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. xxxSMDxxx
    Jan 26, 2017
    8
    The game is amazing. It's really immersing you in a galactic emperor's perspective. And the interaction between the different empires is very clever made. The graphics are very well made. The empire builder and the way each empire acts differently depending on traits was brilliant although there is room for improvement. The 2 things that this game fails are victory types and the combatThe game is amazing. It's really immersing you in a galactic emperor's perspective. And the interaction between the different empires is very clever made. The graphics are very well made. The empire builder and the way each empire acts differently depending on traits was brilliant although there is room for improvement. The 2 things that this game fails are victory types and the combat system.

    The victories limit you to an aggressive play. And the combat system makes it worse. The combat system often feels like smashing a vase with either a hammer or a brick. "It doesn't matter the vase will end up smashed anyway" which makes the 2 current Victory types just a big chore. And said victory types are of little diversity. The only way you can actually win the game is play aggressive which makes non-aggressive plays dead on pointless. And with the well made diplomatic and research system. It really is a shame.

    If Stellaris was a book. It would be that story that is really well made, with interesting characters and a good plot, but has a poorly executed forced ending.    … Expand
  2. BGM
    May 24, 2018
    8
    Its nothing special, boring at times, but there are no other games like it. It also recives constant free updates with actually good content. Ai is bad but with mods its way better. Grab it at sale and enjoy. But it is even worth it at full price.
  3. Chrischrill
    May 11, 2016
    8
    Stellaris is your typical grand strategy game from Paradox, except for the setting. With space, Paradox conquers the final frontier? Or do they?

    The game is off to a great start, the early-game is fantastic and it gives me great pleasure to explore the universe and its anomalies. Once I reach mid-game, the game grinds to a painful halt. Many of the features and functions of this game    Stellaris is your typical grand strategy game from Paradox, except for the setting. With space, Paradox conquers the final frontier? Or do they?

    The game is off to a great start, the early-game is fantastic and it gives me great pleasure to explore the universe and its anomalies. Once I reach mid-game, the game grinds to a painful halt. Many of the features and functions of this game are undeveloped and sometimes not very well thought through. Depending on your mode of FTL transport, you may be fighting an enemy you cannot reach even though they can reach you. It's hard to win such a war, isn't it?

    Stellaris is lacking in areas such as trade and economy. Knowing Paradox, this is something they will work with in a future DLC. All in all, this is a good game with greater potential waiting to be unlocked.    … Expand
  4. Juggulator
    May 19, 2016
    8
    Really good game a bit of a learning curve but i love the setting as well as being able to create your own faction. One thing i don't really like is your policies being limited by your starting species traits as i find it rather annoying that you cannot change your play style as dynamically however still one of the best Grand strategies i have played in a long time.
  5. cast87
    May 24, 2016
    8
    Good game to my preference. And it have easy interface compared with other paradox games, So i don't have barrier of entry. Likewise, there's no need to long tutorials. But I need DLC !!!
  6. openworlds
    Dec 14, 2020
    8
    One of the best recent space strategy experiences out there. It's not the best Paradox game and abuses of too many sci-fi cliches, it's really more oriented to "space fantasy" that a "science prediction and simulation", the options, micro and macro management, could be better, the notification system is annoying, the art, music, ethics system and events are great.
  7. MrsHjort
    Apr 13, 2017
    8
    A great game once you get the hang of it, though, I have to admit it's a bit tough on newcomers such as myself, who haven't played the developer's games before. It has a lot of customizable options though (which makes for great replayability), and it's well balanced. It's one of those games that you can get back to over and over again to try new things and tweak the setup in various waysA great game once you get the hang of it, though, I have to admit it's a bit tough on newcomers such as myself, who haven't played the developer's games before. It has a lot of customizable options though (which makes for great replayability), and it's well balanced. It's one of those games that you can get back to over and over again to try new things and tweak the setup in various ways to get closer and closer to that one "perfect game". It's extremely addicting too, you can always play one more hour, and it's very hard to stop. I only wish for a bit more story missions to make it a bit more interesting.… Expand
  8. Haveaseatson
    Jun 20, 2019
    8
    One of a kind space 4x game built with passion, let down by the engine which cant handle the calculations mid and late game, and way too many bugs introduced with each patch, but the game itself is really a gem, i've got over 500 hours which is a saying something for me because most games i enjoy i burn out on or get bored with after 50-100 hours
  9. umbershap
    Feb 2, 2020
    8
    I play Stellaris time to time. When start to play it I put it at least 70 hours. This is a great game with every expansion, dlc game becomes much bigger. I hope they continue to support the game and release bigger dlc's .
  10. JaPeLi
    Oct 10, 2018
    8
    Stellaris is a lot of fun for a lot of reasons. It also has a great deal of flaws. The game itself is vast, and in typical Paradox style, it has several expansions which add more content to the game. However, even without all the DLC’s, the game is expansive.
    Stellaris focuses heavily on strategy and exploration, and it does these things very well. You start off the game as a space-faring    Stellaris is a lot of fun for a lot of reasons. It also has a great deal of flaws. The game itself is vast, and in typical Paradox style, it has several expansions which add more content to the game. However, even without all the DLC’s, the game is expansive.
    Stellaris focuses heavily on strategy and exploration, and it does these things very well. You start off the game as a space-faring empire, which has just discovered interstellar travel. Your empire is heavily customizable – for example, I started off on a frozen planet run by a deeply religious xenophilic race of blue humanoids, led by an elite group of priests, which co-evolved with a species of servile tortoises. The game does customization very well, and this offers a great deal of replayability to the game.
    The game can be loosely divided into 3 sections – the early, mid, and late game. These correspond to – in a default game – 100 and 300 years after you begin. Each section from the mid-game on, has its own special events, which can occur depending on several factors. I won’t spoil any of them, but they are generally a lot of fun and provide a brief respite from the otherwise bland portions of the game.

    And that is one of my main issues with Stellaris – the “bland” portions of the game. Once your empires borders and opinions of other empires have already been established, they do not change much. What remains is “bland.” Whilst the early game focuses on exploration and colonisation, and establishing borders and strategic points, which is enjoyable; the mid game offers very little in comparison.
    The problem is that the mid-game does away with what Stellaris does very well – exploration. During the mid-game, you generally have explored every system in the galaxy, and encountered every other empire. There is no more exploring to do, and thus no anomalies to find. Thus, you focus on things like research, or (the very limited) diplomacy. Perhaps you become more powerful, your numbers get bigger, but what of it? Until the late game, there is nothing to do, no events to occur, and I have sat through decades (in-game) waiting for something to happen. I generally just left it on in the background whilst I did other things.
    Whilst it does many things well, the game lacks in several important areas, such as the depth (or lack thereof) of diplomacy, the economy, warfare, and of course, the mid-game. Regardless, I still enjoy playing Stellaris, and would recommend it in the hope that these issues are fixed.    … Expand
  11. Inari_Acolyte
    Apr 1, 2021
    8
    A good sci-fi 4X game with a wide breadth of mechanics, playstyles, and replayability. This game is enjoyable despite the regular changes to its base mechanics, prevalent tech issues, and mediocre AI.
    Unfortunately, the game is woefully incomplete without some of its DLCs: namely Utopia and Megacorps. I only recommend buying this game if you can get it on sale with DLCs.
  12. CountCristo
    Jul 19, 2019
    8
    aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
  13. Baltifru
    Apr 19, 2020
    8
    The following was written by a newcomer to the 4X genre.

    Like other Paradox games, it takes a lot of time to learn how to play Stellaris and how to enjoy it. There is a guide (personified by a robot) to help getting started, but the interface seems so rich for new players that it still takes a lot of time to get used to it. At one point I was almost discouraged to go further because it    The following was written by a newcomer to the 4X genre.

    Like other Paradox games, it takes a lot of time to learn how to play Stellaris and how to enjoy it. There is a guide (personified by a robot) to help getting started, but the interface seems so rich for new players that it still takes a lot of time to get used to it. At one point I was almost discouraged to go further because it was taking so long for me to understand the mechanics of the game. But passed a point around 50 hours, I started to fully enjoy the possibilities offered by Stellaris.

    The gameplay includes the management of resources, the expansion of your territory and your planets, politics, diplomacy, wars and research of better technologies. All these aspects have their own importance in the development of your empire. Explaining every function of all these aspects here would take way too much time; let's simply say that whatever aspect of the game you prefer, you can dedicate a lot of time to it and make it count to empower your empire. I praise the devs for coming up with such a complex, yet balanced and enjoyable gameplay. The only element that is not totally on point in my opinion is diplomacy. Interactions with other empires are often chosen from a rather rigid set of possibilities, and all the nuances between brotherhood and total hate are hardly represented in the game. But let's be honest, I have yet to see a videogame where the full complexity of human (or alien) relationships and communication is represented.

    Sound-wise, Stellaris is a masterpiece. One of these games that you want to play just to listen to some of its themes.

    If you are a noob to the genre like me, make sure to change the parameters before starting your first games. Playing against a lot of fallen empires/advanced empires or facing an early crisis can feel very cynical and very discouraging, especially when a typical game lasts between 20 and 30 hours.

    My personal conclusion: the game is totally worth the initial effort required to understand its complex gameplay. A great game with a great personality that fans of strategy can enjoy at its best.    … Expand
  14. Fallconex
    Dec 17, 2020
    8
    A great strategy with great style, beautiful graphics, good scenarios, and lots of content to explore. Replayable for many many times
  15. enro
    Feb 19, 2021
    8
    Really good space strategy game that gives you customization options. Recommend
  16. Medus
    Sep 7, 2023
    8
    Pretty good game duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
  17. thethethe4
    Jul 26, 2023
    8
    Stellaris offers the player a unique experience to manage a galactic wide civilisation. You have resource too mange as well as a government to mange. You also have to be weary of a range of threats. You must also compete with other empires for new star systems and wage war if you must. The game has a lot of mechanics that are all very refined and fun to use, however there is a lot ofStellaris offers the player a unique experience to manage a galactic wide civilisation. You have resource too mange as well as a government to mange. You also have to be weary of a range of threats. You must also compete with other empires for new star systems and wage war if you must. The game has a lot of mechanics that are all very refined and fun to use, however there is a lot of seemly basic things looked behind DLCs. For example you can't build megastructures or use super weapons unless you get two separate DLCs. When playing the game you get reminded that you don't have DLCs by the game allowing you to see the options the DLCs offer but not allowing you to use them, a bit like dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit but never allowing the rabbit to get the carrots unless the rabbits pays a further few hundred. All these features getting locked behind a paywall is really annoying though you can still have a enjoyable experience without them if you use mods.… Expand
  18. Keron_Heruman
    Aug 25, 2023
    8
    Solid and complex space 4x strategy game. Very fun to play, plenty of options and with a lot of alternatives and modes to play... tends to become boring late game, and the DLC politic is unacceptable
  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. Klewer
    Jun 2, 2017
    7
    Overall I really enjoyed Stellaris, fans of other Paradox games of Grand Strategy will as well. The theme and settings is enjoyable, solid game play and nationempire management. It just lacks some of the event interaction, probably just due to it not being historically based and that for me just made it grow a little tired and a touch repetitive.
  21. Tytos
    Jun 10, 2016
    7
    The good:

    - Accessibility
    - Diversity, Content
    - Graphics

    The bad:

    - Performance (uses only 1 CPU !!!)
    - Balance
    - Midgame lack of content
  22. 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
  23. 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.
  24. 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
  25. 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
  26. 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.
  27. 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
  28. 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.
  29. 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
  30. 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.
  31. Maverik
    Jun 14, 2017
    7
    El juego es muy adictivo al princpio y la estetica musica y la interfaz estan muy cuidadas, se nota que han puesto empeño en eso pero cuando llevas un tiempo con el juego te das cuenta de que se vuelve monotono y plano, y se convierte en una tarea mecanica en la cual repites siempre lo mismo y desaparece todo el interes. El juego me a dado unas horas entretenida pero esperaba mas.
  32. 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!
  33. Laer
    Mar 14, 2017
    7
    Y después de varios meses, por fin se puede analizar este juego de una manera correcta, ya que, esto es lo que en un principio tenia que haber sido.

    Empecemos por comentar que en su salida, el juego tenia huecos bastante grandes en cuando a jugabilidad (sobre todo en las fases finales de partida), pero tras varios parches, por fin han solucionado parte de estos huecos. Por supuesto aun    Y después de varios meses, por fin se puede analizar este juego de una manera correcta, ya que, esto es lo que en un principio tenia que haber sido.

    Empecemos por comentar que en su salida, el juego tenia huecos bastante grandes en cuando a jugabilidad (sobre todo en las fases finales de partida), pero tras varios parches, por fin han solucionado parte de estos huecos. Por supuesto aun tiene rango de mejora, y ello me recuerda mucho a EU4, una base solida dispuesta a ser ampliada para llegar casi hasta la perfección (veremos si con el paso del tiempo, queda como un buen juego, una obra maestra, u, ojala no pase, como un pozo sin fondo donde tienes que tirar la cartera para poder jugar, cosa que le esta pasando a EU4).

    Pasemos a "analizar" todo ligeramente:

    Personalización de imperio: Bastantes opciones, tanto en aspecto (lo menos importante), como en formas de gobierno, ideologías, características, etc. Todo esto te dará una forma de jugar distinta, sobre todo si eres rolero y tiendes a cumplir aquello que te propones como raza. Puedes ser agresivo, comerciante, amistoso, liberal...

    El comienzo es sin duda donde más brilla esta obra, comenzaremos como una civilización que ha conseguido poder viajar entre estrellas, explorando los nuevos sistemas, averiguando más de todo aquello que nos rodea y expandiendo nuestro imperio a nuevas fronteras. Los primeros eventos, como extraños sucesos en planetas, la aparición de piratas, el contacto con razas milenarias, otras que se están alzando a la misma vez que tu y algunas en edades inferiores (como la edad media), son sin duda espectaculares, y dan muchísimo juego.

    Cuando las fronteras se hayan mas o menos establecido en la partida, la cosa seguirá siendo interesante, pues es cuando comienzan las primeras riñas fronterizas, la declaración de rivales, la búsqueda de aliados, la posibilidad de formar o unirse a una federación, la expansión dentro de tus fronteras (asegurando tus dominios), son algunas de las cosas que te mantendrán ocupado en esta fase. He de añadir, que aun que la diplomacia se haya mejorado bastante desde la salida del juego, creo que hay ciertos puntos a mejorar, pero se podría decir que apenas tienen importancia.

    El final de las partidas fue muy criticado tiempo atrás, pues era de lo más vació, y he de decir que lo han solucionado bien, y a día de hoy no es injugable/aburrido, pero sin duda es la parte que más sigue cojeando del juego. Hay varios eventos interesantes, la formación de grandes bloques federados monta verdaderas guerras frías, donde cualquier chispa puede ser el inicio de una guerra donde se perderán montones de vidas, materiales, naves, aliados, planetas... Ademas de que siempre hay algún evento importante que pone en serios apuros la galaxia (no nombrare ninguno, pues parte de la gracia es no saber cuando ni que sera lo que se vendrá).

    Y de toque final, las formas de victoria es sin duda de lo mas soso que tiene este juego, Conquista, dominación o diplomacia, son los tres únicos modos que hay de finalizar una partida, y ambas se basan en lo mismo, tener controlados mas planetas que los demás. Deberían añadir alguna victoria científica (avanzar tanto que puedas llegar a otras galaxias), cultural (ser la civilización mas influyente de la galaxia), religiosa (expandir tus creencias por todos los rincones), inmortalidad (que tu raza se haya expandido tanto, que cubra un montón de planetas, propios o no, y por ello seas la más numerosa de la galaxia)... hay muchísimas posibilidades a explotar, pero solo se han centrado en la expansión pura y dura.

    Ademas, estaño un sistema de logros más elaborado, parte de mi amor por EU4 es buscar un reto interesante en los logros he intentar conseguirlo, pero en esté, todos, son extremadamente fácil conseguirlos (solo son "difíciles" los tres últimos logros, y en general su reto consiste más en llegar al final de la partida fuerte, tener suerte/que te toque ese evento, y conseguirlo antes que nadie).

    Añadir también que yo sigo esperando una buena expansión/dlc, pues los actuales me han parecido bastante flojos.
    Uno añade razas en forma de plantas, puramente estético, y otro añade dragones, que a pesar de que he leído algo de su historia y no parece mala.. ¿Dragones? ¿En serio? Con la posibilidad tan inmensa que te da la ciencia ficción, ¿Y metes dragones? Razas errantes, otras que se aprovechen los huecos ocupados de los planetas de una manera distinta (selvas, animales salvajes, etc.), la posibilidad de jugar con una facción guardián del universo, ampliar las facetas rebeldes, nuevas investigaciones, más eventos... tantas opciones.

    En definitiva, un juego con buena base, pero con amplias opciones de mejora, muy recomendado para los amantes de la ciencia ficción/estrategia.    … Expand
  34. 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.
  35. ZetaJiffils
    Dec 21, 2019
    7
    El que no tenga logros estando en modo offline, es lo que me ha tocado los cojones.
    Eso le ha restado puntos...
    También aburre con el tiempo.
  36. Yannig
    Aug 26, 2023
    7
    This game is pretty hard to get started with, but it keeps you interested ...
  37. 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.
  38. 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
  39. 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
  40. 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
  41. 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
  42. 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
  43. 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
  44. 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
  45. 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
  46. BrotherBrent
    Jul 15, 2022
    6
    Thought this was a 4x but it's not. It's OK but don't expect something like MoO.
  47. 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
  48. 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
  49. telefoonboek
    Aug 25, 2016
    5
    The reviews detail how accessible this game is. For me personally, newcommer to this genre, I was overwhelmed with menu's and options and too.

    Also the lack of waging war the way I want too puts me off from giving this a good score. It might be a good game for others, but that was a nay for me.
  50. Heraldofmyself
    Jan 11, 2018
    5
    The development of this game can be summed up thusly:

    Completely remove features that were awkwardly implemented from previous cycles.
    Add more magic power buttons.
    Never revise the core gameplay.
    Entice casuals with pretty(ish) graphics and trailers without gameplay.

    Repeat.

    Seems like Paradox has a weird idea about who wants to play a highly detailed space empire builder .
  51. 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
  52. SomeName
    Dec 31, 2016
    5
    It starts with a great early game, continues with an uneventful midgame and an ends with one of the grindiest numbercrunchers in gaming history. Would I recommend this game? Maybe after many many content enhancements (played version 1,4.1).

    EARLY GAME +You get to design and configure your own space race with a good range of appearances, names, traits and ethics. +You start on a    It starts with a great early game, continues with an uneventful midgame and an ends with one of the grindiest numbercrunchers in gaming history. Would I recommend this game? Maybe after many many content enhancements (played version 1,4.1).

    EARLY GAME
    +You get to design and configure your own space race with a good range of appearances, names, traits and ethics.
    +You start on a single planet with an initial mission and are free to explore/expand as you choose.
    +The early expansion is a balancing of resources and risks to achieve good growth, making for fun play.
    -The developers thought it was great to /always/ spawn you with multiple AI opponents around you, to force interactions (which are pretty boring, but more on that later).

    MID-GAME (you met most of the other AI players and have a dozen planets under control)
    -Very few new quests, with the exception of leviathans (where most of these are just a really powerful mob).
    -Your interactions with the AI are limited to trades, insults and forming alliances. They don't really do anything other than grow. (100+ hours and it has never once declared war on me, even if they /really/ hated me).
    -The game tries to avoid micromanagement by forcing you to make sectors (which are AI-controlled areas in your empire). Not only does this rob of you of things to do, these are also impossible to manage truly efficiently.

    LATE GAME
    -Your victory conditions require either the endless colonising of planets in the system (which is neither efficient, nor enjoyable) or to defeat all other players. The problem with defeating them is that combat is flat and dull, with the only way being to win is literally to have the stronger army and nothing else.
    -You can only become stronger by constantly researching repeatable technologies that add minute stat bonuses to your production and fleets. There is literally no point in doing anything else.

    MISC
    -There is no "strategy" in combat. While you can design and customise ships in your space fleet, you have no control over them in combat. They engage with an enemy fleet, fire lasers and the likes and all you can do is watch their number and yours shrink. Also having a better fleet pretty much just requires having more combat power.
    -Due to the above, the success of expanding and conquering is pretty much dictated by the above: is your military stronger or weaker. Strategy or tactics play no role.

    CONCLUSION
    The game just has too simplistic mechanics to stay enjoyable. While there is the initial breadcrumb trail of scripted quests, it eventually becomes obvious that diplomacy, combat and empire management are far too simplistic to provide entertainment for any prolonged period. I don't even understand why they made some of these design decisions as they clearly do nothing for the player.    … Expand
  53. 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
  54. 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
  55. 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
  56. 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
  57. Analyst77
    Dec 12, 2019
    5
    This review is for version 2.5.1 with all DLC up to Lithiods. I only play in Single Player - I do not play MP. This is a nice game actually, and very much 'influenced' by the old Masters of Orion 2. With 'influenced' I mean there are a lot off things (like Space Amoebas, Space Dragons, ...) from the old MOO2, which is actually a good thing. Lets say Stellaris is MOO2 on steroids. It looksThis review is for version 2.5.1 with all DLC up to Lithiods. I only play in Single Player - I do not play MP. This is a nice game actually, and very much 'influenced' by the old Masters of Orion 2. With 'influenced' I mean there are a lot off things (like Space Amoebas, Space Dragons, ...) from the old MOO2, which is actually a good thing. Lets say Stellaris is MOO2 on steroids. It looks nice, the UI is not too bad, and playing is fun, up to a point...
    The problem with this game is that it has a lot of new ideas and is stuffed with 'features', some of them quite unnecessary. Yet it cannot hide long periods of boredom, except if you want play very aggressive and attack all your neighbors. And it ha neither an end nor a victory condition. It all goes over time, and at a certain year (configurable) victory is just declared, if no 'crisis' is active. The end game crisis is sometimes too long in coming, and the awful micromanagement makes the game in later stages a chore.
    Paradox tried to make this better by 'quests' and 'stories' which you can find and solve, but most of these do not help for long. What this game would need is an end game condition (the game does not need to forcefully end at this point). In MOO2 you always were free to attack the 'Masters of Orion', which were very strong, but beatable. Then you were declared the winner. The game did end at this point, but this would not be necessary in Stellaris.
    Also the game would need more 'crisis' events, i.e. attacks from an unknown source, which you must find and eliminate. The end game crisis (there are several different types, but only one will happen) is mostly OP, and hard to beat. This is fine, but during the game, especially in the second half of the game, there should be smaller crisis events and attacks, scaled to the Galaxies average strength.
    It does not help that I am able to declare my Empire as 'Defenders of the Galaxy' if there is nothing to defend against until the end game crisis.
    The game feels somewhat shallow and becomes boring, since all too soon there is no real threat for your Empire. If you are strong, other (AI) Empires will come to you and ask you to protect them. If you agree, war is impossible for them, and if you are strong (you will be at this point) nobody will attack you, not even one of the 'Fallen Empires', which are inactive until the later game, where they often 'awake' and are set to massive OP. The are gifted fleets and strength which in itself is a bit peculiar, since they mostly have 3 or 4 systems. They have OP technology which you cannot develop, even if you have all things developed. But often they are not very aggressive, and if you come near them in fleet strength they will do nothing. As I stated, the game would need better threats during play, not OP, but during normal mid game, from time to time. The raids in MOO2 gave you the chance to defend your systems and to capture enemy ships which could you bring technology. Stellaris does not allow the capture ships but you can analyze the debris after a battle.
    The game, IMHO, is just not really optimized for single player, and it is very DLC heavy, with features you have to pay for despite them being in the game already. Nowadays they want to part the players from their money for years, and are stinging them along with drops of 'features' which are nice to have, but nothing important.
    The game is quite buggy, there was a storm of complaints lately because of old bugs, never fixed. Also the game has no manual at all! None. There is a Wiki, where players are invited to document Paradox' game. There is a built in help, which is only annoying and no real help at all. Without external sources (posts and the Wiki) you will never understand all game mechanics, which is rather bad for a game like this. This also becomes more frequent and is an affront to the players/buyers of a product.
    So while the game is actually nice and has potential I subtracted stars for:
    +No documentation at all
    +Bugs which I found in the first hours of play, which are long known and unfixed
    +Long boring sequences where you have to micromanage your planets(*) and nothing else
    +AI enemies with unexplained and unattainable technology
    (*)There is an automatic planet management offered, but you have to configure it in a rather silly way, and it does not work very well. You are better off doing it per hand.
    All in all the game sadly has massive flaws, but a lot of potential. It seems to suffer from features which they want to sell as extra DLC, and also suffer from things not well thought through as it often is with such money grab systems. So think well and read a lot before buying!    … Expand
  58. 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
  59. Fokstrot
    May 18, 2016
    4
    If you're expecting the depth of EU, CK, Vic, etc., then this is not much present, diplomacy, trade in gameplay not affected and exist in very primitive form. Race each other do not differ, except for the exterior, with a completely formulaic behavior, their attitude towards to you is divided into - positive and negative... which in principle, does not matter. I got the strong impression,If you're expecting the depth of EU, CK, Vic, etc., then this is not much present, diplomacy, trade in gameplay not affected and exist in very primitive form. Race each other do not differ, except for the exterior, with a completely formulaic behavior, their attitude towards to you is divided into - positive and negative... which in principle, does not matter. I got the strong impression, after wandering through the styryl desert space Stellaris that from the game carefully cut 90% of content to the publication of a couple of dozen DLC.I don't mind DLC that make the game do something new, but in this case, decided not to bother and just cut all that is possible.
    On the background of the above mentioned games, this product looks not very convincing and lowers the bar set by the developer.    … Expand
  60. Renzokuken
    Dec 26, 2018
    4
    Stellaris in 2018 is actually a pretty good game, it's an engaging 4x/grand strategy combo with cool visuals, engaging writing and a ton of stuff to discover and play around with. So why the low score? Well Paradox sell this game as a finished product when in reality it's more of a perpetual early access title. Their development methodology goes something like, release patch > patch is aStellaris in 2018 is actually a pretty good game, it's an engaging 4x/grand strategy combo with cool visuals, engaging writing and a ton of stuff to discover and play around with. So why the low score? Well Paradox sell this game as a finished product when in reality it's more of a perpetual early access title. Their development methodology goes something like, release patch > patch is a buggy mess > have users report issues and fix them > repeat. This leads to a ton of time spent playing a version of the game that has issues. Right now they're pretty severe with the latest expansion release they broke the enemy AI, End-game crisis AI and caused horrendous performance issues.

    So, it's a good game, but impossible for me to recommend based purely on the anti-consumer practices of the developers.    … Expand
  61. meiscritic
    May 22, 2016
    4
    Just played Stellaris and I have to say, very very disappointing. The game has tons of mechanics but so less usability that you'll hate it. I adore games with complex mechanics but this one absolutely messed up the execution. This game is way too bureaucratic. The graphics are lacklustre and soundtrack is bad, but those are just addendum. There is little strategy involved and almost no innovation.
  62. itmo
    May 10, 2016
    4
    First off, this is not a 4X game, it is not a strategy game when pitted against other games in the same genre. This is a story driven space game with some basic management, zero player interaction combat (the combat in this game is similar to watching grass dry) and for a real time game, it plays extremely slow. If you are looking for a Masters of Orion killer, this is not it, this couldFirst off, this is not a 4X game, it is not a strategy game when pitted against other games in the same genre. This is a story driven space game with some basic management, zero player interaction combat (the combat in this game is similar to watching grass dry) and for a real time game, it plays extremely slow. If you are looking for a Masters of Orion killer, this is not it, this could actually be better suited as a mobile game, as it seems to have been dumbed down for the masses.

    The best way to summarise, this game is that is a polished but bland game that has little longevity, very little innovation and very little strategy.    … Expand
  63. Nemyue
    May 26, 2016
    4
    The first impression was F*cking great.

    For the first several hours, I was like 'F*ck yeah! this is some quality 4x game that I've been waiting for that long!'. The BGM and atmosphere were nice. But after that several hours, you will notice this game is missing too many things. Yeah i mean it. It's incomplete. For example, slaves never start revolt even if they are extremely    The first impression was F*cking great.

    For the first several hours, I was like 'F*ck yeah! this is some quality 4x game that I've been waiting for that long!'. The BGM and atmosphere were nice.

    But after that several hours, you will notice this game is missing too many things. Yeah i mean it. It's incomplete.

    For example, slaves never start revolt even if they are extremely unhappy. And Arc Emitter does not deal AOE damage(It says it has chance to do that). I think the devs meant to make it to do something special but it's not in it yet. There are so many suspicious things but i can not remember.

    Also there's no unique government types, factions and weapons. They are all the same but it has different valuables that make numerical differences. I guess the devs never tried games like Endless Legend or many other strategy games.

    Some might say 'it's just released, give it a time.', 'it worth 20 hours gameplay. so i am happy with that' and etc. F*ck that logic. whoever think like that I presume they are slaves of greedy game devs. Since when it's okay to release incomplete games?

    Paradox announced their upcoming 'free' updates. Good god.
    If you have no will to improve the game, just reveal all the scripts like XCOM2 developer did.
    People will make it much better.    … Expand
  64. fredhorrigan
    Jun 3, 2016
    4
    A shallow skeleton of a game, almost every feature is either shallow, poorly implemented or simply absent (spying? what's that?)

    Might be worth playing after a few years of patches and with a several dozen DLCs but right now the game offers nothing besides the novelty of naming a space empire after your favorite meme.
  65. SH1
    Dec 25, 2016
    4
    I am in two minds about Stellaris so I settled for a score of 4. I feel that it is a good concept, but it is somewhat ruined by the implementation.

    The good points: * Very addictive concept * The science ships remind me of Star Control 2 and could have been a separate game. The bad points: * Badly optimized: I get stuttering on my new cutting edge computer, and this is    I am in two minds about Stellaris so I settled for a score of 4. I feel that it is a good concept, but it is somewhat ruined by the implementation.

    The good points:

    * Very addictive concept

    * The science ships remind me of Star Control 2 and could have been a separate game.

    The bad points:

    * Badly optimized: I get stuttering on my new cutting edge computer, and this is months after release. In a way it feels like I am playing on a WPF interface.

    * Cheating AI: When I wanted to fight my first battle, the computer had more resources than it could have had with the available infrastructure.

    * The science ships: Science ships requires constant babysitting. Sometimes it encounters a hostile fleet. Instead of flying around it, it just stops. It is not uncommon for me to have science ships sitting idle.

    * The game pace: I am not sure if I should play Stellaris "offline" by setting up science ship exploration/research/build queues, and then come back later, or whether I should look after it all the time. When I look after it all the time, entire months go by where nothing happens and it is a waste of my time. If I leave it running in the background while doing other things (ex. go outside for exercise) I will come back to find that a bunch of stuff happened that needs my attention.

    * Game stagnation: It is possible to loose a game in Stellaris, but the computer will never tell you that you lost. This could happen through a combination of things, for example there are 4 empires left on the map. They are all in alliances. There is no way to further grow your empire. You can build ships and do research indefinitely and never win.    … Expand
  66. Apostrophe
    Jun 6, 2016
    4
    Just a bad and boring game. Paradox-style solutions to common "problems" in 4x games are generally OK-ish in the scope of games like Crusader Kings and EU, but fail miserably in Stellaris.

    Without going into to much details, for example in this game the decision of going wide or tall does not exist, because going wide does not in any way influence development rate of your starting    Just a bad and boring game. Paradox-style solutions to common "problems" in 4x games are generally OK-ish in the scope of games like Crusader Kings and EU, but fail miserably in Stellaris.

    Without going into to much details, for example in this game the decision of going wide or tall does not exist, because going wide does not in any way influence development rate of your starting colonies. To prevent blobing they add a silly research penalty and mandatory cap on planets you can directly control before making them into sectors (basically vassals with a twist). Instead of designing a game system where the player actually has a strategic choice between going tall or wide going wide is the only real option, so they penalize it with a steep reseach penalty and a roadblock. Does it work? No, because no matter how much you trail in tech you are going to catch up soon and your economy will be much stronger.

    Warscore, Paradox staple system to prevent big empires to just steamroll acros the universe. Basically a limit of how much planets you can take in a single war trough a pece deal. Silly thing is how it scales, not with your economy or military power dictating how much you can assimilate, but with size of enemy empire. The bigger it is the more you can take... Does it work? No, because in this game doomstacking is a necessity, no supply lines,non-existant fleet range, so in short infinite power projection. You win one war there is no way enemy can recover in 10 years. Instead of designing a game where defensive wars are actually easier and cheaper, with limited power projection and effective ways for smaller empires to defend its just bigger doomstack wins it all. Warscore system is just a boring way do delay the inevitable.

    Also in this game you can play a xenophobe race than purges (basically genocide) all aliens. So I conquer all their planets, land armies, destroy all their military and what? I must peace out and get 3-4 of their planets to get and option to kill them all and repopulate the planet? Why cant I do that during the war?

    Now on top of these two Paradox - staple solution that will never get changed and are more than enough reason to skip this one, add piss-poor UI (it looks nice at least, and its good to have something nice to look at when you pause the game to click ~200 times every 10 minutes), pathetic AI, unfinished mechanics, game breaking bugs, broken combat system etc. They will probably fix these, and demand ~100e in DLC content for stuff that should be in game from day one.    … Expand
  67. Gaarq
    Feb 11, 2020
    4
    stellaris is a typical paradox game, with all the good and bad aspects related. it is a complex, vast 4X game with some new interesting concepts in the field. on the other hand, it is underdeveloped, still full of bugs. it is not even worth to start to play years after the release and after the many patches issued, cos it is sold as open beta - modable, but not to the degree you may fullystellaris is a typical paradox game, with all the good and bad aspects related. it is a complex, vast 4X game with some new interesting concepts in the field. on the other hand, it is underdeveloped, still full of bugs. it is not even worth to start to play years after the release and after the many patches issued, cos it is sold as open beta - modable, but not to the degree you may fully rectify some heavy bugs. recently, i resigned to play, cos developer makes new DLCs with bright new bugs keeping the old ones. i fell in love with the game concept, but definitely not with its realisation, no matter how hard i tried (1000+ hours played).… Expand
  68. ShapeLayers
    Jun 5, 2017
    4
    +
    1. Крутые возможности по созданию своей империи.
    -
    1. Ужасная анимация в UI
    2. Дизайнер UI точно ничего не курил перед тем как создать это детище?
    3. Очень посредственные 3D модели

    Вывод: Хочется бэкнуть игру.
  69. Astalid
    Feb 22, 2018
    4
    I do not understand why developers delete wormholes and left only one FTL style. But without wormholes globalm map strategy is sux, cause too easy - u can block entire ways to your empire
  70. MrWhiny
    Jun 27, 2019
    4
    Very nice buggy game pdx you really did well! With the latest updates game itself become much more buggy mess than before, very nice LOL...

    - Terraforming bugs, you can no longer terraform barren or nanite worlds! (Fixed on 2.3.2) - Invasion bug, your soldier's just disappearing without any f*cking reason on ground combat?! - Army disappearing on map, my army just vanished while    Very nice buggy game pdx you really did well! With the latest updates game itself become much more buggy mess than before, very nice LOL...

    - Terraforming bugs, you can no longer terraform barren or nanite worlds! (Fixed on 2.3.2)
    - Invasion bug, your soldier's just disappearing without any f*cking reason on ground combat?!
    - Army disappearing on map, my army just vanished while staying on my home world?? Very f*cking annoying!
    - AI dumb as f*ck, even much more dumber than before! It can't handle the new economic system, don't know what the do and most of time ai rely on cheats! Without cheats ai can't do sh*t! So this dumb ai mechanics and cheats sweep away the "strategy" from the game! Because you can't really hurt the ai economy with war or taking over their systems!
    - So much calculation going on in the game! So that means performance loss (A LOT!!) Because this "ancient relic" *cough clausewitz engine can't handle too much calculation... Now with lot of population be prepare the worst! Especially in very large galaxy with more than 10 ai empire. Why the game need to calculate every pop rather than just a planet itself? Pop number should be just statistic number on planets so the engine itself no need to calculate every pop, just calculate the planet and run the pop numbers as simulation on background... With this method game need to calculate max 100 or 150 planet on large galaxy instead of calculating thousand of thousand pop. Just an another poorly implemented game mechanic! Unacceptable!
    - UI some time freaking out like a maniac LoL. (Most of time in trade menus)
    - Still, there is no diplomacy overhaul, diplomacy just so bland and boring!
    - Don't join the federation or ai will ruin your empire! Like declaring war on fallen empire LMAO. Also ai just spam corvettes for federation fleet, be prepare for 200 corvettes on federation fleet, this is so stupid!
    - Scourge (end game crisis) still have bugs, infestation bug! Somehow you can't clear infestation from planets with bombardment! So you need colossus, all hail the mighty colossus LoL. (Yeah you need to buy DLC for fixing this sh*t lmao)

    And list goes on and on, and pdx really like the threat their customers as beta testers! I don't want to be beta tester i want to enjoy the game but no! Test the game find bugs and glitches report back to pdx and hope for the patch, patch will release and new bugs will appear in the game, so you need repeat to process, again and again! I paid this game pdx you suppose to deliver full product with least amount of bugs! I'm not your beta tester paradox! Period!....    … Expand
  71. Dotasarr
    Feb 5, 2020
    4
    The game started great, but with every DLC, they break something, to the point that now the game is almost completely broken
  72. kamil0101
    Oct 26, 2021
    4
    An interesting game to play on the Xbox Game Pass for a few afternoons, but not much longer than that. It was fun figuring the game out, peeling off more and more layers of the game mechanics, then managing planets, assigning planets' "pops" to jobs in order optimise various outputs. But after working this out and winning a few systems in my first ever war, I did not see a reason why IAn interesting game to play on the Xbox Game Pass for a few afternoons, but not much longer than that. It was fun figuring the game out, peeling off more and more layers of the game mechanics, then managing planets, assigning planets' "pops" to jobs in order optimise various outputs. But after working this out and winning a few systems in my first ever war, I did not see a reason why I should keep on playing. I already knew what the game would be like: a "rinse and repeat" cycle of optimising resource output, upgrading fleets, waiting for the truce to expire before winning a couple more meaningless systems in another meaningless war.

    A major problem with this game is its theme: there is none. The sci-fi veneer is quite poor.

    We know nothing about the species that are available to play, there is no story, they are completely random (in fact, I believe they *can* be randomised). Which makes interaction with AI opponents a dull affair, in which you only care about their strength relative to yours.

    The systems are all pretty much identical except for their resource output and the colour of the star, so I explore them only because I have to, not because I'm genuinely interested to find out what's round the corner (first encounter events were fun though). It is different from other comparable games: in Civilization, for instance, discovering edges of the continent, strategic resources, natural wonders, city-states all matters and makes exploration interesting. In Europa Universalis or its spin-offs like Crusader Kings you don't really discover anything but you play on the real world map, which adds meaning to your conquests: it's more fun to say "I conquered France" than "I won 6 star systems, all identical and randomly generated". It doesn't help that planets suitable for colonisation are fairly rare and a great majority of systems are empty points on the map which you can't do anything interesting with, other than mine them for resources.

    The game is horrifically time consuming. I did not finish my game, I abandoned it in what I believe was early mid-game, to which point I got after spending maybe 15 hours. You could finish a infamously lengthy RPG game like The Witcher 3 or watch all 11 seasons of Modern Family in the time at this rate it takes to finish a single game of Stellaris. And you'd have way more fun doing so.    … Expand
  73. Horrux
    May 19, 2016
    3
    This game should be called "Galaxy Universalis I". It's a much more appropriate title given that Paradox have merely dressed up EU4 as a space game. All the mechanics of the base EU4 game are present in Stellaris. I write BASE GAME because, like in EU4 where your allies won't be helpful unless you get the DLC for that, same goes for Stellaris.

    If you love EU4 and love space games,    This game should be called "Galaxy Universalis I". It's a much more appropriate title given that Paradox have merely dressed up EU4 as a space game. All the mechanics of the base EU4 game are present in Stellaris. I write BASE GAME because, like in EU4 where your allies won't be helpful unless you get the DLC for that, same goes for Stellaris.

    If you love EU4 and love space games, you'll like this. If you don't know EU4, then I'll describe what I mean in more detail for you... This is a "Grand" strategy game, which means there is little to no micromanagement. It's all very macro.

    For example, you can manage UP TO 5 planets directly, and the rest have to go to sectors, which are AI-managed. But then again "managing" is a strong word, it's more like "overseeing". You can tell the sector AI to focus on minerals, military, science, or energy production, and set a tax rate of 0%, 25%, 50% or 75%. That's it, your job is done. Well, you can assign a governor to a sector, for some bonuses. You can design ships, but only in a very limited way. The automatic, self-updating ship designs are mostly sufficient. And so on.

    But for all that "macro-ness", the game is sorely lacking in utility. For example, in a war, you want assault troops. But you have to raise them from each world, tell each of them where to go, and so on. Oh, and once the war is over, you have to do the process in reverse. There are no rally points or any "Land all assault armies on nearest owned planet" button. So you have to spend your time click-clicking like mad to get these guys back on the ground.

    Oh, and don't even get me started on the fleets... Sure, you can split a fleet in two, or merge two fleets. You can even transfer individual ships to a new fleet... INDIVIDUALLY. That is, you have to slowly and painfully scroll through your fleet's ship list, which can be hundreds long and is NOT SORTED, and select the individual ship you want to move. Good luck having fun when you are doing that 50 times.

    I am confident most of these things will be fixed through patches and DLC. But therein lies the problem: EU4 already has "The Art of War". They already have the code. Except it's not in this game. It will be, mark my words, sold as a DLC for this game as well, while it really should be a core mechanic of the game. Plus it wouldn't even be new content, as it would require only a slight tweak on the EU4 code.

    I am very afraid that Paradox is pulling an Activision on us: release game after game with the same core mechanics and sell you tons of DLC for each. If so, I am very displeased.

    Score: 10
    Graphics and sound are great. Performance is OK. Game doesn't crash. However:
    -1 for bugs
    -1 for core mechanics being absent
    -1 for no innovation
    -1 for being a space-age clone of EU4

    Final tally 6/10    … Expand
  74. mojitsu
    May 29, 2016
    3
    As of 1.0.3 the game is not finished... after 100+ hours I don't recommend buying it. Late game bad performance even on high end PC, retarded AI and stupid combat system. The good thing is game support mods and chances are it's gonna become a fully grown title in 1-2 years with the support of mod creators.
  75. Sne
    May 20, 2016
    3
    Unfinished product. Not "unpolished", just incomplete.

    It pretends to be real time, but the turns are just short. Don't worry, they grow longer the more you play. Much longer. In fact, after a couple decades in game a turn that took a fraction of a second at the start now takes a fraction of a minute. Pause doesn't actually stop the action, it's just a temporary off switch for the    Unfinished product. Not "unpolished", just incomplete.

    It pretends to be real time, but the turns are just short. Don't worry, they grow longer the more you play. Much longer. In fact, after a couple decades in game a turn that took a fraction of a second at the start now takes a fraction of a minute. Pause doesn't actually stop the action, it's just a temporary off switch for the automatic next turn thing, and can also take a while to kick in. You will find yourself tapping space twice, unsure if it worked.

    Many little features are missing, like clearing last order on the queue. It's painfully annoying to wait several real time seconds for the orders to be acknowledged in the first place. I cannot imagine what kind of hardware would that game need to work fluidly, or at least make the battles seem less like trying to play StarCraft with someone from antipodes on V.90 while your dog pirates mp3s on the same line. In fact, I vividly remember it was better 18 years ago. In actual real time, and the AI was smarter.

    Speaking of which, evasive behavior is totally broken and it's better to just disable it most of the time. Top tier ship AI adds bonuses to stats but is stupider than lower tier algorithm and will kill your support battleships and you can't do anything about it. Micromanaging fleets to attack neutral targets is useless, as either it ends up annoying you or straight up doesn't work, especially on "alien vessels". Chains of events are buggy in similar ways. Some are impossible to start, some impossible to end. Some undo after finishing, leaving you with confused, passive objects sitting there, clogging up your systems. And you can't even shoot them.

    Sector management is overcomplicated (for something designed to reduce micromanagement) and the AI governing it is insanely inefficient. It doesn't take control of starports from you, but there is no interface for managing starports left. Increasing micromanagement... Personally, I develop the planets individually and when they're half cooked I add them to one, single sector. It has the minimal potential to break your special resources. But it still can, you have to keep watch on the automation system. Ironically.

    War is based on making an OK fleet (enough to take on space amoebas) and aggressively flying around the enemy territory until they give up and cede a planet, apparently. They won't take your planets, because despite the presence of a battle predictor thingy, it doesn't work for the AI players.

    So maybe ship designer? Well, it has some nifty ideas, but the number of available components seems small and boring. Automatic designer makes your ships weak and expensive. Especially the military stations end up silly. Never build the auto designs. You can even save them to a custom class and then build it, but doing it from the auto design will force you to disband ships. It feels there should be an option of refitting a ship to a different class. Essentially, one of the most enjoyable thing to do in MoO or GalCiv, in Stellaris became a chore.

    There seem to be no special ships, weapons or buildings. Maybe I didn't play long enough, but as I mentioned the game becomes unplayable due to slowdown pretty quickly. There are no wonders in this game. It's not very imaginative at all. This is barely sci-fi.

    Diplomacy feels messy, unclear and restrictive, as most other empires will always find a reason to refuse literally any attempts at trade. Except if they got allied with someone who miraculously isn't a jerk, then you can weasel your way in to get the silly crystals you wanted. But beware, from now on you'll get an endless, impossible to disable barrage of federation votes.

    In conclusion, Stellaris is great if you have a terminator rig from outer space, don't care about roleplaying a story, broken quests, factions or AI, and either abuse or can be bothered to use the demented sector mechanic. Exploring you do only for amoeba strike ships, expanding makes the game sluggish, exploiting is made annyoing through bad economic AI, and extermination is something you won't look at because it stutters and you can barely see anything anyway. This is not a real 4X game. Just play Master of Orion 2.    … Expand
  76. Teleman
    Jun 2, 2016
    3
    Very shallow beneath the surface. Any intelligent person will be unable to play after the 3rd playthrough. Basically we are talking about a game won by beating everyone and all the fancy modifiers, ship designer etc. are just there for novelty. Gameplay is a chore after the second game since its less about strategy thanks to random techs and more about baby sitting science ships and pops.
  77. bladex
    May 15, 2016
    3
    this is the most boring space sim i have ever played. all you will be doing the whole time is staring at a screen and waiting!

    you never get enough influence meaning expanding will be slow and long. the battles are a joke all you do is a build a fleet, click on another fleet and than sit back and watch you don't have ANY control of the battle once it starts! most of the time you    this is the most boring space sim i have ever played. all you will be doing the whole time is staring at a screen and waiting!

    you never get enough influence meaning expanding will be slow and long.

    the battles are a joke all you do is a build a fleet, click on another fleet and than sit back and watch you don't have ANY control of the battle once it starts!

    most of the time you will be sending ships out to survey and nothing much else.

    you will also have to constantly hire new scientists etc because they will die and this will use all your influence points always!

    bad design, bad system, bad battles bad game all round! you nailed it with skylines paradox but you failed miserably with this!    … Expand
  78. LegendsmithAU
    Nov 2, 2017
    3
    Stellaris is not a game that I would recommend. While it seems to offer a wide universe to play in with many different options, this is not really the case.
    There is a really fundamental problem in the game's design. The uninteresting big number vs big number "doomstack" fleet battles are just a symptom of this.
    But why? Lets look at where the game's complexity. It appears to be in its    Stellaris is not a game that I would recommend. While it seems to offer a wide universe to play in with many different options, this is not really the case.
    There is a really fundamental problem in the game's design. The uninteresting big number vs big number "doomstack" fleet battles are just a symptom of this.

    But why? Lets look at where the game's complexity. It appears to be in its in ethics and government system, you have factions and influence and such. But apart from that?
    Military, economy and even diplomacy are extremely simplistic and homogenised. Is it any surprise fleet combat is such? It's big numbers v numbers because that's all that matters. Only things that either have a big number or are in large numbers matter. Look at planets, losing one doesn't matter that much in mid or late game. Planets are only valuable based on the fraction of your empire's energy, minerals, or science they produce. Large empires can easily absorb the loss of multiple planets without really much consequence as they represent a small fraction of their 500 mineral per second income. There's no depth. For such a large game Stellaris is actually rather shallow. Things like the endgame crises and War in Heaven (DLC) are fun, but what are they hanging on? Nothing much really. They are there there to distract from the blandness of the normal gameplay.

    There were some major complaints with the game a number of patches ago. There was nothing to do. There were no mid game events worth talking about. The game was really hollow apart from the early game rush to colonise, the late game crisis, and final empire steamroll.
    That shows how the game is so shallow that it needs such events to remain interesting. The developers have said that they're not interested in making the economy deeper. That has really dampened my interest in the game, as it should yours, because it means this problem will never be fixed.

    Other paradox titles like the Europa games game mechanics that aren't massively complex but there's other non-event features that provide depth. In the EU games just having terrain creates actual choices because you need to choose how to deal with it. While income is just ducats you do have choices in how you acquire and spend it. Trade, production, and taxes are all different ways and are still important. You can focus on one, make choices in how you spend your resources to enhance it. Even if you're not focusing on say, trade it's still a good idea to put a little bit of effort into interacting with that system during the game. You can take into account things like the trade goods of resources, how they change in value. You can interact with it with armies, you can scorch the earth and loot places. Trade values change over time.

    Stellaris has none of this. Planet colonisation is very simple; you colonise, you build one of the three production buildings over the entire surface plus a unity building. In the early game you might take tile resources into account but later in the game the production bonus buildings, and things like assist research mean that you should make your planets produce one resource so you can apply the planetary bonuses to as many production buildings as possible.
    You have a farm planet(s) too of course but those barely need touching and in any case sectors will ensure that you have more than enough food. Energy credits are near worthless past early game, they exist to be converted into minerals and that's basically it. I'm quite sure you could remove energy credits from the game entirely and there wouldn't be a fundamental shift in the gameplay of Stellaris.
    Diplomacy is very simple, and has little choice. There's standard pacts, there's federations, but can you demand a planet diplomatically? Can you demand anything, or offer something in support? Can you buy or sell ships? No.
    Combat is quite simple as we know, but even worse than that is the meaninglessness of ship designs. There are a few designs that are the best and we all know, or soon will, what those are; mono-composition fleets of corvettes or artillery/lance battleships (or whatever the current hotness is). Why build anything else? Why research anything else? Fleet combat is so simple to boil down; just like the rest of the game.

    There's very little actual choice in Stellaris. There's no terrain, so you don't need to chose which way to reach your enemies. There's no trade routes so you never choose where to provide value, or what trade good to take control of, and you can never raid trade routes unlike other Paradox games. There's no economy to speak of so you can never choose to focus on this product/component/whatever over another. Even Hearts of Iron has that. Ship design is an illusory choice. You think you have options but you don't really have meaningful choices. Planetary management has very little in the way of choice, and "Sectors" take even that away from you.
    Shallow gameplay, do not recommend.    … Expand
  79. Darlf
    Dec 16, 2018
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. nowa aktualizacja dodała więcej chaosu i dysbalansu niż trudność wynikającej z dobrze zrobionej mechaniki bez aktualizacja najnowszej 6 bo gra miała mnóstwo głupich małych błędów ale tera to ledwie 3 bo gra to 1 wielki błąd… Expand
  80. deadsanta
    May 24, 2016
    2
    A game with some potential, it is currently quite broken for many people, especially if you have a high-rez screen, which for some bizarro reason Paradox decided not to support. Currently on my native 4k rez screen, all the UI font is microscopic, and work arounds listed on site, in workshop do NOT fix the problems. Playing at different resolutions than native causes my graphics to glitchA game with some potential, it is currently quite broken for many people, especially if you have a high-rez screen, which for some bizarro reason Paradox decided not to support. Currently on my native 4k rez screen, all the UI font is microscopic, and work arounds listed on site, in workshop do NOT fix the problems. Playing at different resolutions than native causes my graphics to glitch in another known and as yet unfixed bug, and I cannot be resetting my native screen rez to play just one game.

    In terms of gameplay, it starts out like a great 4x game, but then quickly devolves to spreadsheet gaming, with small incremental +2%-type upgrades to weapons, few ship build options, and zero tactical combat. Having a large empire managed by many AI governors and all your battles managed by horrible AI combat doesn't make for a fun mid-to-endgame, and the emptiness of the diplomacy and lack of engagement with scripted storylines that repeat themselves every game make for a game that quickly loses its' shine.

    Wait a year for mods and fixes, and a 50% sale, IMO.    … Expand
  81. TsukasaHiiragi
    Apr 17, 2017
    2
    :updated: Ended up lower my initial review, essentially this game will piss you off, it'll make you curse at your monitor and enrage you 90% of the time, the other 10% you're endlessly scanning planets and building resource bases, until the AI decides it's time to screw your civilization over.

    Stellaris is that game that couldn't capture the psudo 4X crown from Galactic Civilization,    :updated: Ended up lower my initial review, essentially this game will piss you off, it'll make you curse at your monitor and enrage you 90% of the time, the other 10% you're endlessly scanning planets and building resource bases, until the AI decides it's time to screw your civilization over.

    Stellaris is that game that couldn't capture the psudo 4X crown from Galactic Civilization, mostly due to the fact even nearly a year later - the game is still horribly buggy with many issues, some even gamebreaking not to mention, very obvious cheating AI issues and terrible mid/endgame experience, the biggest problems is related to how Influence and RNG research ruin the game.

    The way influence is handled is one of the biggest crutches in the game, it prevents you from spreading out rapid because it uses up valuable influence, but at the same time - when you don't need to spread out, you'll always have it maxed out...but when you actually 'need' it, you can never get enough of it, this is one of the gameplay issues that affects the game and personally I think the system doesn't work very well.

    Another bad....no HORRIBLE system in the ridiculous RNG system for researching tech, it is quite possible to get royally screwed by a some poor card draws literally possible preventing you access to bigger ships, the entire tech system should be scrapped and redone with a proper tech tree, this is just lazy and bad...half the time, the best method for research is by waging war and scanning the wreckage left behind...heck, ironically sometimes you can scan your own wreck for tech boosts..

    It's kinder sad because what Stellaris attempts to do is over an almost mixture of Command and Conquer mixed with Master of Orion style gameplay, whilst its all highly strategic and obviously has the 4X emphasis, the game falls flat on it's face as soon as the bugs appear. This could have something special if more time had been spent on development before releasing in a very obvious "Alpha" state, I wish steam would honestly stop with the 'early access' because you end up with potentially great games that takes years before they can live up to the potential.

    Another note; players who love 4x // empire building strategy games be careful with this title as it can become quite frustrating, especially early when your trying to get a foothold and you discover your sandwiched between several aggressive species who...magically will almost always hate you and force you to scramble, often turning the game into a no-win situation for the player forcing a restart.

    Summary; Stellaris has (had) potential but being almost nearly a year after launch and many issues still remain, and highly doubt they will be fixed anytime soon. I'm going to assume this title will remain a 'cult' classic, meaning if you really enjoy space empire building games and are willing to put up with many hours to learn the complex structure of the game, and willing to put up with glitches and even gamebreaking bugs, then I'm sure you would enjoy Stellaris, for the rest - I'd be cautious.    … Expand
  82. Corefitz
    Feb 15, 2020
    2
    Game has been unplayable since Le Guin update... tried over and over again.. It's become just another micromanagement game, and I didn't play Stellaris to spend 8/10 of my time just managing my population. ANY aspect of Roleplaying in the game is flat out killed because of the hell that is the micromanaging. I mean.. cmon... changing a core mechanic of a game to fit just 1 DLC, is a REALLYGame has been unplayable since Le Guin update... tried over and over again.. It's become just another micromanagement game, and I didn't play Stellaris to spend 8/10 of my time just managing my population. ANY aspect of Roleplaying in the game is flat out killed because of the hell that is the micromanaging. I mean.. cmon... changing a core mechanic of a game to fit just 1 DLC, is a REALLY REALLY bad move... 400 hours of awesome gameplay, and now there's only the good memories left. what a waste...

    I keep trying to poke the game every once in a while. I still flat out have to give up on it within 7 minutes, solely because of micromanagement. This game had such potential...    … Expand
  83. Nereid
    May 24, 2020
    2
    Good, music, good UI, okayish graphics but the diplomacy is just meh.

    And because the diplomacy is the biggest part in a game like Stellaris, it just deservers 2/10. So, what is wrong with the diplomacy? As soon as you or an AI empires is part of a federation you can't negotiate NAPs or mutual defense pacts anymore. A federation has to fight for their own. Even if there is    Good, music, good UI, okayish graphics but the diplomacy is just meh.

    And because the diplomacy is the biggest part in a game like Stellaris, it just deservers 2/10.

    So, what is wrong with the diplomacy?

    As soon as you or an AI empires is part of a federation you can't negotiate NAPs or mutual defense pacts anymore. A federation has to fight for their own. Even if there is another federation or empire that do have the same enemy you cant defend yourself together. For a federation there are no options to negiotiate an alliance, a pact or something else with another federation. You are just doomed - or you have to disolve the federation (and the AI won't do this).

    Imagine the USA that refuses to join or form the NATO because they are a federation.

    If you just could turn of feds completely Stellaris would deserve 8/10, but you can't.    … Expand
  84. Smiler78
    Nov 6, 2022
    2
    First impressions of a game I had very high hopes for. Love strategy games with a passion so I was excited to play this. I loaded it up, chose my empire and was met with a massive array of icons and options. I have NO IDEA what to do! Just flicking through lots of upgrade trees and options. I don't get it thus far. I have given up for now. I feel like I would have to study it for weeks toFirst impressions of a game I had very high hopes for. Love strategy games with a passion so I was excited to play this. I loaded it up, chose my empire and was met with a massive array of icons and options. I have NO IDEA what to do! Just flicking through lots of upgrade trees and options. I don't get it thus far. I have given up for now. I feel like I would have to study it for weeks to even grasp the basic principles. I'm tired and can't be bothered trying to figure it out. To be continued...… Expand
  85. K1ller
    Feb 27, 2018
    1
    Patch 1.9 and earlier - 8 / 10, patch 2.0 and later 1 / 10. Nice example of how to kill a good game with a totaly moronic gamechanges. Good job Paradox, you are now another company on my "Never buy their games" list.
  86. StrongHarm
    Dec 4, 2017
    1
    I bought it after they screwed it up (12-2017). Wish I would have made my purchase before the DLCs and bad updates.

    I completed an initial 'test playthrough' while reading articles and watching videos about game mechanics and tactics. I then spent about 200 hours on a map and was staying at the same pace as the AI. First, although diplomacy was even across me and all AI, every time I    I bought it after they screwed it up (12-2017). Wish I would have made my purchase before the DLCs and bad updates.

    I completed an initial 'test playthrough' while reading articles and watching videos about game mechanics and tactics. I then spent about 200 hours on a map and was staying at the same pace as the AI. First, although diplomacy was even across me and all AI, every time I attacked someone, everyone else attacked me (no, they didn't have any diplomatic ties). I still held my own. Next, I received a message saying an AI won by owning over 40% of planets, although it clearly showed I had 71/1235 to their 63/1020. I decided to play it through as I had a drake and about a 400k fleet to play with. I went up against a 105k and two 50ks. I paused and checked our loadouts and I was surprised that they were nearly exact, except I had scale armor. The AI fleet had no leaders, and I had two high level admirals. The AI destroyed my fleet and lost only 50 corvettes and 18 battleships. Now, before you start thinking 'this guy must have done something really stupid'.. understand that I've been playing strategy games since before the PC was invented, I worked on fighter jets in the military, and I'm a data intelligence architect; I'm not stupid. I do understand that software updates occur and unbalance the game and it's hard to find every bug, but Stellaris is broken like non-alcoholic beer.. it's cold and tastes good, but then nothing happens... it's a big buildup for nothing but disappointment. I might wait for a few patches and try again, but at this point I would tell anyone who asked that this game had great potential, but turned out to be a waste of time and money.    … Expand
  87. saz
    May 21, 2016
    1
    Good game but the combat is bad. Non-interactive and it ultimately pulls the game down. I was bored after a day of playing. I'll check it out again in a few months.
  88. SoakerCity
    Nov 4, 2018
    1
    This game is not fun, at all. There are so many labrynthian rules, that you cant even attack an enemy planet after a prolonged war because you didnt know how to set the war goals ten hours ago- even though they weren't available. This game is a total piece of **** Its like having a school teacher tut tut tut you the whole time. NOT FUN.

    This game will gobble up your life, with no    This game is not fun, at all. There are so many labrynthian rules, that you cant even attack an enemy planet after a prolonged war because you didnt know how to set the war goals ten hours ago- even though they weren't available. This game is a total piece of **** Its like having a school teacher tut tut tut you the whole time. NOT FUN.

    This game will gobble up your life, with no decent payout. Very far from the accessible MOI type games. Just a series of increasingly bizzare rules. Very ****ty "game". It was better before 2.0. Now its total dog crap.    … Expand
  89. Renegade_Zerg93
    Apr 11, 2020
    1
    You have to watch 3 hours tutorial on Youtube to understand how things work in this game. At first, you will enjoy everything until everything stats crumbling apart without you knowing why because there is no in-game tutorial whatsoever. This is not a game this is hard work and a terrible waste of time.
  90. 113
    May 16, 2023
    1
    Look, All I wanted to do was take over the galaxy like a normal teenager. However for some damn reason, those damn turtle people wont leave me the hell alone. I never did anything to you. We even made an alliance and then you betrayed me. We were supposed to enslave the jellyfish people together and now we will never know. Mark my words, I will end your Civilization.
  91. MrTusks
    Nov 29, 2022
    0
    For the life of me, I can't figure out what this game wants me to do. The tutorial gives you tasks but doesn't tell you why it matters. If you transfer some knowledge from games like Civ you can figure out things like the resource management, but beyond that I am not given a reason to care.
  92. Violett
    Nov 27, 2019
    0
    I rarely disagree with the opinion of majority on Metacritic, but here it goes. This game is awful, I cannot even name it "a game". There is no tutorial besides pick ship A and send to point B - congratulations you won! Very "deep" strategy indeed. A lot of non-understandable options, races, talents - whats all this about? Oxygen Not Included was difficult at first too, but reallyI rarely disagree with the opinion of majority on Metacritic, but here it goes. This game is awful, I cannot even name it "a game". There is no tutorial besides pick ship A and send to point B - congratulations you won! Very "deep" strategy indeed. A lot of non-understandable options, races, talents - whats all this about? Oxygen Not Included was difficult at first too, but really attractive - spent 400 hours there. Here played this "game" for an hour and it was the same dull environment - worse than EA Android games.… Expand
  93. fernando8biondi
    Oct 20, 2019
    0
    Build just ONE army, conquer the whole galaxy!
    This game is a piece of s¨¨¨¨¨¨, period.
  94. megabear
    Feb 28, 2019
    0
    Alien diversity? No, more like humanized zoo animals. How are they so not imaginative?
  95. Karameni
    May 16, 2016
    0
    An unplayable beyond the early game beta version of a game, that could've been good.

    1. Massive lags past 60-70 years. 2. Ship AI is braindead and combat itself is extremely buggy (sometimes only part of a fleet does actual fightning while rest of my ships just stand there doing nothing outside the actual combat) 3. Sector AI is braindead, it uses slaves who get malus to producing    An unplayable beyond the early game beta version of a game, that could've been good.

    1. Massive lags past 60-70 years.

    2. Ship AI is braindead and combat itself is extremely buggy (sometimes only part of a fleet does actual fightning while rest of my ships just stand there doing nothing outside the actual combat)

    3. Sector AI is braindead, it uses slaves who get malus to producing science to produce science and option to enforce AI to respect tile resources doesnt work.

    4. War AI is insane sending single trooper transports to capture you capital for years, losing every time.

    5. Events are bugged and just dont work as intended frequently.

    Verdict: 0/10, because they are selling people an early beta instead of a functional game.    … Expand
  96. Flyingpigm0nkey
    Feb 23, 2020
    0
    The worst 4x game I have ever played. The game could be good if they removed the influence systems and entirely reworked how conflict and diplomacy function.

    Actually a joke. If you want a decent old 4x game for single player just find Sword of the Stars. There might be others out there as well.
  97. Leeeeeeeel
    Dec 8, 2018
    0
    is relativ whack joa... fragt mario ich tu echt nicht haten.... aber das spiel ist halt legit einfach nur bullenpisse!
  98. flecso
    Jul 17, 2022
    0
    Достойна гра, не все ідеально але дуже класно
  99. paradoxfail
    Mar 6, 2020
    0
    Genuinely the worst dev team in the business.

    Outright stopped Mac support in 2019, despite selling MILLIONS of games they are LEGALLY REQUIRED to support MacOS for. EVERY SINGLE parafail title has been pulled from MacOS, because the devs couldn't be bothered maintaining their stupid redundant launcher that literally not one single person ever wanted. These devs SUCK. 0/10    Genuinely the worst dev team in the business.

    Outright stopped Mac support in 2019, despite selling MILLIONS of games they are LEGALLY REQUIRED to support MacOS for.

    EVERY SINGLE parafail title has been pulled from MacOS, because the devs couldn't be bothered maintaining their stupid redundant launcher that literally not one single person ever wanted.

    These devs SUCK.

    0/10 outright f**king stole my money    … Expand
  100. Ghost1069
    Dec 10, 2020
    0
    Stellaris was, until 1.9.1, a very good game. It was on the right track to become a masterpiece. All it needed was some more content and QoL updates.

    Instead, we got a "rework" that made the game a boring spreadsheet spree. You spend literally 95% of your time looking at the planet list and shuffling pops and induestries between planets.

    Just go play 1.9.1. It is much better than this crap.
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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.
    Read full review
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