Stellaris

Hate the 4.0+ update, but the earlier versions of this game are great. I have 130+ hours and I’ve just barely scratched the surface of what you can do Just reminding everyone you can easily play earlier versions of the game: settings (in the game’s library page) -> properties -> betas -> then pick whatever version you want to play

I dont understand anything at all that is going on, but the sheer storytelling aspects plus just how hard it goes on the sci fi brings me back every time. I'm not a 4x games guy. Man i dont even know if this game is good compared to other 4x games. But I know I boot it up and then five hours are gone without me even noticing, and the soundtrack is good. So here is a positive but very useless review from someone who doesn't know anything about the genre. I am having fun.

Stellaris used to be a wonderful toy. But then it took an arrow in the knee. The pointy end of that arrow even has a name: it's "Four Point Zero", aka the Phoenix update. With all the recent DLCs of questionable quality the game has become a soggy, blobby mess of brilliant ideas that look good on paper, but require absurd amount of developer effort to implement properly. The growing complexity of the game internals and the perceivable difficulty of keeping it all from blowing itself apart doesn't discourage Paradox Interactive; it is not a secret that in a publicly traded company, the money must flow, as investors expect and demand. If you want to see if stacking up features without breaking the game is possible, look up Hello Games. Every update after NMS 1.0 was an actual phoenix rising from the ashes. Not surprisingly, HG is a privately held company.

I've own Stellaris for about 10 years now, got almost every DLC and played more than 1.5k hours in single and multi player. I'm fine with Paradox' DLC policy, I generally love the game for its replayability and among the Paradox grand strategy portfolio this is one of the easier games to learn. I can really lose myself in the RP, I enjoy the mechanics and the story generation. I can even deal with the late game being ridiculously slow. But the 4.0 update brought game breaking bugs that still haven't been resolved. For me what broke the camel's back was that in every playthrough suddenly my ship upkeep spirals out of control without any logical explanation. I'm well within my fleet limit, have no empire modifiers to explain the cost and still energy and alloy upkeep are far beyond what my empire can compensate even through trade. Deleting all my fleets doesn't have the slightest impact on upkeep cost. How a company can release such a broken update is beyond my wildest imagination. Right now I cannot recommend Stellaris at all. It's in a broken state. I can only hope they fix it quickly and if so I'll update my review.

Stellaris is a good game especially for anyone who likes strategy games/plays other paradox games and also appreciate sci-fi. I like Stellaris because it can also somewhat be how you want it to be, it can be a very difficult and intense campaign, conquering each corner of the galaxy, or you can literally just chill out as some peaceful communist fish and do nothing because this game has an endless barrage of things to keep you occupied. There’s always achievement hunting as well, if you get too bored. The modding scene is also endless and ranges from great quality of life to total overhauls. That being said, Stellaris at its core is somewhat barren and some DLC are just essential. I’ve grown accustomed to having all the DLC and buying them when they come out, but it puts a drain on your wallet and you know the dlc is problematic when there’s a subscription “pass” for it. I like the developers of this game and appreciate their visions but as of the most recent major patch and dlc, it’s in a pretty undesirable state. I don’t think that’s a developer issue really, but probably just paradox greed trying to pump out as much $20-$30 dlc as fast as possible. The most recent dlc (biogenesis) was cool but unfortunately a lot was broken at launch and that was alongside the free 4.0 patch which killed my interest by breaking it further. The AI became idiotic and un-fun to play with and despite having a decent PC the game ran so much worse compared to the previous patch, which was bad because Stellaris has always had bad performance (esp. in late game) and the devs promised to fix it in the newest patch, but it became so much worse. By performance issues, I don’t mean frame rate but rather just how slow the game runs, which is bad when before a game would already take multiple hours and realistically couldn’t be finished in one sitting. After 20+ patches and months later since then, it’s still not how it was promised. You can certainly just wait on this game and it’ll probably improve more, but unless there’s something new to happen I think it’ll take easily a year. If you want to revert to the old update from when it was at least playable, you can do that too, although personally I want to try the new content that I paid money for already. The games core mechanics are definitely improved after the 4.0 update and I think are a lot more intuitive for new players, even if they still have some issues to work out. If you want to try it now then just get the game on sale for as cheap as possible and get the main dlc, i.e. utopia. If you like it more then consider picking up more dlc. Like I said first though, I do like this game and I’d give it a positive recommendation, bbuuut I want to see it improve over whatever this is now. I feel like I’ve waited too long for it to improve and was rather scammed, and am now getting frustrated. I’ll keep checking up on Stellaris and once I think it’s in a good spot I’ll change the review and probably double my playtime. But overall, not a great idea to start now, maybe check back in a little while.

Stellaris is a real time pausing-simulator, where you balance spreadsheets and get stressed about it even when you are not playing. You will got sleep and imagine games you have yet to play. You will send hours making empires to appear in custom games and will be surprised how much they evolve in just a few decades organically. Stellaris is a game where you create the lore as you go along, you role play as you wish and you are not afraid of failure, its apart of the design. Your civilizations will tell grand stories through mechanics you don't understand and the primal impulse to build wide or build vertically, to make big number go up. For the most part, it is a very simple game. You survey, you research, you build and you utilize what you research. Meet aliens! Fuck them or kill them. Meet aliens of an even lesser evolutionary stature! Observe them, enslave them, modify them or uplift them, or fuck them or kill them. As one of the in-game council-agendas states, the possibilities are infinite. It is impossible to comprehensibly even write anything coherent about how this game works and how it plays, so instead, my review will be my first two playthroughs as of now. No mods, completely vanilla with most of the DLCs. I bought the original game for virtually free awhile ago and all the DLCs on sale. I also recommend taking your time with building up the DLCs over several sales, rather than jumping in all at once. The amount of content and overwhelming mechanics will be rough for the first 11 hours, but after that, you will know how to play (mostly) and the fundamentals will be second nature. Everything after that is up to you and the self imposed limitations of your journey. [b]Hadedeshian Hegemony[/b] The fox-faced aliens are repugnant, decadent and operate under a military dictatorship, while ironically, very barely knowing how to actually utilize militarized ships for the first centuries of their existence on the galactic stage. They expanded quickly in their corner of the Galaxy and they had the added benefit of having a start as an imperial fiefdom under an acting hegemon. The goat faced mammals ran a theocratic alliance of other furry losers and this has given us a permanent taste for spite. They have subjugated us once, but in the future, all of their stuff will be ours. But first, we build colonies, colony ships and have a small fleet but a capable one. Despite being ran by a junta, we are actually very science motivated and nearly isolationist once the border expansion operations ceased. By coincidence, this first playthrough was bound to be the most complicated and overwhelming. On the other side of the galaxy, another empire started as a hegemon. Within the first century, we were the scientific, astral-rift exploring dictatorship and autocracy arm of the Federation. We ignored all their laws, contributed the least, yet whenever we were elected president of the Stellar Pact Federation, we increasingly made it more utilitarian and stratocratic. All while utilizing the Federation's massive defense Fleet's for our nefarious wars. Among them, fighting the evil fungus people and also our former hegemons, that we broke away from. We carved into them good, landing on planets, outright destroying and rebuilding others. All while having many slaves. So many slaves. We were the only free mammals in the stellar pact. Outside of a few patches of dissonant rebel forces from the former goat-faced theocracy, we are surrounded by psionic squid people (our best friends) and multiple races of synthetics. The robots are sort of a problem, they have massive amounts of space, massive tech and massive populations and many of them have a gestalt consciousness. And now, we are no longer small dogs in a big pond, we deserve better than to be the hook for the fisherman, impaling the mouths of these stupid fish. Just as we are about to leave, we extend our presidency to 40 years for fun. We are the Russian Federation of space. The Galactic Pact on the other side of the Galaxy decides that its mold people are way better than our subjugated fungus people and robots. It is genocide time. We lead the charge in what is effectively the firsts galactic war. Two massive federations, composed of huge, efficient, utopian first-rate militaries, are now fighting a 76 year war. It takes years to even fly into each other's systems, even when guided by relays. This war of attraction is only brokered by the sure amount of ship losses, in the tens of thousands for both sides. We broke our backs for the Federation and now the robots dominate the elections! Fine! We leave the Federation and now we are enemies of all synthetic life. Us! The backbone of science, all on the backs of a statist, stratocratic military regime! So naturally, we go prove we don't need any alliance. We are so big and powerful, we can fight whoever we want and win. In fact, we start taking over our northern neighbors decade by decade. We have one last goat-face empire to conquer. Remember us? You made us pay a lot of taxes and we didn't have the coziest of citizenship benefits, now we are going to ensure you are all serving us fast food until your fur turns grey. But oh, whoops, they happened to join a pact with our arch nemesis, the second federation across the Galaxy. That is fine, we want all of your stuff anyways. And in the process of invading the fungus people again on the side, we start a war against the Federation we were fundamental in building. 40 years of service, turning the federation into a galactic superpower and now we have to dismantle it, ship by ship. RIP rust buckets, we have our own automated work force, we will melt down your tin bodies for our bullets. We only want organic slaves. It was devastating, we made it 2500 and the war ended with a permanent stalement. We are no longer in the top 10, but neither are our enemies. We might not be the best empire, but we fundamentally built a superpower and then spent a century dismantling two. All because we wanted the goats to be wiped out. And to my surprise, what was the diabolic force behind the Galaxy far away? A splinter group of traders, a pact of goatfaces. If the end game lag wasn't so crippling on even a medium galaxy, you know that I would be renewing this endless revancholist revenge war. But for now, even our slaves live in a utopia. [b]The Cluster Prime[/b] A subterranean network of Bee/Wasp shaped automons, ran by the Queen Vexus. Surrounded by hand-made empires of my own customization. We immediately encountered numerous Courts of space elves, inspired by certain factions of the Craft world Eldar from 40k. Meanwhile, the Skorpius Guild, a recurring antagonistic force from tabletop games I've ran before and the Miik starfish-shaped friendly traders, from a book I wrote but never published, are reluctantly my benefactors as I fight a war against the fascist, xenophobe elves. Despite everything, our goal is the complete destruction of organic life, as we put all subjugated organics to be PURGED. Along the way, we discovered WE can become the ENDGAME CRISIS. It is not enough to be the most scientifically advanced empire in this small galaxy, we have to become like gods and transcend. So of course, we do this by eating entire stars to build a metaphysical doomsday engine that will blow up every star in our galaxy to fuel a dimensional shift. The whole galaxy declares war on us. We are fairly sentient and individualist for robots, we love gambling and drugs and crime! All our habitat stations are basically ran by aristocratic mafias and our Minister of Defense even died in a duel once on one. We are utopian hedonists, ensuring robots live well before we end all sentient life besides our own. Three cheers for Cluster Prime! Oh, and my Signalis inspired Neo-Soviet cyborg, mono-gendered lesbian race eventually became an autocratic Imperium ran by an Empress. True poetry.

I've had a rather frustrating experience just now that got me incensed enough to post this review. Long story short, the Chosen (mid-game crisis that spawns with around 110k - 200k fleet power in GA) spawned before mid-game and abruptly ended a game that I was enjoying up until that far. They spawned because a bug allowed empires with 0 visibility with each other to initiate first contact, and my federation member completed it. This bug has been present in game for several major patches, and the developers (to my knowledge) has not acknowledged this bug, let alone have any plans to fix it. This is kind of the straw that broke the camel's back for me, because this is just the latest in a long string of happenings where the developers of this game has prioritized pushing out half-completed content for monetary gain, without the promised playability. I purchased this year's season pass because I genuinely love this game. I've spent hundreds of hours on this, and I thought the promised changes - especially the one regarding late-game performance improvements - were going to come through. Instead, there are still bugs and exploits present in the game even after nearly two dozen hotfixes, including ones that look innocuous but can potentially ruin games such as this. I understand the devs are not Robots. They have a work-life balance, and I respect that. Then, the developers should set a realistic timetable for their release schedule. You cannot eat your cake and have it too. If the studio cannot, for example, release 3 DLCs within the year that meets the requisite stability and quality, then they must accept that either they should reduce the number of planned content or accept that putting in more man-hours - whether it be through more hires or extra hours - is necessary. I feel like a complete moron for at least not waiting to see what the state of the game would be like after the 4.0 update, before purchasing the season pass. Some will say that this is the studio's Modus Operandi, and I should have known better. That's fine. The way I see it, the fact that this studio has amassed such a reputation is an indictment of their dishonesty, not my moral character. All I wanted to do was to support the people that made something that I enjoyed. My only fault was to act in good faith and assume that Paradox would do the same. Shame on you.

After about 2 hours, i can finally have good games with whatever bullshit civ i decide to make. The only thing that will make me restart a game is my friend, who just so happens to always have a very bad time and demands a restart. 10/10 would restart again

Game is normally great, but its in a terrible state right now and the devs need to fix their game, its not playable. Don't bother buying the game or dlcs until Paradox fixes the game, its currently too broken. Once they fixed 4.X to be playable and actually deliver on their promises, then I'll change my review. They've done 21 patches and the game is still not even close to being how it should be.

Well, you have "Sins of a Sollar Empire 2”, "Stellaris" and "ENDLESS Space 2". I like them all. Stellaris and Endless 2 have more complex systems. They are like civilization in space. You manage each planet and its resources. They are more like a management resources game to obtain an advantage and dominate the galaxy. Stellaris has a strong policy of selling you DLC that should be free patches. I believe Endless is more accessible and has a better diplomacy system, you can actually win a game with diplomacy. Regarding paid DLC, Endless is a fairer game too. Sins 2 is a more focused on combat. You play different maps in and more or less balanced situation and you run to obliterate your opponent. Sins tends to sell DLC that should be free patches (less than Stellaris). Cheers.-

This game used to be a lot of fun, and in a lot of ways it is still great, but the game is no longer something worth playing at this time. They need to go back to before districts, this system for managing planets is just bad. By mid game I no longer get to focus on sci fi and big space ship battles because I am constantly embroiled in a nightmare micromanagement simulator. I spend more time with the game paused tweaking jobs, districts, and building upgrades; than doing any part of the game that is actually fun. Do I never have enough consumer goods because I'm making too many amenities, trade, or unity? Who thought this would be fun to do? There is an AI manager, but it is terrible and barely does anything at all. If anything becomes unbalanced than it simply does nothing. Even when I get things balanced, any changes to my empire (sudden growth or loss) can send everything into a doom spiral. Suddenly the game is paused and you are going through one planet at time trying to figure out where it has all gone wrong. Worst I it takes three guides to understand just the UI used to manage planets. This is a game made by systems engineers for other systems engineers to enjoy. The game needs to go back to the old grid, or at least back to when you could automate whole sectors. Stay far away from it now.

I've played Stellaris for years on a different account, having hundreds of hours. It was a fun and enjoyable game. Each update, however, the game becomes more and more unoptimized and the performance worsens although these updates cite "performance improvements" as one of their changes. Update after update, it has gotten so bad that I can't even run this game on a small sized galaxy- the only way it's playable is if I have a tiny galaxy with two other stellar empires. This leads to an incredibly boring game without much interactions with alien empires. Do NOT purchase this game unless you have a very powerful processor on your device. It's literally unplayable for me at this point.

TLDR: This a SCAM GAME that comes incomplete and requires over $200 in "DLC" to play a completed game. ~ This game is a great example of how predatory and disgusting the gaming industry has become. There is no reason this wouldn't be among the best strategy games I've ever played, other than the sheer greed of Paradox. This game costs over $200, and the real strategy to this strategy game is the predatory nature of it's piecemeal pricing. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO PAY THE $200+ it costs to buy the entire game and all it's "DLC". The DLC is absolutely nothing more than a slow drip of things that should have, and in fact are, a part of the main game. The game is not complete without the DLC, to the point where they will download all of the DLC to your computer when you buy the base game, and then you "unlock" it via further purchases as it becomes more and more apparent the game you are playing is incomplete and unsatisfying. This is even more obvious if you wanted to do something as foolish as playing online with a community that has been slowly leasing this game at the cost of about $20 per "DLC" coming out every 2 months or so.

I'd sure love to play more of this, but the latest update broke the game to the point I cannot even launch it. Quit changing stuff just for the sake of it!

Reviewing (mostly) every game (or DLC) in my library, part 256: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆☆☆☆☆☆ (4/10) I wanted to love[i] Stellaris.[/i] I really did. Grand strategy in space? Diplomacy, empire management, alien drama, synthetic uprisings? On paper, this should’ve been perfect. But in practice, it’s clunky, exhausting, and heartbreakingly unstable. And worst of all—it keeps getting worse. [i]Stellaris[/i] is a game with amazing ambition, and Paradox deserves credit for keeping it alive this long. But ambition isn’t enough. Between the DLC treadmill, constant redesigns, and bloated systems, I eventually gave up. If you enjoy complicated games with lots of knobs and no safety rails, this might still be for you. But for me, it’s not a grand strategy. It’s just a grand mess. 🛰️ [b]Pros:[/b] [list] [*]Cool concept. Exploring a living galaxy full of weird alien races and unexpected events should be incredible. It sounds incredible. And occasionally, it is. But those flashes are buried under too many layers of systems that fight each other. [*]It’s beautiful. The music, the background art, the ship designs—it’s all genuinely lovely to look at. Sometimes you zoom out, admire your vast empire, and feel like you are the master of the stars. But then the UI gets in the way, and the spell breaks. [/list] 🚫 [b]Cons:[/b] [list] [*]The game gets broken every couple years. I’ve never seen a dev team with such a deep commitment to rewriting their own systems from scratch then replacing them with something worse. They’ll take a clunky-but-functional mechanic, throw it out, and implement a new clunky-but-broken one instead. Empire sprawl, trade, pops, leaders—none of them have been safe. By the time a system gets stable, they blow it up again. It’s like trying to build a house on quicksand. [*]The learning curve is steep and unrewarding. This isn’t a game that gradually unfolds or invites curiosity. It’s a spreadsheet in disguise, and you’re dumped into it with minimal guidance. Tooltips are dense, nested, and inconsistent. Tutorials help a little, but mostly you’ll be bouncing between wikis, YouTube guides, and forums. If you’re new, the onboarding process feels like taking a final exam in a class you never signed up for. [*]Micro-management hell. Whether it's pops, planets, sectors, or leaders, the game constantly asks you to babysit systems that should be automated or intuitive. There's too much busywork and not enough meaningful decision-making. Even automation tools are frustratingly unreliable. [*] Too much DLC—and it’s still incomplete. Want the full experience? Hope you’ve got $200+. The base game feels like scaffolding without [i]Utopia, Federations,[/i] or[i] Nemesis.[/i] And even with all of them, it still feels like something’s missing. Most DLCs are required to “fix” the base game, and a lot of them just layer more mechanics on top of unstable foundations. [*] The devs move fast—and break everything. Every major patch reshapes core systems. Just as you start to understand how economy or leaders work, a new update shatters it all. What’s worse is that fixes and balances come at a glacial pace. It’s hard to fall in love with a game when you're constantly waiting for the next rebuild. [*] Hard to 100%—and not in a fun way. The achievement list is bloated, RNG-heavy, and often tied to obscure mechanics or rare empire spawns. The game doesn't feel designed for completionists at all (more like it actively resents them). [*] Clunky interface and feedback. Half the time you don’t know why something is happening. Why did this fleet lose? Why is this planet rebelling? Why can’t I build that station? Stellaris loves throwing numbers at you but does a poor job communicating cause and effect. It’s all graphs, no clarity. [*] Just… not fun. I know that’s subjective. But after a couple of hours, I realized I was playing out of obligation, not joy. For every moment of awe—first contact, a megastructure, a crisis—there were hours of dragging sliders, reorganizing leaders, and desperately Googling how to fix my broken trade routes. This game burns you out before it ever pulls you in. [/list]

I'm sure my playtime seems odd. It's a fun game. The devs suck at being devs. Give me the functioning game that I bought.

I like Stellaris a lot, i regularly play it, i am planning to get into modding, however i cannot recommend it to new players due to the state the game has been left in after the 4.0 update. Bugs everywhere, the ai doesn't stand a chance even on the hardest difficulty, the endgame lag is even worse and already starts in mid game

I love this game, and it holds a special place in my heart, but I'm really tired of how Paradox handles DLC. They have a frustrating habit of releasing underwhelming, overpriced content that you need just to access core gameplay mechanics. So if you're buying this game, be prepared to set aside around $200 for the full experience.

This is a game that released a brilliant new form. Unfortunately it has gone down steadily until this last incarnation that just now gives me a headache to play. Its just become soooooo convoluted and contrived. Should have focused on less, better. Shame can't stand it now used to love it.

I've played a ton of Stellaris. I love the game and it is my ultimate comfort game to play with friends (play enough and it becomes super relaxing). But I'm giving it a negative review for one reason, and that's Desync. I play this 'with my friends' but it's completely unplayable in multiplayer right now. I just got desync after three minutes of playing and it makes me want to punch my screen. Every single game as soon as desync starts it never stops and it has been an issue for LITERAL YEARS that they would rather ignore as they release more overpriced and broken DLC. The developer hates you and they'll never bother fixing this, go to the community and see before you even consider buying as that's not the only broken thing about this game, just the one that makes me loath it.

Patch 4 made the game worse. The game has a lot of bugs, poor optimization in the late game, and the bots are very stupid. The interface became more cluttered and inconvenient, it became impossible to manage many planets.

I cannot even begin to describe how disappointed I am over the devs bringing GenAI into this. Like come on, please just hire voice actors to do this shit, and keep generative AI the fuck out of this game. I've been playing this game for longer than I can remember, and was always hyped over every new DLC even if the majority of the community wasn't. I will not be spending any more money on this IP until ya'll actually get real voices back in here to redo the content ya'll used AI for. Set a standard, and stick with it: NO GEN AI IN STELLARIS.

I just have to say that the 4.0 version of Stellaris is not enjoyable. It's like they tried to mash together a whole lot of half-thought ideas and made a confusing and complicated mess out of something that was straightforward and WORKING--populations and the planet screen was not broken. If they had taken a few of the ideas they had and slowly introduced them, that could have worked. As it is, it's work to play and not enjoyable. YMMV.

I have loved this game for a long time and played it since alpha. Each iteration of the game was different and fun but... At this point, Stellaris is not a $40 game. Currently with all the DLC with the game is nearly $200. Some DLC is fine but when it comes at the expense of the main game then it stops being okay. I would love to recommend this game but I wouldnt recommend the base game at $40 and I sure as hell wouldnt recommend the actual game considering the true Stellaris experience is nearly $200.

the dlc is expensive and required like all paradox games they make their money by bleeding a niche audience I love this game but cant recomend because of the dlc

Arbitrary game mechanics, with no 'in-universe' explanation, limiting what you are 'allowed' to do. It feels like being told to play slow and stupid so they can have more of your time and encourage the play style they want from you. These mechanics had very poor explanations, which makes things worse. Wish I could refund it, but it takes so long to get into a game that you can never get a refund because of play time. Even though I own this game, I play FreeOrion (which is a free and better version) instead. It's much better to play.

I really want them to go back to the way things were in 3.7 sure keep the new content but drop the changes to planetary buildings and pops and changes to UI nothing makes sense anymore as this game no longer even resembles itself in it's old form. Just fix the Performance and Lag for crying out loud. Moreover Stop! Just Stop Making DLC For this Game. It's already got a lot of Content Leave it to the Modders Now. Take all your new Ideas to Stellaris 2 the Stability of this Game has been Ruined one to many times for me to Enjoy Myself. Mods are ruined yet again being that some have been updated and others are dead as in totally unworkable and like HOI 4 I have had to Totally Uninstall Everything... All my files Corrupted, heck Missing Data Files from the Base Game. Better Yet Drop the Idea of DLC and Make an Entire Game and Sell it at Market Price Like the Good Old Days. I am tired of wasting what little free time I have fixing games and figuring out what mod works just to play them only to click on a Planet and then Realize... I don't understand the UI anymore... Some of us want to enjoy our free time. At least HOI 4 UI is mostly the Same in all iterations. This is my First Negative Review for Once. As this is Truly Worthy of my Ire.

This is a game I've played off and on for years, I enjoy it and love it greatly, but Paradox has just dropped the ball massively with this 4.0 update. They've had rough updates before in the past but this update is by far the worst they've done. Ignoring the content they've added and changed with this update, the game itself dropped in the worst state the game had been in, hundreds of bugs, unfinished content that's being worked on and updated live, and worst of all, the insane performance drops. In the past you could play a save 200 years in before experiencing lag that reduced game speed to a level that was noticeable, now, in the 4.0 update you can see that same drop withing 50 years game time. The update was sold on the idea of performance upgrades but it seems they're not even mentioning how much they've destroyed performance with they're devlogs. Would not recommend playing the game at this time until they've released a few major updates.

The game is kinda of scammy, with how little you get with the Base game and how much the DLC's costs. If you didn't know better like me, your suppose to get the Start pack, other wise the base game is not finshed.

Playing this game is like suffering from a drug addiction. You feel compelled to keep going for hours on end yet derive no true enjoyment from it. Also, as others have said, the 4.0 update breaks the game. I can't even start it up anymore without crashing.

If you think the AI in HOI4 is bad, in Stellaris it's ten times worse. As soon as you snipe it's capital planet, it starts freaking out and hopelessly charge deeper into your territory. And before the AI realizes that it's capital had been lost, you already captured the entire sector.

Overwhelmed by tons of complex stuff in this game, too many things to explore, I need another life to enjoy it

pretty good game but 4.0 fucked it up for me and now i cant run it without crashing after like 1 hour

I enjoyed this game for a while but ever since the new update where they changed the planets its finally to much for me. This game used to be not complicated and you would get notifications that mattered. But now you get 1000 notifications for things that give you 30 consumer goods, or you have to pick traits for your leaders 24/7. Also the game is not fun vanilla at all and its the most plain and bland ever. I dont know if this made any since but in general do not recommend it.

Yall fucked it up man its bloated af just work on a sequel and stop milking this shit

If I'm going to continue being an unpaid alpha tester I at least want the game balance to be addressed. During the 3.0 years several base game civics were removed/changed for being too good only for the next DLC to add something even more broken then what was just nerfed. It feels like the balance is willy nilly and all over the place. A physic or society focused tech empire is seemly allowed while Engineer focused empires were nerfed to the point of still being a subpar to this day. But rather then go back and buff weak civics back to be equal with the new ones they leave them weak and keep introducing broken DLC

Look, I made an attempt at this and I just don't like it. Sure it provides an expansive experience, but as the game drags on and things happen eventually your ears will be bombarded with "STATION IS UNDER ATTACK!" every 2-3mins, but no alert in the upper left will appear. The game will outright refuse to inform you what station is under attack when you have upwards of 100-ish stations. I guess, if you ever wanted CK2 in space this is a game for you.. I just can't get into it, and I tried. I really tried.

While I had a lot of fun with this game when I first got it, as of the 4.0 patch Paradox has spent more time breaking the game than fixing it. With 4.0 came the BioGenesis DLC, which was supposed to make biological empires fun to play and able to hold their own, or so I thought. And while, initially, going biological and taking a Psionic ascension was incredibly strong and a lot of fun, Paradox quickly patched the fun out. Then, they broke the new Wilderness empire for awhile. They've fixed that since, I believe, but have broken so many other things in this game and made it to where going Virtual is still the strongest and best way to play. I have uninstalled the game and won't play it again until they've fixed all of the stuff they've broken since 4.0 came out.

Great game, sucked up a ton of my time throughout the years The fantasy of being in command of a galactic empire never gets old, especially with the amount of things you can encounter in-game, besides the occasional planet-busting and a healthy dose of Xenophobia after getting shafted multiple times by the game for having the audacity to play as a Xenophile Pacifist faction. (Don't do it, unless you like being bullied by Xenophobic empires, fanatic purifiers and devourers from all directions) There are mods to spice up your experience, and a lot of learning to do, as the mechanics change pretty often. It's overall a pretty good time Despite that however, there are a ton of 'barriers' that may prevent you from enjoying the game in its entirety. The seemingly endless stream of DLCs that cost quite a lot for what they offer, the existence of the true end-game crisis (the lag), and sheer amount of things to learn (not a big deal if you are used to paradox games) before you can play reasonably well. I highly suggest that you play the game for the experience. Immerse yourself in its world and explore the cosmos for peculiar anomalies and encounters. Make friends and survive together? Rule the whole galaxy with an iron-hand? Maybe purify the universe from filthy aliens? All for you to decide.

Go play Distant Worlds 2 instead...tired of Paradox with it's broken DLC's costing $200

Absolutely terrible v4 functionality. My population of workers just stopped rising at some moment. Impossible to play the game. I wish I knew it before I bought a new pack of updates. I have to give up on this game.

Update 4.0 ruined the game IMO. I'll take down the review when they fix planetary building and the pop system. IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT.

I love the rework of features that this game brings every couple of years makes things less stagnant and keeps the experience like a new game, but the blatant ignoring of issues regularly reported is starting to drive me mad and i cant in good faith recommend it anymore until they acknowledge the issues people have, right now its just silence as you hope you were heard as you report bugs and those bugs never get acknowledged.

The best part about Stellaris is the late game, which is exactly when the game becomes completely unplayable due to lag. This problem is exponentially worse in multiplayer. Paradox, please, Instead of reworking core mechanics for the 19th time and for no reason, how about you make your game playable late game, so that we can actually see and experience all the dlc your're releasing. By the time I get past surviving the early game and able to start exploring all the cool stuff that has been added, I have to start a new game, because the game gets so laggy, it grinds to a halt. And it's not even worth trying to play in multiplayer anymore, the lag is so much worse and players are constantly falling out of sync. Do not buy this game

This is perhaps the most greedy game I ever have come across. Like, its actually worse than mobile games. 90 % of the game is locked behind DLCs. So unless you got 500 dollars laying around to spend on a single game, then dont bother buy this game.

Dear Paradox, I'll preface this by saying we used to enjoy this game a lot, and have all the DLCs purchased, aside from Cosmic Storms, which until now had still been on our to-buy list. We've got 700 hours spent together in multiplayer games. However, there comes a point at which you can't just put up with a product that is released in such a horrible state. We're 21 patches after the release of an update that was suppose to optimize things, yet now it is difficult to even have a compete, bug-free game from start to finish. I'm only talking about multiplayer, since we always play the game together at home. Just look at the videos from two recent games we just tried to play infinite desyncs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T67LIZgeLOc&feature=youtu.be frigates upgrading into deep space citadels - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoqSC9ctdeU and these are just the last two games. This isn't CoD, where you just jump from match to match a dozen times a day. You invest dozens of hours into a single map, just to have it eventually ruined by yet another game braking bug. Get your act together. It's unbelievable how this industry is allowed to get away with such half-baked products without any repercussion.

Stay away from this game for now, don't buy any DLC present and future, until PDX implements performance patches.

patch the damn ai already, and improvement boost nonexistent. There is a masterpiece under all this but come on now

Stellaris is such a good game that I had to buy it across two platforms. Stellaris is such a good game that I used to avoid spending money on necessities to buy its DLC's. Stellaris is such a good game that I had to preach it to everyone I met like a religion. Stellaris can be described by just a few words, it is simply perfect. I usually struggle with getting out of my comfort zone in terms of opinions towards games and often fail to admit that a game is better than my other favorite games but Stellaris? It shattered all of these, as soon as I played it for the first time I was completely in love. I just don't even know what to say, it is so good it can't be described you just have to live through this. There are so many diverse mechanics in the game that sometimes even I go "how did they even think of this?", it is just that great and I just love how they are tied in so well with the gameplay, even though there are so many mechanics you always feel like they are relevant to the game and feel a need to utilize them in some way or another, it is truly magnificent. And if you are a fan of modded content, then look no further as in true Paradox fashion Stellaris houses a great library of mods, if you are into mods like me then definitely try Gigastructural Engineering mod, I still struggle to wrap my head around the fact that it is just a mod made by players rather than being a DLC made by the games developers. I really failed to express myself but overall, Stellaris is the best grand strategy game money can buy, it is so good that it could change your opinion towards all other strategy games, why not give it a try?

It's the most accessible modern galactic-scale grand empire strategy sim featuring a broad variety of deep economic and military management controls in granular and holistic scopes. It has a healthy variety of settings to make each game suit your tastes, with options for customized empire starts and galaxy settings. Between the primary strategy systems, and the origin and event systems; it becomes a heady choose your own Sci-Fi epic full of surprises. Direct fleets; choose political, economic, and military policy; and settle new worlds, new to you at least. Multiplayer experience may vary.