Stellaris

 PC
User Score
8.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 984 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 742 out of 984
  2. Mixed: 133 out of 984
  3. Negative: 109 out of 984

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  1. SirDiddles
    Jun 6, 2016
    5
    Stellaris is a very good game with a few serious flaws that affect, well everything.

    The good points: 1. you can design your own race, probably could use more points in traits to actually be able to customize your race a bit more, but still its a good attempt. 2. graphics are quite good when they are working correctly. 3. overall game design is good with a few caveats. 4. you can    Stellaris is a very good game with a few serious flaws that affect, well everything.

    The good points:
    1. you can design your own race, probably could use more points in traits to actually be able to customize your race a bit more, but still its a good attempt.
    2. graphics are quite good when they are working correctly.
    3. overall game design is good with a few caveats.
    4. you can design your own ships, sort of.

    The bad points:
    1. As with most 4X games, this one really suffers from a poor AI. I won't go in to details, it would be a very long list.
    2. I just started the game and my combat fleet has 4 ships, my neighbor i just met has thousands of ships.
    3. Ship design: it would seem like you can custom design your own ships but here are your choices: (depending on the platform) you can put 1 large weapon, 2 medium weapons, or 4 small weapons. Quite often it won't let you build the design you want without pressing the 'auto-complete' button which changes your ship design.
    4. Combat: you have no control over your ships once they engage. You put all long range weapons on your ships, guess what ?, you are going to point blank range for fighting.
    5. Game killing mid game slow down: has nothing at all to do with how good your system is according to the developers, even on their beast machines they get ridiculous slow down. Rather than build a new platform that uses multi-threading and optimization, they used an older gaming platform that assumes you are only using a single core with limited ram. By turn 200 you are experiencing a massive performance slow down of the game, by turn 300 (if you can actually make it there) the game is unplayable, a single click on anything in game may take 30 or more seconds before it responds, if at all. Making it to end game is all but impossible. So you play for a bit, then start a new game. Frustrating.

    So in short:
    1. you can design you own race, poorly.
    2. you can design you own ships, poorly.
    3. you can engage in combat, poorly.
    4. you can play the game to a point, then you have to start a new game.    … Expand
  2. Twinkobell
    May 14, 2016
    7
    This is a beta DEMO in the disguise of an end product. Supporters will insist that game will be improved with DLCs and patches in the future. Haters will cry about the incomplete state of the game. It's a culture shock from knowing Paradox Interactive business models. Nobody likes this. It's like buying a car, but the engine and windows are paid upgrades.
  3. czarinabox
    Jun 7, 2016
    6
    Stellaris has a great early game, with some of the best space exploration I’ve seen in a game, but if you were expecting it to be like other Paradox grand strategy games once the mid game set up you will probably be disappointed.

    The early game’s event chains and micromanagement of science ships and planet upgrades works really well. There isn’t too much to focus on and exploring the    Stellaris has a great early game, with some of the best space exploration I’ve seen in a game, but if you were expecting it to be like other Paradox grand strategy games once the mid game set up you will probably be disappointed.

    The early game’s event chains and micromanagement of science ships and planet upgrades works really well. There isn’t too much to focus on and exploring the space around you is really fun and engaging. In my second game I was disappointed to find out that many of the space monsters would be the same from game to game, which decreases that sense of an unknown galaxy that captured me in my first playthrough, but the other parts of the early game are very strong.

    When you get to the mid game, though, it really doesn’t live up to the expectations of a GSG in space. The factions you encounter are fairly interchangeable and have little character, and the fact that so many of them have no desire to go to war leads to a somewhat boring game. Fallen Empires provide some interesting variety, but mainly ignore you unless provoked. There is no threatening France or Ottomans from EUIV to force you to seek strong allies, and conquering new systems only to give them away to a sector just feels like conquest for conquest’s sake. In EUIV I feel like I’m bettering my nation’s position against threats, but the threats seem to be mainly lacking until late game.

    The late game crises that can happen do help to spice things up, but that only matters if you play to there. I only played to the end game a few times because I kept wanting to restart to play more of the early game again. I was very excited for a space game, but the setting on top of the characterless factions makes it difficult to keep track of who is who and where things are. I have to reorient myself every time I load a game to remind myself which space animal is which. There are also no familiar cities or landmarks to anchor yourself, only randomly named systems that mean nothing. I’m not taking East Prussia from the Teutons or reuniting the Italian peninsula to create a new Rome, I’m taking some system whose name I won’t remember from some random space animal with a ridiculous and hard to remember name. I don’t know if there is a fix to this or not, but I doubt I’ll be playing much more Stellaris until expansions start coming out, especially considering all the other excellent games releasing this year.    … Expand
  4. Chaotic-Entropy
    May 15, 2016
    7
    Best described as a flawed gem. The game is great to start with, everything is interesting and shiny but it quickly devolves from there in to a land of inefficient empire management, poor ergonomics for their UI design and missing/broken mid to late game content.

    I seriously get the feeling that the devs were told to put all their effort in to the early game, get the game out sooner,    Best described as a flawed gem. The game is great to start with, everything is interesting and shiny but it quickly devolves from there in to a land of inefficient empire management, poor ergonomics for their UI design and missing/broken mid to late game content.

    I seriously get the feeling that the devs were told to put all their effort in to the early game, get the game out sooner, and then fill in the gaps later. Just put enough interesting content in to the start in order to get positive early reviews. Then when they're 20-40 hours in, and realise how shallow/needlessly clunky to operate it is, we'll already have their positive reviews and they won't go back and change.

    I hope that the game gets a lot of patching and a lot of content added, not just DLC, but actual feature completion. Lots of bugs, lots of half thought out mechanics and pointless busy work.

    Don't get me wrong, it's a great foundation and I think it could go on to be a classic, but it's an alpha/beta build at best. No one has done any significant end-to-end testing on this besides the players it seems.    … Expand
  5. Babinski
    May 16, 2016
    6
    As it stands now, it is a half made game with a lot of issues. I can't help but feel a little bit disappointed with Paradox, this game had and still has so much potential, but I guess we are gonna have to wait another year to see it.
  6. Thilus
    Jul 13, 2016
    6
    I've got a problem with Stellaris. Because the game is good. But it is also an unpolished product. You could even call it unfinished. Bare bones that still need a lot more on their frame. The situation is similar to Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV - both of those games are 2-4 years old and only just recently CK2 has become what I think Paradox wanted it to be from theI've got a problem with Stellaris. Because the game is good. But it is also an unpolished product. You could even call it unfinished. Bare bones that still need a lot more on their frame. The situation is similar to Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV - both of those games are 2-4 years old and only just recently CK2 has become what I think Paradox wanted it to be from the begining. EU4 is the same, only I don't think they published all the DLCs quite yet.

    Stellaris might be another great game in PI portfolio, but not before there's a ton of updates and expansion packs. Right now there is a lot to work on - the diplomacy sucks (my biggest mistake was to start the game as a peaceful race of scientists, and not because the other races conquered me, but because after a while I couldn't expand more without resorting to violence, which was prohibited by my people), the military part is limited to say the least (you can build your own ships, but why bother when you have the auto-upgrade option that gives you good results), and there is no real goal to achieve, other that "conquer the whole galaxy, unless you're a peaceful race in which case you can't".

    I will wait for the game to develop further because as of now it's just a below average product that will make you "WOW!" for several sitting, after which you will quickly notice that deep down it offers very little. At least for now.    … Expand
  7. vezon
    Jun 14, 2016
    6
    When I first saw its first gameplay trailers and then actual gameplay footage from I was really, really hyped.
    And indeed at first glance the game design looks excelent, but in the end it doesn't work.
    Lets start with the good part. I love the soundtracks. The exploration at first is a nice touch. The interface, aesthetics is nicely done. But the gameplay, I don't, get it, I don't feel    When I first saw its first gameplay trailers and then actual gameplay footage from I was really, really hyped.
    And indeed at first glance the game design looks excelent, but in the end it doesn't work.
    Lets start with the good part. I love the soundtracks. The exploration at first is a nice touch. The interface, aesthetics is nicely done.
    But the gameplay, I don't, get it, I don't feel it.
    For example. The game limits u to have direct control only over a few planets, to alleviate the micromanagement and yet I don't recall any other 4x games that I wasted so many time in planet management and the worst part is that its tedious and boring.
    How so, u would ask? Every system like planet management, ship design, battle system, diplomacy is extremely streamlined. I could leave a lot of things in the hands of the AI,( and u would think with such simple rules should handle it nice, but nope, its broken it a lots of places) but than u would ask what should I do? And when u go down and try to fine tune some planets, stations, mines, designs, etc its sooo tedious and boring.
    When I played DistantWorlds my only complain, despite it had excellent automatization tools, it was still not enough. But here aiming to the same level of grandeur u have one level of automation but NO TOOLS.
    So in this game u have 2 choices. U could do a lot of things but its extremely simple and tedious because of the lack of tools or u do almost nothing.
    And also the state of the game its not really finished. There a bugs (like different bonuses don't work), half late game and start to get a lot of 1-2s freezes in battles. But this are patch-able.
    I know paradox model of development and in the future will add a lot of nuances through out expansions but I fear those will not resolve my main issue with this game.    … Expand
  8. deathmachinept
    May 23, 2016
    6
    The game is a 7.0 but deserves for me a 6 for pre-order DLC, buggy on late game, selling over 30$ and not being DRM-FREE(sold on day 1 in GoG)

    It's a good ride but it gets ugly and really buggy the more you play, it has the quality of HoI 3 and CK II when they came out it's a decent foundation but it's somewhat bland and lacks features compared to previous games like Imperium Galactica    The game is a 7.0 but deserves for me a 6 for pre-order DLC, buggy on late game, selling over 30$ and not being DRM-FREE(sold on day 1 in GoG)

    It's a good ride but it gets ugly and really buggy the more you play, it has the quality of HoI 3 and CK II when they came out it's a decent foundation but it's somewhat bland and lacks features compared to previous games like Imperium Galactica 2, Galactic Civ 2, Space Empires IV or SW Rebellion.

    You could compared Stellaris to Stardrive I in terms of polish except it plays somewhat better on huge battles as both these two games choose to set up battles on the same map instead of having an instance like IG 2, Rebellion and Total Wars games do. But you will still get huge frame drops and slow downs when you get into big battles.

    The Good
    - Researching is fresh & interesting, techs take in account the way you play, if you build robots you are more likely to get tech related to A.I. and robots etc.. but it's still a bit arcade and unrealistic, it could take some queues from sword of the stars.
    - Nice foundation for a game.
    - A simplified pop system from Victoria game.
    - Potential storylines and interesting quests and events - I came across and interesting quest with backstory which was definitely the high point up of the game for me.

    The Bad
    - Music is repetitive
    - Tutorial is really bad still surprising to this paradox hasn't made a real attempt at a good tutorial, for example you never know what advantages a federation brings, tutorial quests can be very hard to unlock like building a station to study primitive species.
    Also if you deactivate and active the tutorial quests on the same game it gets reset to the first mission loosing all the progress you had made.
    - Gameplay Information is hard to get to(Example there is no quick way to only show strategic resources on the map/primitive empires or unexplored systems.
    - There are no tactics when you are on combat, you can't set you ships to stay far or get really close, not even run from enemy ships they always charge head on.
    - UI is not the prettiest and it's simplified this means there is more information hidden and takes more clicks to get to, you also never know if there features hidden away or not implemented.
    - Some quests get broken easily, some have no information, some don't trigger.
    - Collecting debris easily become unrewarding and an annoyance, for me this a complete miss it should give resources and a chance at acquiring unresearch technologies plus it should have an option to autocollect debris and not always have an associated research requirement on the situation log.
    - There are not enough resource sinks in mid and late game you will eventually just cap and don't have anything that requires massive value of resources like building a huge monument etc..
    - No logistics if you compared to stardrive where you produce food and resources and you can ship this with transports to planets that need them, here food is a local planet resource and there are no trade routes between your planets or other empires.
    - No espionage mechanic.
    - Late game events/crisis are buggy and stop working mid way, example a trigger for a quest gets trigger by A.I. players and you can't never trigger it again or a big menace stops building attack fleets and conquering after you beat it's 3 large fleets.

    The Ugly
    - Friendly "A.I" just does this, follows your larger fleet nothing more... So consider the scenario of fighting a huge battle in enemy territory and if you happen to create a new fleet slightly larger across the entire galaxy to reinforce the depleted one prepare to have the entire A.I. to disengage and leave you alone fighting so they can group with your larger fleet.
    This also is a reason for poor performance instead of having A.I. spread on multiple fronts of a war they are all one the same place which reduces performance.
    - A.I. never seems to accept border access even if just for civilians this means most quests get broken or post-pone for late game which in turn makes the rewards unrewarding and contribute to a more bland and unfulfilling experience.

    In the end I enjoy much more Stardrive (early access) than Stellaris (at release) and for now you are much better off buying Stardrive if you haven't yet, it has more depth and is way more innovative. Just wait 1 to 2 years for an expansion or a DLCs that adds more depth & content to the game.
    Unfortunately Paradox is starting to get a reputation for releasing okay games that don't really innovate or even measure to their past titles that only get good after one to two years with expansions and with dozens of DLCs.

    This game only shows how technical superior and advance IG 2 was for it's time a game that had real 3D building like sim city, ground battles, space battles, planetary defenses, espionage, trading, research and design, quests and dynamic quests, built-in working tutorial, 3 storyline for each of the 3 races, cutscenes.    … Expand
  9. FGM
    May 21, 2016
    5
    Graphics and music are nicely polished for a game of that type, but not for a game of that price.

    Was hoping for bigger variety of fleet designs, space objects and entities, and for the battles to be more spectacular, and more of a blast when it comes to ships maneuvering, and different weapons. Event chains bug at times, reload fixes it. Army can get stuck at time so you can't use    Graphics and music are nicely polished for a game of that type, but not for a game of that price.

    Was hoping for bigger variety of fleet designs, space objects and entities, and for the battles to be more spectacular, and more of a blast when it comes to ships maneuvering, and different weapons.

    Event chains bug at times, reload fixes it. Army can get stuck at time so you can't use or disband them, yet you pay for them. Resources bug, so you have them, yet you don’t and can't use them. AI has massive problems with management and auto-management is broken.

    War tactics dumbs down to: pick a weaker enemy, stack your fleet in one stack, destroy enemy stack and conquer undefended planets. There is no real defence for planets that could stand a chance against any invasion. One reasonable way to defend systems is to build a ridiculous amount of expensive defence platforms. No point in destroying everything as space stations are transferable when you takeover enemy system, upon winning a war.

    Planetary assault is down to the numbers and no limit on assaulting force size with limit on defending force size, makes it so much easier (quicker than in EU and CK). Fleet is not bound by the invasion and troop transport doesn't need any escort, and you chose if you want to provide orbital support. Like in other Paradox games there is no choices in battles. I'd love to see some mini games with space battles and invasion, so that you can actually make a difference. Doesn't have to be big you know. Sort of a “Heroes of Might and Magic”. It doesn’t have to be Total War straight away. Just dumbed down the Paradox way, would be enough. Something that would give the stronger attacker a slim chance to loose and defender a chance to win. Paradox games always lack in that department and it makes them completely lack epic heroism. CK has the power play, EU has simple diplomacy and Stellaris has even less than EU. I’m sure it would make their games much deeper and enjoyable.

    With no tactical combat, there is nothing you can do for the computer to be better. Other than just let him behave like a$$ to the human, and let him cheat. That's exactly what higher difficulty is about.

    Research is as dull, at the beginning you get the feeling that there is a variety and they actually done something about it. But quickly you realize it's simple and dumbed down to few unique projects, and the rest is a lvl 1 to 3, or lvl 1 to infinity research.

    Each race feels the same, as there is no tech variety. Would love to see separate tech tree paths, which progress through in roleplaying fashion (complete missions to progress research, force you to invade empires and stuff). In the end it would make some technologies inaccessible, if you researched their equivalents and completely different tech tree paths would be nice.

    Variety of space stations is minimal, Frontier, Mining, Research, Terraforming, Observation, Military, Spaceport, Wormhole Generators. Other than for military platforms there is no way of upgrading them, which is well.... boring. There isn't a lot of defence stations and ships variations, I want to see massive gun stations that obliterate destroyers with one shot and stuff, death stars, MASSIVE SPACE STRUCTURES, ARTIFICIAL PLANETS AND CANNON SHIPS!

    Game screams for more weapon types: antimatter, gravity, plasma, ultrasound, microwave, dark matter and beam line of weapons. Planet destroyers, mobile space stations, force fields, stealth technology…. still because everything is dumbed down to one simple number, it doesn't really matter which weapons you use, as long as you keep a healthy ratio.

    Please add Stellar Council made up from all races, and some influence power play among races. With no galactic policies system or some sanctions and forced missions from most influential council members, there isn’t much to do. As well nothing that would drive you to conquer.

    It needs spy agents to steal tech and sabotage, merchants to improve earnings trade resource outside official channels, ambassadors to improve relations organise coups and takeovers, missionaries (to spread your culture ideology, make ideology like religion).

    Survey missions feel repeatable after one playtrough and they disappear in later game, after trading starcharts. Research ships become useless, other than survey the crap left after space battle that speeds up your research projects.

    Game gets really boring real quick, as there isn't much to do in the end game, other than paint map. So it is nothing more but a graphic makeover of EU with little bit of CK in space, and it doesn’t work well. EU was boring real quick, as it was a simple map painter and CK was fun for the power play but, same as EU it lacked in tactics department.

    For now, I can say for sure that it’s an unfinished (lack of content), not entirely polished (bugs), otherwise a cool game. Yet another clone of same mechanics, so gets old real quick. I think it was well intended by Paradox DLC MILKINGCO    … Expand
  10. akako
    May 20, 2016
    5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. WORST AI and battle. insufficient stories and events.

    it is not finished product, i played PAID BETA.

    Is this really $40 over?

    Paradox the thief    … Expand
  11. BlakeArius
    May 13, 2016
    6
    I really wanted to like this game. The elements are there, just some bad design choices. Early game is great, missions are fun, well written and interesting, exploring is fun and exciting. Then the mid game - a constant "Now what" in terms of lack of things to do, not even the info pop ups to read, AI does nothing unless they have the ability to steamroll you and you seriously piss themI really wanted to like this game. The elements are there, just some bad design choices. Early game is great, missions are fun, well written and interesting, exploring is fun and exciting. Then the mid game - a constant "Now what" in terms of lack of things to do, not even the info pop ups to read, AI does nothing unless they have the ability to steamroll you and you seriously piss them off. The politics are as simple as a total war game despite seeming complex. Creating sectors take what little there is to do out of the game. The universe should get more interesting at this point, it does in civilization.. but instead its just lonely guessing until you get random bad events in the end game to make things harder.
    Battles are crap, the ship designer is pointless, I think a simple update to the ai would fix alot of the mid game issues but right now... eh its too boring.    … Expand
  12. Wiebe
    Feb 26, 2020
    7
    The concept is great, but it needed a lot of paches, and the ai is still dumb, some concept are too simplistic also. Moreover, the end game gets tedious and boring because there is too much micromanagement and you are just grinding to a victory that you know is coming if you had some wins in the mid game.
  13. LordZ_
    May 13, 2016
    7
    PAX MPERIA (1997 THQ ) = Stellaris (2016 PARADOX) can't be a 10
    Nothing very new in this 4x galactic but a very addictive game ( you will lost few night sleep )
    I don't like that you don't manage your fleet in battle and graphic are very basic.
  14. CrimsonMarshall
    May 19, 2017
    5
    PLEASE DON'T BUY THIS.

    Initially dazzling but gets old really fast when you realize how front-heavy the depth of this game is. Civilization creation and customization is rich and enjoyable but once you've determined your values, strengths, and politics, you will soon find yourself in an indefinite rinse and repeat cycle of monotonous expansion. Unfortunately there is not much to    PLEASE DON'T BUY THIS.

    Initially dazzling but gets old really fast when you realize how front-heavy the depth of this game is. Civilization creation and customization is rich and enjoyable but once you've determined your values, strengths, and politics, you will soon find yourself in an indefinite rinse and repeat cycle of monotonous expansion.

    Unfortunately there is not much to discover, and alien factions will cease to surprise or interest you quite soon. Also, weak and almost entirely passive AI (after many tens of hours, none of my allies or enemies invaded anyone my empire or anyone else's) make this apparently complex game disappointingly facile to the point of boring.

    I can just about guarantee a very engaging first 10-15 hours but campaigns take WAY longer than that and the dev's just haven't filled them out; if you crave any kind of challenge or novelty, you'll quit every game you start long before whatever it's conclusion is. I actually don't know how these games are supposed to end - I couldn't bring myself to sleepwalk through any more of this game after about 40 hours. Played it at launch though. If they released any more story content or elements of dynamism to progression, they got my money first.    … Expand
  15. Robinjhoe
    Jul 14, 2016
    7
    I didnt expect muc of the Game, because it was a "Hell why not" buy. But i kind of was surprised by it.
    First off, it is pretty basic. But it has its own strenghts and weaknesses:
    Positive: + Amazing soundtracks (especially faster than light (instrumental) + Interesting way of exploration + Easy to understand + A species creator + Day One Mod Support Negative: - Some starting    I didnt expect muc of the Game, because it was a "Hell why not" buy. But i kind of was surprised by it.
    First off, it is pretty basic. But it has its own strenghts and weaknesses:

    Positive:
    + Amazing soundtracks (especially faster than light (instrumental)
    + Interesting way of exploration
    + Easy to understand
    + A species creator
    + Day One Mod Support

    Negative:
    - Some starting problems
    - Combat is really dumbed down
    - Managment is very basic
    - Exploration gets really annoying the bigger the universe you are in is
    - Politics are very often one-sided
    - It gets very crowded at times
    - Research is more or less random (you get 3 to 4 choices what you can research next, but it is not an open research tree)

    All in all it is fun. But it does not really anything complete new. It is fun for people liking these type of games but nothing for hardcore 4X lovers, even if this is not really 4X.    … Expand
  16. aidan0
    May 14, 2016
    7
    Good early game, runs great, it's fun, but it will take your time and make it go poof.
    I play lots of civ 5, endless legend and endless space and this fits right in with the games I like.
    It's not turn/base, but you can pause/speed up/slow down the game at anytime. It makes me have to force myself to stop and go to bed. Just one "5 more min" turns into an hour later. Edit: after 45    Good early game, runs great, it's fun, but it will take your time and make it go poof.
    I play lots of civ 5, endless legend and endless space and this fits right in with the games I like.
    It's not turn/base, but you can pause/speed up/slow down the game at anytime.
    It makes me have to force myself to stop and go to bed. Just one "5 more min" turns into an hour later.

    Edit: after 45 hours...
    Mid-game it gets boring, I don't like the victory goals, only conquest and expansions.
    You have a max amount of planets you can directly control, the rest you'll have to put in sectors that take them out of development and empire resource management. boo...

    End-game is... not done well IMO. You get confronted with some crisis, which basically makes you have to destroy everything. So, no real choice but to fight. In my case, loved my AI/robot pops which dun.. dun.. dun... go rogue. Why must advanced AI always have to go rogue, such an human trait, which base on my peaceful, bird people doesn't seem right.

    The game has potential, but for now it's gets a 6. Early game is a 9 btw    … Expand
  17. Koblihozrout
    May 10, 2016
    7
    If you played paradox strategies you know what to expect. It has potential to be best 4x game in the last 10 years. But it's a paradox game, so it could only happen in 3-4 years with 100-150$ worth of dlc's. Right now it's very very blend, with little to do.

    The game doesn't have game crushing bugs, or at least i hadn't had any, but a lot of patching work will need to address clunkiness    If you played paradox strategies you know what to expect. It has potential to be best 4x game in the last 10 years. But it's a paradox game, so it could only happen in 3-4 years with 100-150$ worth of dlc's. Right now it's very very blend, with little to do.

    The game doesn't have game crushing bugs, or at least i hadn't had any, but a lot of patching work will need to address clunkiness of planetary invasions, underwhelming diplomacy, ridiculous unbalances like "researching discovered aliens always takes 6 months, even if you have 50x more research generating per day, than in the first year."

    On a good side AI seems decent, and doesn't fall off quickly. It might change when more content is added. 7/10 on the release day.    … Expand
  18. Shrik3
    Feb 24, 2020
    5
    Do not buy until the next update is released. Which is supposed to fix the performance. This is not a question of specs it is a case that the mid late game lag goes from huge to unplayable on any cpu.

    I doubt anyone can play a large map playably from mid game. I have heard of no one. Not even the development studio itself from the latest video they posted while using a super charged    Do not buy until the next update is released. Which is supposed to fix the performance. This is not a question of specs it is a case that the mid late game lag goes from huge to unplayable on any cpu.


    I doubt anyone can play a large map playably from mid game. I have heard of no one. Not even the development studio itself from the latest video they posted while using a super charged cpu.

    The recommended system requirements should be increased to "please wait til quantom computing is invented as despite being a billion euro company we can't be bothered to redo the engine" Oh yeah it ran fine for the first year and half then they radically changed the pop system (which no one asked for and I think makes a complicated game even more micro management heavy) causing this mess. How recent reviews on steam can be "very positive" is beyond me. Has not one of these recent reviewers ever tried to finish a game? Will delete this review if 2.6 fixes this but I'm dubious. I don't like writing negative reviews but this broken, otherwise masterpiece has cost me over 150€, yes that's the most I spent on a video game and at present I highly regret it and I believe I'm justified in being angry.    … Expand
  19. theirrelephants
    May 15, 2016
    7
    This is a good game. After several hundred over priced DLC and a few "expansion" packs as per business as usual at Paradox, it will probably be a great game.

    Starts off fantastic, gets slow in the middle, and rather dead at the end. One of the three 'end game crisis' doesn't work, and the AI is incompetent beyond belief. There is little challenge here. On the flip side, they've    This is a good game. After several hundred over priced DLC and a few "expansion" packs as per business as usual at Paradox, it will probably be a great game.

    Starts off fantastic, gets slow in the middle, and rather dead at the end. One of the three 'end game crisis' doesn't work, and the AI is incompetent beyond belief. There is little challenge here.

    On the flip side, they've done things that people always wish you could do in a space game. From building observation posts to observe primitives to forming a federation between talking fungus and bird people, there's a lot to do. Until the core gameplay gets fixed however, this game will merely remain good instead of being amazing.    … Expand
  20. DamirBa
    May 10, 2016
    7
    Promising game, but really lacks depth (but to be frank, EU 4 started pretty much like that), and I do hope Stellaris crew will add a lot of new content. Loved the idea of no-turn strategy game, but needs a lot of improvements. I found it rather tedious to repeat the same quests every time I started the game. I dunno, EU and CK much better :S
  21. lordaeron1
    May 13, 2016
    6
    After playing the game for few days i must admit that it's time consuming, but that's about all the game does.
    the empire creation is detailed and the game look fun until you hit a brick wall (will explain).
    after colonizing all planets that you can (5+2 with perk) the game comes to a stand still. exploration has no point what so ever... battles are fun at first but boring after 2-3    After playing the game for few days i must admit that it's time consuming, but that's about all the game does.
    the empire creation is detailed and the game look fun until you hit a brick wall (will explain).
    after colonizing all planets that you can (5+2 with perk) the game comes to a stand still. exploration has no point what so ever... battles are fun at first but boring after 2-3 fights. this game has a huge potential but it looks to me that they just missed it. also good to note that even with high end pc the game will lag after few hours of game play.

    really hope that they release a patch that address this issues and more. giving it a solid 6 until improvements.    … Expand
  22. HaloFever
    Jun 1, 2020
    6
    At the fastest speed, a game of Stellaris on a small map will take 16.67 hours. (Big thank you to my son for running those numbers.) My first real game of Stellaris took me over 40 hours. I suppose that makes Stellaris a great deal assuming you have nothing better going on in your life. I thought if I got to the end, there might be a big pay-off, like a cutscene or a memorial to all of myAt the fastest speed, a game of Stellaris on a small map will take 16.67 hours. (Big thank you to my son for running those numbers.) My first real game of Stellaris took me over 40 hours. I suppose that makes Stellaris a great deal assuming you have nothing better going on in your life. I thought if I got to the end, there might be a big pay-off, like a cutscene or a memorial to all of my space empire's achievement. There weren't. The game just says "victory" and that's it.

    If I am to be totally fair, I have to let you know that you can adjust the game settings to make games go quicker. Choose the smallest, fastest tech improvements, and earlier events. Even so, Stellaris has long stretches where you have nothing to do while you wait for your workers to make more resources or science ships to scan objects. Then you hit pause so you don't lose time versus the computer opponents, and thus turn Stellaris into a kind of turn based game like Civilization. (Though even in the heyday of Civilization 2, games would never take more than 40 hours to play.)

    Back in Mass Effect days, I might have marveled at the diversity of star systems and the sci-fi storylines built into the game. Times have changed, and with games like "No Man's Sky" that let me explore a galaxy in first person, I find look and feel of the game to be uninteresting. The voice options of the a.i. assistant are nice. The planet destroying Colossus is also good fun. The giant space battles are kind of "meh" when the player has no control over the ships and the frame rate tanks.

    The strategy game is entirely familiar, and any veteran of these kinds of games will win easily. You can see which resources are important, but one of them, energy, is also the game's currency. Spam energy production and you will have an easy time. The game also gives the players many tools to assure victory. I love tools. If you play as a race who cannot inhabit any world other than a perfect "Gaia" world, then you can genetically engineer them to survive on any world. If your empire is to big then you can build some administrative buildings to ease the burden of expansion. You can dedicate planets and orbital habitats to maximize production of research, resources, or trade. You can also build a super giant fleet to terrorize the galaxy. Play it your way.

    The game has some limiters. The first is the "Influence". You cannot simply take an area of space by planting a space station. You first have to build up enough influence. I don't know how influence is supposed to work in the dead of space. This isn't like a city annexing the unincorporated county. No one will protest. When you form a galactic council, then influence is understandable. Early in the game, though, it is simply a limiter and not an elegant one.

    The other minor limiters are empire sprawl, starbase capacity, and star fleet capacity. You can solve empire sprawl and fleet capacity issues with buildings. Starbase capacity is more of a hard limit and seems very arbitrary considering the game world lets you staff hundreds of giant space ships but not more than a dozen starbase's. Much of the game seems arbitrary, like trading with the a.i. My son plays this game with his friends on-line and they will trade constantly. The limiters in the game to keep the human in check versus the a.i.

    Lastly, the a.i. in the game can be dumb. For starters, if you give the a.i. control over your planets, a complicated task in itself, the a.i. will do a terrible job. The best way to play is to micromanage everything. I am always baffled when I play a game on a computer and the game won't let me use the computer to reduce the tediousness of playing the game. War with the a.i. is frustrating. The a.i. will not send their ships on suicide missions, but they will break up their fleets and make picking them off a more tedious task than it should be. In real war, armies tend to congregate at chokepoints. Not in Stellaris. The a.i. doesn't understand the meaning of the word. Perhaps the a.i. strategy is to exhaust the player with tedious actions per minute.

    All in all, my feelings about Stellaris are mixed. There is a lot of game here and I appreciate what the game has to offer. There is just too much of it and too much of it that is not fun to play.    … Expand
  23. Moo-vies
    Aug 13, 2016
    5
    Game is pretty but UI is not up to the task.
    Game mechanics are pretty shallow and kind of illogical on many aspects.
    AI is dumb. Game needs mods to become slightly interesting. At the moment, do not buy it. It may become good in two years with lots of DLC to enrich the experience and filter out the numerous bugs (that transparently touch a lot of invisible things in the AI the    Game is pretty but UI is not up to the task.
    Game mechanics are pretty shallow and kind of illogical on many aspects.
    AI is dumb.
    Game needs mods to become slightly interesting.

    At the moment, do not buy it. It may become good in two years with lots of DLC to enrich the experience and filter out the numerous bugs (that transparently touch a lot of invisible things in the AI the player does not see are just not working.

    Bitter about the fact most games today are released in such a poor state.    … Expand
  24. Filaton
    May 28, 2016
    7
    A fun 4x game which biggest problem right now seems to be lack of content. The early game event chains do not link very well into the almost stagnant mid-game. UI is also, despite PDX's claims, quite unintuitive.

    My thought on buying this game: don't buy it until you get it on sale along with a few DLCs.
  25. Crimert
    Jun 18, 2020
    7
    At first, the gameplay was really exciting. But I got bored in time. Long story short, I had high hopes but left a bit disappointed. 26hrs on record.
  26. notTheRadBrad
    May 20, 2016
    7
    Well, the game surely is a bit stale in terms of combat. But damn the graphics are so good and the story has so many twists and turns that you get hooked to this game instantly . Any space-game seeker should definitely try this game , Have fun!
  27. Tytos
    Jun 10, 2016
    7
    The good:

    - Accessibility
    - Diversity, Content
    - Graphics

    The bad:

    - Performance (uses only 1 CPU !!!)
    - Balance
    - Midgame lack of content
  28. DiogenesLaertys
    May 23, 2016
    5
    I have to admit, I'm really pissed at all the Paradox fanboys that make this game to be something more than it is. The most important thing you should know about this game is that it is incomplete. There are huge gaps in gameplay. In it's current state, the game deserves around a 5 or 6.

    Let's start with the pros: - Decent UI. In the early game, it's easy to respond to in-game    I have to admit, I'm really pissed at all the Paradox fanboys that make this game to be something more than it is. The most important thing you should know about this game is that it is incomplete. There are huge gaps in gameplay. In it's current state, the game deserves around a 5 or 6.

    Let's start with the pros:

    - Decent UI. In the early game, it's easy to respond to in-game events and inactive units by clicking the icons that pop up.

    - Good enough game skeleton that maybe with a year of dlc it will become an 8.

    - Big multiplayer games are something new and fun for the genre.

    Negatives -

    - Exploration/research quests are too powerful relative to how you manage your empire. Makes the game more of an RPG than a 4x game.

    - Expansion is boring. You have to build frontier outposts rather than colonies because of the resourcing early game only you can't tell what territory the outpost will cover so you end up getting like 2 systems covered by your outpost when you thought you would get 4.. When you finally colonize a planet, you don't have a lot of meaningful strategic options: it's just more power plants or mineral plants. You need enough food too but its not hard to get the minimum amount. Other strategic resources are hidden until you research the relative tech so you can't plan and make meaningful strategic choices.

    - Research is too RNG. You have 3 types of techs and 3 options for each tech that change every game. This is to stop min-maxers according to the designers, but why stop min maxing? That's part of the reason play the game. Just adds more RNG to the game and makes your decisions less meaningful. In other 4x games, it's fun to pile all the research into attack or into more research or into industry and make your empire specialized.

    - Combat is on-rails. You just build enough ships so that your number is bigger than theirs. There is some technological rock, paper, scissors but it's not that well-fleshed out. Feels like abuse when you do it to the AI since they don't adapt well.

    - Leaders is another RNG element. Your leaders die and get replaced. So instead of working towards leaders that lend themselves to your strategy, they level up with random traits and then die. Not a fun mechanic at all. I don't want realism in a 4x game, I want fun and for my decisions to be more meaningful.

    - Influence is an irritating and stupid mechanic. Your empire generates only low single digits of influence and it is used to recruit leaders and build critical infrastructure like outposts. It is also used for edicts which give small planet-wide or empire-wide bonuses. Because generation is so low, it is basically a way to make all empires limited in their ability to grow early leaving a feeling of sameness between all empires.

    - AI is bad. All 4x games do have bad AI but Stellaris doubles down on it because you HAVE to use sector governors (basically friendly AI) when you have more than 5 planets. This will never be a feature to me. I want to control my planets and eke out what small edges I can. Hopefully they improve AI especially sector AI. There are many bugs atm. This may be a forever negative to the game. I despise the AI in every 4x game I play. They do too many stupid things.

    TLDR version: There's a lot of layers to the game but many aspects aren't quite fleshed out yet. Also the overall design of the game makes it feel like your decisions really don't matter which is damning for a 4x game. RNG is too prevalent for my liking. It can be a good game eventually with some tweaks, but it's not a good game right now and doesn't deserve the high scores it's been getting.    … Expand
  29. dragon0085
    May 28, 2016
    5
    I oringinally gave this a 9 when I wrote it for a professional review. Initially, this game is awesome, the exploration is cool etc, let me get into the problems:
    The scope is so huge, and you are forced into 'diplomatically' killing people instead of blowing away planets. Let me explain, in EVERY other game, you can bomb a planet dead, or invade and take over - not here. You invade,    I oringinally gave this a 9 when I wrote it for a professional review. Initially, this game is awesome, the exploration is cool etc, let me get into the problems:
    The scope is so huge, and you are forced into 'diplomatically' killing people instead of blowing away planets. Let me explain, in EVERY other game, you can bomb a planet dead, or invade and take over - not here. You invade, and 'hold' the planet, and if you go enough of these, you reach a diplomatic goal and they give you a planet. The universe is so big, and so slow to fight, that you will almost never finish a game. Its disappointing, and I've played nearly all 4X games out there.    … Expand
  30. axxiusdecius
    May 29, 2016
    6
    It is a 9/10 game before you are forced to form sectors (the -1 because of the unrealistic surface system), but a 2/10 with the sectors. I hated the idea andthe fact it is forced on me and unavoidable. Hope they will make a patch to let players choose not to use sectors. till then, it is unplayable for me and i uninstalled it
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Awards & Rankings

99
#99 Best PC Game of 2016
23
#23 Most Discussed PC Game of 2016
31
#31 Most Shared PC Game of 2016

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
78

Generally favorable reviews - based on 57 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 46 out of 57
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 57
  3. Negative: 1 out of 57
  1. Games Master UK
    Jul 25, 2016
    90
    A stunning first step into space for strategy's superstars - and a great gateway to their other games. [July 2016, p.76]
  2. CD-Action
    Jul 21, 2016
    85
    It was really hard for me to break away from Stellaris’ grip to write this review. It’s one of those gems you launch in the evening for a moment but quit at dawn. [07/2016, p.50]
  3. Riot Pixels
    Jul 11, 2016
    65
    Stellaris feels like two games of completely different quality. One game offers boring linear stand-offs against a tame AI, the other is an excellent multiplayer platform.
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