Thoughts on Stellaris? Might buy it

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It's okay. Doesn't do anything particularly well but it's a few hours of enjoyment if you want to go for it. Not recommended.

It's good for a little bit until you realize you did everything interesting. Everything past early game is sorely lacking in depth but it's a decent time killer. I wouldn't spend money on it though.

It's a game that tries to merge 4X w/ Grand Strategy and does an okay job with it, with some nice qualities to it. Ironically, it was super interesting to read the devlogs leading up to the release and not so interesting to play the game.

One of the cooler things about it, is that you can discover civilizations coming and going as you travel through space and build up your space. Specifically, civilizations that haven't achieved one of the three means of FTL; and you can observe them or uplift them if you're sufficiently advanced enough. Some species will end up blowing themselves up into extinction, others will achieve pre-FTL within their system and ultimately die out, or others will survive that and become new empires. It's a nice touch, and gives live and breath to a large galaxy (1,000 stars); but as this guy said: it's not fun beyond a certain point in time.

Honestly, I'd just go buy Sins if you haven't already and if you have, then go buy Ashes of the Singularity (made by Sins devs). Because that will satisfy your itch for a sci-fi 4X title. Which I think is what you want here.

wait 2 years for paradox to fix it and actually finish it.

I liked it a lot, it could become something really great with some more patches. As is, you'll certainly get some enjoyment out of it, but it won't last too long for now.

it's alright

I found it weird that primitive civilizations can go from bronze age to atomic age in like 100 years.

Early game good
Mid game bad
Late game nonexistent

The best thing about it is you can play as cute foxes.

It needs a lot of work. Like most Paradox games it will be shit until it gets 4-5 DLCs, and then everyone will talk about how great it was from day one.

Mostly valid criticisms in this thread though, the early game is the most interesting part.

Yeah I think similarly with other Paradox games it needs a few expansions and patches to really get going. Unfortunately I think it's the most extreme case of that out of all of their games. You basically experience everything of any interesting in a single game, then there is not much reason to mess with things again. Besides the different races, not a ton of replayability.

I haven't played since before the last major patch and after getting it updated it no longer works, which sucks because it sounds like there have been a lot of good improvements

Was shit at launch.
Improved a little.
Still not good enough unless you really, really like shallow, repetitive space sims.

Mid to late game is too boring

Just wait for the inevitable flood of DLC with features that should have been in the original game to begin with, then consider buying it and pirating all the DLC.

I disagree with this commont sentiment that DLC will fix Stellaris. The systems upon which the entire game is built are fundamentally broken and/or boring. unfun shit.

Get it in 2 years with the gorillion patches and DLCs that will come.

Care to elaborate?

Just pretty much everything. Your race and empire was no flavour, traits and ideologies are inconsequential modifiers at best and gamebreaking crutches at worst. Individuals, your ruler, your governors, your captains, etc. are all also just replacable modifers that just make for more busywork. Populations are stupid and shallow, the way they migrate, the way they assimilate, the way they diverge, it's all really simple and at the same time throwing a billion numbers at you that more often than not boil down to you not doing anything about them anyway because the system to handle them is so shallow, there's nothing for you to do. Very little things in the game actually give you a feeling of impact, it's all passives and waiting on sliders and shit, and not the good kinf like Vicky with actual depth. Combat is the most immediate thing, but again, extremely simple and shallow and it was a huge missed opportunity in a fucking SPACE game to not have any formations - it's a fucking three-dimensional battleground without gravtiy, and you ships are acting like actual ships on an ocean. Sectors are stupid and annoying, even with all the AI fixes and they too contribute to the "busywork for little to no effect" that seemingly every system in Stellaris has. The tech tree is a joke, there's no diversity, you research the same tech in pretty much every playthrough.
Every playthrough feels the same because tech, race, ideology all matter so little to what tasks you're actually doing in the game - research planets, settle planets, repeat. Once the galaxy is full, an endless series of unending wars.

I could go on but I wont.

Literally all things that will be fixed by DLC.

How often do you see Paradox DLC go back and completely rework existing systems? 90% of the time they just add a new layer on top of them.

Every single EUIV DLC has completely reworked something.

Amazingly, they're still making EU4 worse and even CK2 keeps getting DLCs years later to make it more shit

Bullshit. Outside of Cossacks, they all just add new shit, on top of the old ones.

Then again EUIV was an infinitely better base game than Stellaris. Paradox games having a rocky launch and getting into their groove with DLC is a bit of a meme, but Stellaris is the only game I considered unplayable at launch.

Meh, it's decent. I'd get it on sale

How is Ashes? I adore SinS but Ashes looks like a fairly standard sci fi RTS like a crappier supreme commander.

Pretty sure Stellaris was rushed out just before the company went public to increase their value and make the company owners more money from the IPO.

I haven't really had the patience for CK2, is EUIV more interesting?

Unfortunately Stellaris sounds 1000x more interesting than it is to play.

I could type up an incredible story of my last playthrough which would be very colorful, have a lot of interesting twists and turns, awesome events, a vast and climactic war between elder powers, unholy forces from beyond the galaxy and desperate last stands with scavenged technology against unstoppable threats.

But it was kind of boring to play