REVIEW: Stellaris

Review: This article goes in depth about a game and opens a dialogue about the positive and negative aspects that compose that game. At the end of the review, the author notes whether he or she feels this game was worth playing. Keep in mind that this review reflects the author’s opinion; you may have a different experience with this game!

Time Spent: 88 Hours

Version Played: PC-Only Release

Holy crap. I genuinely have no idea how I’ve spent so much time on a game that released less than a month ago. Where did all of that time go? What happened?!

Crafted by the same minds behind Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, Paradox Interactive has made their first foray into the 4X genre of video games. Called Stellaris, this insanely addictive grand strategy video game revolves around exploring your randomly generated galaxy, completing unique and entertaining quests, and building up your interstellar empire. Time seems to evaporate when playing Stellaris; indeed, the need to explore just one more system or complete one more piece of technology drives you forward in a fascinating romp through your galactic neighborhood.

Let’s start with the basics. Built in the same vein as games like Civilization, Endless Legend, Endless Space, and probably most like Sins of a Solar Empire, Stellaris is a 4X game. For those of you not familiar with the “4X” title, it means “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate” which runs the gamut of what you can accomplish in a standard game of Stellaris. I’ve often been a fan of 4X games and their insanely addictive turn-based or real-time gameplay usually has me staring at my clock wondering how much more time I can put into the game before I absolutely have to sleep. Stellaris is no different. Put in charge of a galactic empire of your choice (you can choose from pre-made empires or create your own with a wide variety of options available), you must explore all of your nearby systems and begin colonizing planets in order to expand your empire. Resources such as energy and minerals help power your fleets and build your structures while the ever important influence resource fuels diplomatic and empire-wide decisions and helps you recruit new leaders such as scientists and admirals.

Building your own empire is half the fun!

Simply moving past the empire builder can become a difficult task as you are given a plethora of races, racial traits, colonization options, government ethics, and ways of space travel from which to choose. Some of these remain purely cosmetic; my lovely bird people certainly look spectacular, but that doesn’t affect how other empires see me. Other options, however, impact how your people interact with their environment and the plethora of empires you’ll meet. When building a race, you can select from many positive and negative traits that could boost their ability to produce minerals or make the migration of your citizens take longer and cost more. Beyond that, your government ethos will play a dynamic role in your overall empire as well as your interactions with other nations. Depending on what you choose for the ethics section, this will open up new government types that could fit the style of play for your empire as well as offer bonuses for your people. It’s all a little complicated at first and I highly recommend reading a guide that discusses some of the major differences between the ethics.

It’s a shame that Stellaris doesn’t expand on the variety of options and give players more information on what bonuses, technologies, and buildings each ethos allows them to research or create. Such knowledge remains vital when crafting a unique empire! When beginning a new game, though, the amusing and sarcastic tutorial serves as a very helpful guide. Some 4X games have difficulty introducing new players, but thankfully Stellaris seems to handle that with relative ease while not overwhelming a player with absurd amounts of information. Do not mistake me for saying that Stellaris is a simple game; the complexities available to the avid grand strategy player are abundant and the AI can be utterly ruthless. It’s just that Paradox manages to present their newest title in a way that offers new players a beautiful interface and a quick entry into their first game.

The AI empires in a single player game all have unique personalities and along with exploring the galaxy, meeting these new empires fills the exciting early portions of the game with a bit of tension. Who will you meet: the peaceful mushroom people that wish to form alliances or the crazy spider people who desire nothing else except to purge everything in the galaxy? Like many 4X games, you can engage in diplomacy with every race you meet and while the diplomacy section seems a bit more detailed than some games of its ilk, Stellaris‘ diplomacy remains cluttered and annoying. As of the recent Clark 1.1 patch, asking for things such as civilian access through another empire’s borders became a bit easier, but the process still remains convoluted. Even if you remain on excellent terms with another empire, they might laugh in your face if you suggest things like an alliance or a non-aggression pact. The update added more notices for diplomatic events in the galaxy so hopefully Paradox continues to refine their diplomatic system.

As you expand into the galaxy, your science ship will encounter intriguing anomalies on the various planets it scans that could provide resource benefits, empire-wide bonuses (such as this floating tree that produced a sap that helped reduce the aging of my people and gave me a bonus to my overall happiness), or that could kill the scientist and the ship he/she/it tried to research the anomaly in the first place. As I mentioned before, this makes the beginning portions of the game a huge blast. After discovering all of these planets and mapping the galaxy, Stellaris comes down to two options: eliminating or subjugating the opposing empires or colonizing/conquering 40% of all colonizable planets in the galaxy. This doesn’t give players a wide range of options in which they can win the game. What if someone wants to form the first United Galactic Nations? What about if someone researches a piece of technology that allows them to transcend existence? Stellaris moves away from other 4X games that give players these options and simply demands that they engage in warfare to achieve his or her goals. While I don’t necessarily disagree that moving away from those general tropes is a bad thing, I feel like every style of play should have a way for players to achieve victory.

The galaxy quickly becomes a crowded place.

The scale of Stellaris becomes readily noticeable when you begin your first playthrough. You can customize your galaxy by choosing its size (150 systems is considered small while 1000 is the largest option) along with its shape (spiral, ring, etc.). You can even designate how many AI empires exist in the galaxy with you and how many get a head start as well as their aggressiveness and the overall game difficulty. The size of the galaxy generally determines how long that game will probably take; small is perfect for a day-long session while the largest setting may take you quite some time. Managing your empire as it grows becomes a daunting task. You can only directly control so many planets on your own. Beyond that, you must create sectors and assign governors to manage your ever expanding nation. These sectors act as miniature empires of their own and produce their own resources, science output, and construction ships. While it takes them some time to get started, you can help them out by giving the sectors some resources from your own pool to accelerate their growth. You can even tell the sector governor what you would like them to focus on producing: Energy, Minerals, Science, or Military. Before patch 1.1, the sector governors were practically useless. I generally began building up a planet and taking a resource penalty for having too many under my direct control before adding that planet to my incompetent governor’s sector. This made expanding out into the galaxy aggravating. Thankfully, patch 1.1 helped relieve some of these issues and greatly improved on the sector governor AI. While it’s still not as good as running everything yourself, I look forward to Paradox’s continuing updates.

In the end of the game, you only have one option: war. You have to expand your control in order to achieve victory and warfare in Stellaris resembles warfare in Sins of a Solar Empire. You can build fleets, assign admirals, and upgrade their technology in order to defeat your opponents. I’m still not entirely sure what the best weapon combinations are, but the computer can customize your vessels for you and it does a reasonably good job. You can only conquer so much of another empire’s planets at one time, however, and attaining overall galactic victory will take some time. You could even encounter crazy endgame events that pit you and the other empires against powerful new enemies such as hyperdimensional invaders if someone researched the jump drive or a rebellious machine consciousness hellbent on annihilating organic life if another empire researched artificial intelligence and refused to treat their synthetic people with respect. The middle of the game seems dull by comparison, but you rarely have nothing to do and Paradox has promised more scripted events for the middle game. As always, it’s nice to see a publisher supporting their product and listening to their fans.

Tired of the crazy AI? Try multiplayer! Having played with several of my friends, I can confirm that coordinating with actual humans helps in your galactic conquest. You can even play in massive 32 player games! The server begins to lag as players engage in large scale fleet battles and this becomes especially prevalent in a larger galaxy, but interacting with other players feels more natural than the sporadic AI. Stellaris also supports an incredibly active modding community and I can’t wait to see what people create. There’s already a Warhammer 40K mod in the works! Woo!

Stellaris has floored me with its craftsmanship and ingenuity. It certainly has its issues, but with the generally rapid pace at which Paradox has released patches, I remain confident that Stellaris will only get better with time. If you like space and 4X grand strategy games, definitely consider giving Stellaris a try.

Happy gaming!

-Valiant