Recent reviews by DeadSniper

A tactical RPG worth your time. Engaging story, interesting challenges. And you manage a larger army and your skirmishers to change things up. I will warn that Act 3 has some foolishness but still a great game.

Stellaris is a space strategy game which encompasses hundreds of years of space exploration and conquest. Through expansions and updates the number of scenarios that you can participate in are really staggering, you can be insects hoping to spread your Company throughout the galaxy, slaving authoritarians seeking to put everyone under your direct control, crazed robots hoping to either exterminate every single living creature or contain then in your own biological sanctuaries, a hive overmind hoping to exist in peace, or even "Become the senate" and reign over an empire containing the entire galaxy.

I will warn anyone wanting to play of two caveats.

First: It has a steep learning curve, there are MANY concepts which simply require experimentation and exposure (and occasionally wikis) to fully understand.

Second: Paradox strategy of releasing DLCs frequently could be off putting, not only for the cost (although core systems are usually included in the free updates) but also because those core systems update means that the game is fundamentally changing. If you were an expert at Stellaris 1.0 and had every caveat of it honed to perfection, you would likely need 2-3 games to get a decent understanding of 3.2. This can keep the game fresh, but also can disrupt saves (campaigns can take quite a few hours) and be frustrating if you dislike aspects of the changes.

Despite these warning, if you love sci fi, or strategy games, nothing can really compete with the options and polish of Stellaris. Even when you master the "competitive" aspect of the game in surviving and "winning" there are still many interesting role playing scenarios that can unfold. (Also, while I have untold hours in the game, the steam hours are inflated due to being left on when I am not at the PC.)

Some interesting concepts, unfortunately stuck behind an unfinished game.

- Economy is split between civilian and state economy, you only have direct access to state economy but can direct civilian money to the state via taxes and building and resorts.
- Strong automated systems, most ships are fully automated so that you can let them do their own thing until you are comfortable with how to direct them.

Unfortunately the automated systems seem to have a hard time letting go when you DO want to direct your designs or ships. You might find your ships in a fleet across your empire when you need them.

The help systems through the game are somehow both too long and drawn out, while simultaneously not offering the information you actually need. Many places have terms or statistics with no way to find out WHAT those terms mean specifically,

CRASHES. I have yet to make it through an entire game without it crashing, I would recommend anyone playing to lower the auto-save intervals below 5 mins, as with many strategy games you can go a while without much happening, and then have a lot happen at the same time. Meaning that 5 minutes feels like a lot more lost time.

Interesting enough story. Closer to a choose your own adventure book that you aren't allowed to keep your thumb on the pages to further explore the options. You can basically play this game on youtube.

Felt like it really intruded on the base game, and didn't really add any fun to the experience.

This is a fun pretty low stress sim style game, the music is inspiring, and commentary from Goldblum throughout the game is nostalgic.. The only downside I would mention is that it could really use a time adjusting function to speed up during down times or pause during hectic times.

This game is a fun mashup of tactical RPG and stealth. Notably it allows your hit and crit chances to hit 100% with no failure chance, meaning perfectly executed ambushes will have no chance of failure. Some of the story is a bit ham handed, and the ui at times looks closer to rip-off of xcom rather than inspired by. However there is lot of fun to be had in this game.

The Good: This game gives that old school CRPG feeling of Baulder's Gate and the like, but with a very pretty coat of new paint. It is immersive and an extensive campaign. It has potential to be a great game. Some encounters are handled with a textblock decision chain which also hails back to old school CRPGs but isn't so common as to become tedious. Also the settings menu grants you lots of freedom for how you want to play the game.

The Bad: From an RPG perspective, Pathfinder kinda shows it age, there are so many minor variations and changes that show its addonism that has gone on for many years. A lot of the "choices" have little long term effects. The kingdom management system could be cleaner.

The Ugly:
BUGS:You will encounter game ending bugs. Make frequent saves and keep some older ones. Many companion quests are unable to be completed. An entire town name doesn't exist on the map, quest chains just fail to complete.
LOADING..: I don't know why the game devs decided to unload the kingdom/overworld assets, you will be leaving these screens a lot, and every time you a treated to a minute or two of loading.
BALANCE: The game is balanced around you being able to save and reload often. There are encounters which are incredibly beyond your party's ability when they should be encountered through the course of the game.

Verdict: As of late October, this game is a mess, it's basically unable to be completed without accepting that you will fail many aspects due to bugs, there have been many patches, so maybe in a few months, it will be a good game. Once enough modders get a hold of it to fix bad design decisions it might even be a great game.

I really love the concept. The idea of playing your PC games from a more relaxed setting of your living room is great. However it is simply not there yet.

Notes: I had wired network running to the Steam Link and PC hosting Steam. I used a wireless keyboard/mouse and a wired controller with the Link.

First step was Fallout 4 simply didn't work while streaming to the Link. It would open and then close. (You can work around this by starting Fallout 4, then beginning the stream and "continue playing" Fallout).

However to avoid the issues with Fallout I played a slightly older game that had time to hammer out any odd bugs. While video is generally smooth, the sound seems to have frequent hiccups. Notably, periods of lagging, or hanging due to technical reasons become much more problematic with this setup. Your computer is still running fine, but for the half second the video takes to resync your character has now been put in a precarious position.