, but with this mod it suddenly becomes the best Star Trek game out there! Big shout out to the developers. All the Star Trek races are present, and the universe unfolds as presented in the TV episodes. My only complaint is that the Klingon and Romulan empires don’t get any sort of bonus bump, on several play throughs they get defeated or are pretty small – would like to see them rival the federation as in the shows.

Stellaris with New Horizons mod:
Rating: 9 out of 10. Highly Recommended.

Playing on i7-6700, 16Gb RAM, GTX1070