[Introduction]
LET'S BE XENOPHOBIC; IT'S REALLY IN THIS YEAR!
Stellaris is a 4X Grand Strategy game, so right off the bat you should expect to do some exploring, expanding, exploiting and exterminating. It's also gone through so many patches, updates, hotfixes and miscellaneous changes that Stellaris in 2021 is vastly different from Stellaris in 2016. There have been mixed responses to those changes, but it's really not as bad as some people will make it sound.
[First Impressions]
Around the time the game was released, I didn't see the point of it. A bunch of my friends were playing it, but I was happy with Sins of a Solar Empire. I figured it was basically the same thing.
I was wrong. I also struggled to get into the game at first, because my only prior experience with Grand Strategy was Crusader Kings 2, which I struggled to get into even more. But, unlike CK2, I kept trying with Stellaris, and eventually I got over the comparatively small initial learning curve and made my way up the rest of the learning curve.
In short: don't be deterred, Stellaris is sufficiently easy to learn that it can serve as a gateway into the Grand Strategy genre of games.
[Development]
Revealed in 2015 and released in 2016, Stellaris has had a long development cycle.
Now, we don't know when work on the game began, so naturally I'm not saying this because development from conception to release took a long time. Rather, I'm saying it because Stellaris is, practically speaking, still being developed.
To the dismay of some, there have been many total overhauls between 2016 and 2021 that fundamentally changed how the game plays. The original release barely resembles the current build, and certainly played nothing like it save for some very broad strokes.
General notions of population growth, infrastructure development, colonizing new planets, expanding borders and so on and so forth never changed. What did change is how exactly players go about interacting with these elements.
In total, there have been 62 patches (by my count), 17 of them major. 8 of those major patches were substantial enough that they can be considered literal gamechangers. Fortunately, perhaps in reaction to the aforementioned dismay from parts of the player base, Paradox have opted to make it possible for players to roll back to earlier versions of the game through the Steam client.
To be clear: Paradox really didn't have to do this, but they did it anyway. It warrants mentioning that they went the extra mile to accommodate people who weren't fond of the overhauls, and while those older versions are obviously no longer in development, the fact that they're available at all is a sign of commitment to the fans.
Finally, it should go without saying that Stellaris still has its share of problems, despite the developers perpetually working to fix bugs and improve the game. The biggest issue, which may(!) have been fixed with the most recent major patch, has always been late game performance due to the sheer amount of pops that have to be tracked by the game. There are work-arounds, such as simply playing in a smaller galaxy with less habitable planets and fewer factions, but that's no solution for folks who want bigger game worlds.
[Game Mechanics]
What with this being a 4X game, most of your time will be spent exploring the galaxy, expanding your territory, exploiting resources under your control and exterminating any opposition. Kind of. Two of those are optional. You don't really need to expand much if you'd rather play a tall build (small highly optimised territory) than wide (grab as much land as you can and then some). You don't have to exterminate anyone either, because you can have a pacifist government.
Speaking of government, that's one of the first things you'll probably want to do: create your own custom empire. Sure, there are some default ones with decent flavor and variety to them, but half the fun is designing your own faction. Species, traits, government type, home world and origin are all customisable elements, in addition to city/ship aesthetic, name lists and flag design.
Regardless of your empire and the settings chosen for your galaxy, you'll most likely want to get exploring and exploiting pretty quickly. Send out science ships to survey systems and have construction ships build mining and research stations. It can be a slow start, particularly if you have traits that reduce population growth.
As your population grows, you'll want to provide housing and employment, for both their benefit and yours. Unemployed pops will reduce stability and increase crime unless you provide adequately high living standards, and homeless pops will definitely be unhappy. More jobs generally means more resources, which means more improvements to the infrastructure.
Even if you don't expand much, it's vital that you maintain growth across all resources, or at least maintain a substantial supply until you can create growth. This is particularly important when it comes to industries that consume resources to produce other resources, such as fabricators that turn minerals into either alloys or consumer goods.
This of course means that you have to balance the infrastructure of individual planets as well as your empire at large. It's fine if a planet has a deficit in, for example, food production, so long as other planets pick up the slack. It's also important to take the three strata into account: rulers, specialists and workers.
Generally speaking, if a specialist job opens up, then a worker pop will move to fill it, so bursts of sudden development can be detrimental, because that worker pop might have been providing food or energy in their previous position, which is now empty. When this happens, you'll have to wait for population growth to fill the position. That, or resettle some folks from another planet, but doing so isn't free.
Inevitably, you'll run into alien empires. Depending on your cultural inclinations, this might either be a joyous event or a disaster. The same is true for the aliens. However, before any kind of diplomatic action can be taken, you'll have to establish first contact. How this is achieved may positively or negatively affect your relationship with other empires once communications are finally established.
Afterwards, your interactions can range from hostile to friendly to completely uninterested. Naturally, hostile interactions largely involve insults, territorial claims and outright war, while friendly interactions are centered around trade, embassies and various pacts and agreements. Provided you have the associated DLC, diplomacy will eventually expand to the point that a galactic community is created. Think of it as a sort of UN in space, with all that this entails.
War, of course, largely revolves around territorial expansion and planetary invasion. Or just planetary bombardment. Or, if you have the appropriate DLC, outright planetary destruction. Combat is a fairly straight-forward affair. You design ships, then you build ships, then you send ships at the enemy. It plays out automatically in real time and involves precisely zero tactical interaction on the player's part; you only make strategic decisions, i.e. when and where to move the fleet(s), who leads them in battle, what ships they're made of and how those ships are equipped.
Once enough time has passed, an end-game crisis will appear. There are several of these, ranging from interdimensional invasion to galactic AI uprising, but all of them present an immediate threat to the galaxy in one way or another. Although dealing with the crisis can take anywhere between an afternoon and several decades depending on the circumstances under which it emerges, you are effectively in the final stretch of the game at this point.
Once the crisis is defeated, whichever empire has the highest "victory score" will win the game. You don't really have to care much about this, because winning or losing the game doesn't mean you can't keep playing after the fact. The galaxy is still around, and so is everyone in it.
Well, unless you blow it up, which is possible with the Nemesis DLC.
You might have noticed by now that I've mentioned a number of DLCs. That's because Stellaris is a Paradox game, and consequently has 14 of them of varying quality, usefulness and impact. The base game is perfectly serviceable in and of itself, but certain DLCs do add quite a bit to the game. In my opinion, these are: Federations, Nemesis, Megacorp, Utopia, Apocalypse and Synthetic Dawn. The rest, frankly, are hit or miss. In any event, I caution you to research the individual DLCs and what they contribute to your experience before purchasing.
Additionally, Stellaris has excellent mod support, which is embraced wholesale by the developers.
[Graphics]
It's a space game.
You'll be looking at space a lot.
In fact, more often than not, you'll probably be looking at a galactic map and borders between empires.
Stellaris is, in its own way, a beautiful game. Many systems have various backdrops and astral phenomena in them. Planets, especially inhabited planets, are fairly detailed for what they are. It's not necessarily jaw-dropping, but what's there is solid and fits the general aesthetic of being in space.
Colors are generally dark or muted. You'll never really come across anything that might be described as blinding, and the reason for this is simple: you're gonna be looking at this for extended periods, so anything that's hard on your eyes is gonna make it an unpleasant experience to play Stellaris. With long sessions in mind, it's very welcome that the game doesn't stab your retinas with bright flashes.
As for the UI itself, it's fairly straight-forward and easy to navigate once you get into the swing of things, although you may occasionally encounter some doomscrolling. This mostly occurs when you end up colonising many planets or building 12 science ships or somesuch.
The graphics are fine. There's really not much else to say. There used to be some visual glitches, but as far as I'm aware, they've all been fixed by now.
[Story]
Here's where your imagination shines. Or doesn't.
Because on the one hand, there's literally nothing stopping you from creating an expansive universe with a homebrew setting and alien races and empires who all have complex cultures and unique motivations on the galactic scene.
I know, because some people even make Youtube videos about this stuff.
But beyond what you cook up yourself, there's very little in the way of story. Certain events are always the same, and the background for each crisis is also always the same, but the real story is how the story of your particular galaxy unfolds. This is doubly true for multiplayer.
[Pros]
- Base game is perfectly serviceable by itself
- Empire creator offers substantial variety in potential custom empires
- Great replayability
- Exceptional mod support
[Cons]
- Base game is missing some of the cooler features in the game
- Paradox's DLC policy (all expansions combined cost around $170)
- Can be hard to get into
[Conclusion]
I've played a lot of Stellaris. 906.6 hours according to Steam, as of writing. Suffice it to say that I'm probably a little bit biased, because I've been returning to it every now and then for years. It's not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a game with dedicated developers, fans and modders.
In fact, as it happens, much of my playtime has been with mods installed, and while ensuring compatibility can be a pain when you have a hundred of the things active, it's a lot of fun. Stellaris mods allow you to do some crazy shit, and to showcase that, every screenshot in this review has been from a modded game.
The folks that ought to know have told us how it's got to be. Moral compass optional.
/DUX
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