I wish my kids’ tantrums were like that review.
Keep things pro next time, bro
This. The game is so much better than at launch, especially via the most recent patch. But after a half dozen hours, it’s hard to keep interest up in going further. And the random generated races all play pretty much identical - min max your economy and stomp the enemy with the same fleet tech.
Hello from 2023, in which the Devs multi-year commitment to improving the game has made this one of the greatest grand strategy set pieces ever created. Fixing virtually all of the gripes mentioned in this review.
Just so long as you’re willing to pay for >10 dlc…
Even if the DLC does fix the fundamental problems I had with Stellaris… yeah, I’m not going to spend more money on a game that I didn’t like the first time around. That’s not a reasonable ask.
Has it though? I’ve tried a few times over the years, and it’s always come back to being an achingly boring game with minimal differences in mechanics and strategy between ‘races’.
The best part of Stellaris for me was freeing up a bunch of disk space when I uninstalled it.
I re-tried Stellaris and it reminded me of MOO 3. I am looking at numbers go up, doing a whole bunch of busywork, I have absolutely no idea what my ship components actually do because I am just comparing fleet strength numbers.
The story beats however are absolutely great so I guess it’s a great Sci-Fi novel with a 4X grand strategy game getting in the way? I really want to love this game but maybe my tastes have changed significantly and I’m just waiting for Homeworld.
The DLC didn’t actually fix anything, it covered over the cracks with numerous extra content that distracted you “temporarily” from the problems.
The first part of the game is and always has been the best part, exploration, the race to expand, the anticipation of what neighbours you’ll have, etc. etc. If they made a single ship based game with all of the elements and storylines and a bit of randomness, I would definitely buy it.
The middle part once borders are established is lacking. The war fatigue element drags after a short while and that’s why a lot of people like to play “murder bots” instead to avoid it.
If you can get to the end game, you normally already know whether you’ve lost or won. The crisis options are all fun for the first time, but get boring after a while.
Overall, the DLCs have added variety and options to get around some of the flaws, e.g. build tall rather than wide, but I think they would be better off working on Stellaris 2 at this point and fixing the fundamentals rather than milking the cash cow dry.
This thread resurrection actually made me realized I’d never read this review.
An excellent read. Thank you Tom Chick, as always, for the well written word on this game. Reading it, the game reminded me a lot of MOO3, but much much better, in that in MOO3 I couldn’t even stomach going far enough to know if it had some of these same problems or not.
This. So much this.
Stellaris is such a weird game to try and have an opinion on. Almost entirely because of the business model.
I think if you’re playing the just the vanilla game (with absolutely none of the DLCs) a lot of Tom’s criticisms are still valid. Some won’t be; time marches on and there have been substantial improvements even in the base game. However, as a question of personality, the base game is sorely lacking. There simply aren’t enough gameplay differences between one empire and another given the limited choice set and supporting features at your disposal. There are certainly a bunch of portraits, ethics and traits to choose from, but how that manifests in gameplay terms doesn’t, generally, feel like a huge step even between the extremes of what is on offer.
Play Stellaris with every DLC enabled and it’s a different story.
Suddenly empires can start behaving very differently even at the outset. Fancy starting on a doomed world where you need to recolonize and evacuate within some 40 years from the game start? Or perhaps as a subject to one of the mighty fallen empires, with all the perks and downsides having such a relationship implies. Just two options amongst many, and we haven’t even selected our species yet.
Species (and their portraits) that become, in their way, a lot more important. Running into a robot portrait at the start of the game probably means you’re going to have a determined exterminator on your doorstep and all the pain that goes along with it. Their large bonus to fleet strength plus different rules of engagement means you may want - need - to explore an early ‘common enemy’ alliance just to hold on. Playing as one yourself may require restraint so as not to overplay your hand and become besieged from all sides.
Every little thing added just gives it that extra layer of flavour. The story packs that mean that you’re not running into the exact same selection of events every game. The Galactic Community stuff that knowingly allows you to Palpatine your way to despotism, perhaps made easier if you’re the charming xenophile type.
I won’t claim that it’s a perfect game, but somewhere along the line it did develop a personality and embraced its quirks. About the only 4X game I really enjoyed for a long time was SMAC; I loved the sci-fi vibes and have found everything else to suffer that personality-less ‘dryness’ that this had at the start.
Now, though, it may just be my favourite messy 4X sandbox. I also really like that I can include old empires I’ve created/played for previous games as opponents in new ones. The Democratic People’s Republic of Slurm is always a joy for me to run into especially as those despotic molluscs are usually neck (antennae?) deep in a slave revolt and doing poorly as a result. If you still feel the game lacks personality, well, you can certainly develop a history and create your own.
Sure, at times it’s still a spreadsheet, and an apple symbol is just that. But then at other times, that symbol represents swathes of a sapient alien populace you’ve (cough) processed into apples, and suddenly those apples you’re offering on the trade screen with said aliens takes on horrifying new depths…
Stellaris has ultimately been the Paradox game I’ve spent the most time with and enjoyed the most since EU2. The custodian team has done an amazing job dealing with the game’s tech debt and turning it into it’s own best self. The DLC expands the story telling options and, at the end of the day, every PDS game is really a story telling engine. Stellaris started at a severe deficit in that respect, not having real world history to build on like their other games, but for me it’s very much come into its own. I look forward to where they go with the franchise in the future.
I suspect once that I find a chunk of time to really dive into it that Distant Worlds 2 is going to take top billing for my Space 4x games until Paradox releases a sequel. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with Stellaris though, and have had fun. It never met the expectations people had for it, but I think it is a decent game now. I can see how it will still rub some people the wrong way, just like Distant Worlds: Universe didn’t work for some people. I have high hopes for how well they will do with a sequel. The only other Space 4x games I would probably spend time with are:
- Remnants of the Precursors - especially for a quick MoO 1 experience
- Interstellar Space Genesis - the spin on exploration in this was interesting, and added a lot to what I initially thought were going to be small maps.
- I’d also like to find time for a deep dive into Stardrive with the Black Box, and Combined Arms mods.
I still play and like Sword of the Stars more than pretty much any space game ever.
That said I do still have fond memories of playing Wing Commander when it originally came out. And although I guess it’s not technically a space game Descent blew my mind and I think of it as a space game since we played it using a joystick.
Well, you’re not going to get any argument there. SotS is just a wonderful thing, and what happened with the sequel is still one of my biggest gaming disappointments of all time.
SotS and AI War are still my all-time favorite space games, hands down. I wouldn’t try to choose between them. I really need to give AI War 2 some more time, it looks like a worthy sequel but I’ve not hand a chance to really properly dive in.
That said, Stellaris, for me, is a laid back sci fi storytelling engine, which is not at all how I’d describe the other two I just mentioned. It occupies a fairly unique niche and is ideal for high stress times, which is part of the reason it’s gotten so much play.
I need to as well. In my mind it falls into some region between rts and the others, and these days I need to be in the right mood to play with the time pressure of an rts.
I should install sots again, and play that though.
I highly recommend it. I did an AAR of a play through awhile back, amusingly if you do a search for the thread by AI War 2 (which is the title of the thread), nothing comes up?!
I googled it just to convince myself I hadn’t just imagined it all: AI War 2 - #658 by Scotten
Keep in mind while I guess you can call it an RTS, it’s core design is centered around pausing absolutely any time you want. So when I play I spend the majority of my time paused contemplating what I’m doing next.
Steam tells me that I played Stellaris last in May of 2022, and SOTS, June 22. I have no memory of my last Stellaris game, but clearly, it did inspire me to play SotS. I played probably 3 games of SOTS, and enjoy but after 1,000+ hours there is only so much you can new you can do. SOTS 2 was a double tragedy for me. I got my friend to play SOTS a bit, and we had planned to do some multiplayer on SOTS 2, but alas the stinking pile of shit that was SOTS 2 ruined our plans.
Stellaris is a lot better game than the broken mess that Tom so appropriately skewered when it released. I can understand why some people like it but it is but for me its an ok game. IMO and if you think it is a great game, you clearly need to play SOTS, or MOO 1, or MOO2 or their updates.
I think both Remmants and ISG are fine for what they are. A graphical and UX update to two classic games. Soren Johnson said sequels need to be like the old wedding saying (something borrowed, new and blue) they need one part old, one part improved and one part new.
Both ISG and Remnant suffer from not enough new for me to really love them. Although, the new ISG DLC seems promising. I’m waiting for someone to post a review.
I’m glad you enjoy this though I see that you talk about playing with every DLC enabled. That’s a lot of DLCs and buying all of them seems prohibitive from a pricing perspective!
Do you have any specific ones that you would recommend?