Stellaris

Stellaris is a “just one more year” simulator where 4 a.m. arrives faster than your ring-world megastructure. One minute you’re naming a planet “New Earth,” the next you’re diplomatically apologizing to space penguins. Expect to spend 30% of your game-time in pause mode, 30% hurling fleets at an end-game crisis and 40% scrolling through the DLC page wondering how a black hole also swallowed your wallet.

I have enjoyed this game since it launched. Through every iteration of this game I have had fun playing even with the major changes to fundamental systems and all of their flaws. With the release of 4.0 this is no longer true. There are 3 major issues I have with 4.0: pops, buildings, and performance. The new pop system is worse than the older one. This "upgrade" isn't like the first one which changed the very old tile system into pop system which has been through most of this games' lifespan. That system was, in all aspects, an upgrade. It made the game more enjoyable and allowed game-play to be much deeper and expanded in ways that were not possible before. It was simple and easy to understand. The new system is none of those things. The update makes understanding the UI much harder at a glance. I do not understand why making everything in multiples of 100s was an idea that got approved. Before I could glance over tool-tips and immediately under how many pops building use or how much housing they give. Now I have to think for half a second to compute all of that. While this isn't much, it is enough to impact the speed of everything I do. The slow down isn't significant enough to cause me to really think about things like which buildings I need to place on specific planets or which tech option to research base on the current situation my empire is in, but it is significant enough to be a slight inconvenience and interrupt the flow of gameplay which makes this game less enjoyable. The most generous take I can give it is that is a side-grade. That would have been my take if it weren't for performance but I will get to that later. Now onto buildings. This system did not need an update. It wasn't perfect, but it was close enough to being perfect that I thought any change to it would be a net negative to the game-play loop. 4.0 proved that assumption to be correct. I get what the developers were thinking with the new system, i really do. Having individual districts have their own building slots is a neat and novel idea. However, a neat and novel idea is not always the best to implement. The new building system is a strict downgrade on the old one. Is was much simpler, and this update was not needed. The developers fixed a problem that did not need solving. Last is performance. Oh boy... performance. I have been a paradox game player for well over a decade now so lag and poor performance is nothing new to me. Each and every paradox game as issues with late-game performance, except for the greatest pdx game of all-time March of the Eagles, my beloved. This performance is different with every title. Some were bad, others were... shall I say... less bad. Stellaris regularly placed towards the bottom. This I was okay with, I am used to it. With 4.0 the new pop changes were made to help with performance. I would be fine with the pop systems' current implementation if the performance improved. I do not know how but performance got WORSE. The change, which to me is a side-grade at best, a change wholly made to FIX performance made it worse. The 4.0 update failed. Completely. In every regard. I do not know who made the decision to release 4.0, but that person needs to be fired. I will not and do not believe that the performance issues were not known. I noticed it immediately while playing my first 4.0 game. If i noticed it that quickly and easily, then devs also noticed it. Shipping the update in the state it is in is simply inexcusable. Well there is my rant. Its been fun Stellaris, it really has. I just wish you were in better hands, you don't deserve this. So long space cowboy.

Not so much a strategy game as a big space opera sandbox. You'll find all the familiar space opera tropes spread across the vanilla game and its many DLC offerings, with the various mechanics allowing you to realize just about any type of epic scale science fiction universe, from Star Wars and Dune to Star Trek and Babylon 5. Play the vanilla game for a while to get a feel for things. If you enjoy the experience and want more, consider trying out the DLC expansion for a month or so. Collectively they add a lot of great content, but not all of it may play into your particular play style. Note that at the time of writing this game is almost 10 years old, and that's somewhat reflected in the game's UI. It was designed to be readable on 720p displays, on 1440p and 4K displays the UI and graphics are going to look a little blurred unless you have a video card capable of integer scaling (and don't mind the pixelated look). There's a thriving mod community for the game and UI mods are easy to find, but don't expect miracles.

Unwanted and unneeded Update 4.0 plugs game into depths of fecal oceans. Robots go extinct because they have negative traits, organics do not eat food, psionics stack infinite productivity bonuses from uncapped telepath jobs, cyborgs multiply (^N) productivity bonuses from uncapped enforcer jobs, leader traits still untimmed despite all the promises, AI doesnt know what to do with new zones and districts, events and event jobs doesnt consifder pop rework at all. 10 burning bears out of 10. If you want something good - switch to 3.14. Good luck with fishing for actual mods.

Paradox doesn't seem to know what to do with Stellaris, besides tack on an insane amount of buggy DLCs at inflated prices. For a space empire sim there's both a frustrating amount of micromanagement and a frustrating lack of precision in that management. The AI, as with all Paradox games, continues to be astoundingly dull. The optimization and UI are atrocious, especially for 2025. Mods prove that a number of the issues can be fixed within the game code, Paradox just doesn't care to because it won't let them push another "feature" filled DLC at a premium price. The base engine itself is pushing 20 years at this point and it certainly shows, with performance on high end systems grinding to a halt because they can't figure out how to run on more than one core with Clauswitz. The most frustrating thing about all this is the game could be so insanely good if they sat down and just ironed out the issues. More than 720p UI scaling, better use of scroll bars, making the AI just a little bit less dumb, better tools to deal with or automate the super frustrating micromanagement, setting a dedicated vision for the game. It could be worth the cost of all those DLCs, but it isn't, and they're not. 4.0 made everything so much worse I rolled back to 3.14. Just...come on Paradox. Maybe you won't mess up Stellaris 2 but I doubt that very, very much.

There is an argument that exists with games that have depth, which revolves around the concept of increasing depth can lead to increased complexity if done poorly, and increased complexity creates a barrier of entry for new players, because they have too much to learn just to get to grips with the basics. So the ideal when it comes to design, is to keep the depth but reduce the complexity. This game, since 4.0, feels like it is going in the opposite direction. Changes to the base game, in order to accommodate DLC, are NOT a good thing. Because if you dislike a DLC, you can turn it off, but you CAN'T rewind the game to change base game changes, unless you rollback and play a previous version. Since 4.0, I have little interest in playing anymore, which is infuriating because of the money I have spent on the game and the DLC (which I always use, with the exception of the rubbish weather DLC from last year). Changes to the base game which add complexity rather than reduce it, and can't be undone (you have to live with them), are the hallmark of the 4.0 patch. And even worse, there doesn't seem to be any actual improvement to the mechanics of the game which were previously pointless and boring (such as Espionage). To be fair, they made Trade a resource to care about (whoohoo), but it sucked before and still does, and should have just been removed, instead of 'fixed'. This is a game which has been cooking for too long, the constant stream of DLC has bloated the game, and instead of taking their time and making gradual improvements, the devs have repeatedly prioritised their next DLC payday (understandable) and rushed too many changes into the game. Changes which don't feel well thought out, have fundamentally changed the base game and added complexity instead of prioritising depth and reducing complexity, to the point where you can feel the bloat. At this point, I think they would be better off focusing on Stellaris 2 where they can start from scratch, instead of trying to build on a foundation that is straining under the weight of too much added content, and where the priority is selling DLC rather than fixing the long standing issues with the game, both in terms of performance and design. And that is a shame, because this used to be a brilliant game to play. Now it just feels like a chore.

Devs change all core mechanics every couple of years, from imperfect systems that work to imperfect system that dont work. Then they spend years fixing it, and when you finally grow accostumed to it, they will break it all again to change the systems. Dont waste your time.

500 hrs in this game and only just learned random planets that are not inherently habitable CAN be terraformed wtf

I would like to say this is a great game. could have been. Sadly the developer is a bunch of money grubbing bean counters who couldn't code a website. They just "re-worked" the entire game to make it run better and it actually runs worse and now the planet menu is a hot confusing pile of ass, and nobody knows how to play the game anymore. This is not the first time they have tried something like this either, but instead of learning to code they think re-doing half the game is the solution.

Not really sure if it's worth a recommendation anymore, when just buying all the DLCs is going to cost you a fortune.

Owned base game since release. The 4.0 changes have made the game unplayable for months. It is difficult to tell what is intended vs broken and the new UI elements aren't helpful. And the direction some of the game is going in isn't my cup of tea. I regret buying the latest season pass. To be fair, I've sunk just shy of 3,000 hours into this game so hats off to a long run. Few games have been able to hold my attention that long. Respect to the Devs for past work. As of now, June 2025, I don't plan to buy any more DLC for Stellaris. I already got the newest season pass so I'll dip my toe in from time to time to see what was added. Even before the 4.0 changes, I have considered the prices of the DLC a bit high so now is a good time to start saving my money for something else.

This game is in the worst state its been in in years. Over the course of the last month or so, basically when 4.0 was released, there has been 20 patches to try to fix what has been broken. They have the player base actively play testing what is essentially a complete overhaul with 4.0 and I've never seen the fan base so upset. Most of us have been buying hundreds of dollars worth of DLC over the course of years and to see that the amount of testing for this massive overhaul was so limited to the point where 20 hotfix/patches were needed is wild. I'm not recommending any new players get the game in this state. I don't even recommend veterans start a new campaign until Paradox figures it out. Shameful. Edit: The ability to rollback to older patches/versions does make it at least playable so I will give credit where credit is due. Paradox in general is pretty good about version control so it is managable, just frustrating.

作为买断制的单机游戏，为什么可以为了新的DLC内容而削弱已有的DLC内容。 As a buyout game, why can existing DLC content be weakened for the sake of new DLC content? 作为正版的付费玩家，买断了原有游戏内容，却因为新的游戏内容不断削弱游戏体验。 As a genuine paying player, the original game content was bought out, but the game experience was constantly weakened because of the new game content. 这样只会把玩家推向盗版用户。 This will only push players towards pirate users. 你可以因为新的内容削弱旧的DLC，那玩家可不可以因为削弱选择退款旧的DLC。 You can weaken old DLC with new content, but players can't choose to refund old DLC because of the nerf. 在此奉劝你们明白，单机买断制是什么，出新DLC削弱旧DLC，只会离赚钱越来越远。 Here, I advise you to understand what the stand-alone buyout system is, and the new DLC weakens the old DLC, which will only get farther and farther away from making money.

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.

Its a in my opinion very complex game but its really fun to play, Ive only been playing with my boyfriend in multiplayer so far and he has all the dlcs so the game is always fresh and new and I have him who has a few thousand hours in the game to rely on for questions but overall I do like this game and think its a great game overall

I love Stellaris, and have been playing it since shortly after initial launch. It is currently broken. The new version was released a month ago and unfortunately it just isn't playable - I have tried three times to start games since the new version came out and every game has ended quickly with a bug significant enough to stop me from moving forward. The changes seem interesting in theory and I hope they get it into a playable status again, but as someone who has already paid for it, releasing a product in this state is unprofessional. Nobody else should reward them with money for this, and I will no longer buy any future updates to the game without waiting for release to see if they actually finished it.

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!

Abysmal performance in the mid-to-late game after the 4.0 update. Seems it won't be fixed for a few months at this rate.

really enjoyed playing this game pre 4.0, but ever since 4.0 its gone from stable to just unreliable, its clear paradox once again dont care about the players and just want to make money of yet anotherwave of DLCs. the AI usage is another factor, they claim to pay consenting VAs to train their AI, but i wouldnt trust that in the slightest. overall a 3/10 update, for the love of god give us the stellaris back that you took from us.

If you want the perfect body, want the perfect soul this is the game for you. Its got more layers than an onion and I have over 1000 hours in game and keep coming back for more. New Bio ascensions are great. 4.0 updates are great. I've been playing since release and having a game this well curated and kept new and fresh is like having a new game to play every few months.

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.

My personal advice, if you like 4X strategy games and space exploration, buy the base game and use mods to fill in any missing content that you might want. Paradox Interactive has gone way overboard with this title. The price of the game is bad enough, then you add all of the ridiculous DLC which is sold at prices equivalent to an entire game. I've said this before, and I'll say it again, I'm done supporting the greedy bastards at Paradox Interactive.

Well, last update (4.0.16) we got desyncs every sesh from fleets of more than 25 ships stacked for both player and bot ones' alike. With current patch (4.0.18) it became impossible to connect to MP if you aren't starting a new save. Small indie studio developing game

There was a time about 2 years ago I would have recommended this game. Now its a straight up don't bother. This game is so bug ridden from "additional content" and patches that break more than they fix ... it is not worth the money, time, effort, or aggravation to even try to play this total disaster.... do not recommend.

I love Stellaris so much, I've spent thousands of ours playing modded Stellaris, it scratches so many itches for me. I also admire how the devs are not afraid to redesign things for a feeling of constant evolution. There are countless changes and updates that I have loved over the years. That being said, the latest DLC and update is simply atrocious, the release state of this content is not acceptable; game breaking bugs, useless AI, rushed release, overpriced DLC, etc. I have bought almost all DLCs since launch, but I refuse to buy the handful of recent ones. It feels like quality is rapidly decreasing and these updates are being pushed out just to meet deadlines and drive engagement. Until there is a public statement about the state of recent content from Paradox and a noticeable shift in direction, I can't recommend Stellaris to anyone. I doubt this is likely so I fully expect a slow and steady decline until "Stellaris 2" is launched and the DLC milking cycle begins again...

This company has a very bad policy of just shoving out more DLC in order to charge people more for the game they already own while leaving the existing game in a broken and unplayable state OR actively make it worse with the addition of unbalanced garbage in the DLCs.

They broke this game with the latest updates. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. DO NOT SUPPORT PARADOX GREED. Pumping out DLC after DLC for a broken game amounts to FRAUD.

After almost 1800 hours, I can't recommend this game in good faith. Stellaris is described as "the ultimate exploration-focused space-fantasy strategy sandbox". It contains 4X, grand strategy, and galactic sandbox/space simulator elements. Like other Paradox games, the continued development is funded with frequent DLCs. This is where the problem begins. Each DLC introduces a new mechanic to the core gameplay loop that's either repetitive or not cohesive with the existing mechanics. For example, the main attraction of Grand Archive feels like a re-skinned progress tree from Astral Planes. The bio ships from Biogenesis make space fauna ships that were introduced six months before obsolete. Even the new content is balanced in a way that makes no sense. Consider the nanite ascension from the Machine Age. Nanite producing jobs are massively underwhelming compared to the nanite producing starbases. Moreover, the nanite buildings and edicts don't synergize with the ascension's main focus: zero upkeep nanite ships. Churning out DLCs multiple times a year proved to be detrimental for the game. There were (and still is) aspects of the game that have problems and lack depth like end-game lag (fixed with the mid-game lag introduced in 4.0, since you no longer play until the end-game), planetary invasion, diplomacy and espionage, piracy, internal politics, war resolutions, UI/UX problems, and AI behavior. PDX addressed this with the Custodian Initiative to improve the base game and keep the old DLCs fresh (Dev Diary #214). Paradox also had another extremely ambitious initiative to address these big problems by conducting multiple community surveys and iterative discussions near the end of 2024 (Dev Diary #361). As much as these were big steps in the right direction, the 4.0 update simply fell short compared to the expectations set by the developers. I've been playing this game since 2021, and it's without a doubt in its worst state. It's been a month since the release of 4.0, but even after 15 patches, every build I tried had balancing issues and game breaking bugs. Please take a look at the comments on the 4.0.15 patch release post on PDX forums. There are still TODO comments in the game files one month after the release. The game is still not in a release worthy state, but the PDX are busy trying to decide on an empire limit for fallen empire buildings and advertising xeno plushies. I honestly doubt that the game will be in a good state before the next upcoming DLC in summer. I feel deceived as a long time player, and I'll play something else until PDX gets their stuff together. If you need something to scratch the space 4X with focus on combat itch, maybe give SoaSE 2 a try. Or play X4 for a space flight and economy sandbox game. But stay away from Stellaris until it's in a better state.

It's addicting. This game ruined my life. My career is gone, but don't worry, I have a shit ton of war crimes to commit. It's a 4X game in a theme of space war. You will engage in many ways: diplomatic, spy, ally, and war. With a ton of customization and level of detail, you can replay this game in FK Tone of playthrough. PLS give it a try. Wait for the sale and grab the main game with DLC called "Utopia." Its really fun game. Just grap a cup of tea or coffee with you and the time will past faster than any day in your life.

Im sorry i love the game but the recent major patch really fecked up, will come back in an year when its probably fixed.

As much as I like stellaris, I largely only play this multiplayer and this is now completely broken with constant resyncs as soon as the game progresses to mid/late game. Until this is fixed I can only recommend stellaris as a solo-player game.

I got the game and most of the DLC's (summing A LOT OF money) to play multiplayer with my friend. The game is however unplayable in multiplayer as it stands now. You are constantly fighting desync errors and performance issues. I've reached a point in our games where we get desynced every month cycle in game (which is like every 30 seconds). For such a high price tag this is absolutely unacceptable and surprised this is actually not punishable, especially when they basically lie in the marketing videos and description. At most this is a single player 4X with heavy performance issues late game. For now if you want to play with friends/multiplayer, its almost impossible after early/mid game when desynchronization occurs at almost every step.

Stellaris 4.0... Imagine a game that is RTS, resource management with a hint politics and complex decision making IN GOD DAMN SPACE, that has not been done before on this scale, and it is massive success for many many years. You are still with me right? Good, NOW IMAGINE THE GAME DEV'S SIMPLY THROWING EVERYTHING OUT OUT OF THE SKY WITH THIS ABOSLUTE HORRENDEUS 4.0 UPDATE! Paradox, get your sh*t together guys. 2/10 for 4.0 update.

First of all i would highly recomend reading this review, since it covers a loooot of problems i and many others have with game, and does so very well: https://steamcommunity.com/id/WoodenPotatoes/recommended/281990 As for me, i would also like to add that after 4.0 AI broke so hard, the game is now permanently in easy mode even if you don't try anything. With enormous buffs AI gets they just refuse to build normal infrastructure. I had strongest nation in galaxy have only two planets and filled with forts and empty spaces. I taged into them to set up some bare minimum research buildings in empty space and they just removed all of them in a year. Playin singleplayer in this state is NOT fun, challanging or anything really. It's just boring. Ignoring the fact that the game is literally unplayable at the moment, i would also recomend to not even come close to it because... well, it's a paradox game. Buying base game will leave you with barebones experience and you will have to buy at least some dlc's to make it at least feel more compleate. I have been buying dlc's for a while, untill Astral Planes came out. Costing almost 14$ in my native currency it added 32 reskinned arheological sites, one mostly usless outside of DLC itself resource and nothing else. There are mods that add more for free. In fact there are a lot of them. However because paradox keeps updating game at neckbreacking pace, most of them become obsolete in a month or so. As of writing this review, complete stellaris experience costs almost 300$ of my native currency, which is waaaay cheaper then the rest of the world has to pay. Most of things you have to pay at the moment are so old, devs don't even consider you not having them, so good luck geting in 9+ years too late. On a less objective side of things, i would like to add that artistic direction of game had shifted significantly in past years, which makes most new assets just feel out of place. You can just tell that some portraits follow different principals, some icons are deffinetly drawn by different people. And also game is just bloated as hell. Fresh install of mine is 23.7 gigs, a lot of it are repeated assets, because devs for some reason just refuse to reference same image in code, instead copying it thee times and renaming every identical file. There are also many old, unused and placeholder files that should be left in dev builds, or outright removed. I don't need buldings from version 1.0 and chinese main menu image. Don't buy it. Get it from your friends, download a demo or something, DON'T BUY IT unless you are ready to be constantly disapointed. Because you will be.

Game was really good until the 4.0 update, now it feels like it takes longer to do everything, feels like the difficulty increased, and you aren't able to micro manage you're planets as much as before.

So much to do & I'm still messing with the base game and a few mods. Wish I could play on the go. This game is addictive

The 4.0 update broke a huge number of things in the game. It was pushed out after a very short "beta" test where most of the game didn't work. Despite the no joke hundreds of bugs that they had to know about at least a significant percentage of, they rushed the update out to meet a deadline. Now every build I play, I find a new thing that has been broken by the update. I'm not talking about stuff working differently and being upset about change. The game is lousy with bugs and stuff either doesn't work, or doesn't do what it's supposed to. I do not recommend purchasing Stellaris at this point, it's not remotely functional at this point. This from a person who owns every DLC and has over 5k hours sunk into this game. It used to be a great game, my favorite strategy game in a long time.

Adding generative AI art and voices cheapens a game that is already a pain to relearn every 6 months or so because Paradox breaks their systems.

I absolutely love this game, 4.0 has made it unplayable. It's disappointing that Paradox continues to attempt and fail to hotfix 4.0 into a playable patch instead of listening to players and rolling it back until it's ready. On top of a lot of unnecessary redesign, I have a top of the line computer and I cannot play through the performance issues of the end game. I'm extremely disappointed.

I used to love this game. Then they started changing things for no reason every update. Changes that were either bad or meaningless, but rarely good. I don't remember which version it was, but it was around when they took out Admin Capacity that it started getting on my nerves. Every month or two (it felt like) they would introduce some new rework that made my experience slightly worse or didn't change anything noticeable, invalidating my save games and having me wait for my favorite mods to be updated. (Make no mistake, the vanilla game was fun, but certain mods like Gigastructural Engineering and Ethics and Civics took it to a whole new level.) I'm writing this review because even though I haven't played Stellaris in over a year now, I often have the urge to play one type of empire or another, theorycrafting fun thematic ascension perks, civics, etc. to use from different mods. Then I look at the recent posts of what dlc has come out, how many updates there've been, and I remember why I stopped playing. It's just too much waiting outside of the game, too much figuring out what has changed and which new dlcs I should avoid because of some unfathomable addition. (I stopped at them adding cloaked fleets that could apparently get past your forts. What use are forts, then? I don't know if that ever became a problem, got fixed, or if players found a way around it, or if it never amounted to much.) I want to play Stellaris again, but this seems to be a game with an identity crisis. Or more like, a self-image problem. It can't stop changing systems, mechanics, and UI elements that were just fine. It can't let go of superficial problems that mods fix anyway. (UI in particular.) This was the first Paradox game I ever played, and my most-played game for a long time. Through it, I found EUIV, my favorite ever since (Just when that game got stale, I found the Anbennar mod. Perfection.) and CK3. While those games have their own problems, the comparative stability of them made me realize how much of a hassle playing Stellaris had become. I had a lot of fun with Stellaris, and I'll always wish for it to fulfill its potential. But I don't think I'll come back to it unless it stops this doomed cycle of superficial updates and un-asked-for changes.

The 4.0 update broke just about everything from multiplayer constant desync that soft lock the save you've been playing to entire civ builds just not working. Not mentioning the insane cost just to play the single player experience.

Used to like this game, changed completely. I don't understand the new ui. Just liked playing against the bots and not PvP. Don't get nothin' anymore. Uninstalled

This review hurts. I adore Stellaris, you can see just how many hours I have put into it. However ever since 4.0 has come out this game has become almost unplayable. The performance has gotten worse and that that is on the rare occasion I have a game that doesn't crash soon enough to run into those performance issues. By all means, if you're interested then put this game on your wishlist but do not buy until these issues have been resolved.

Stellaris is one of my favorite games but it is so unbelievably bug-ridden I can no longer recommend it in good conscience.

It's a very good Strategy Game about space exploration, exploitation, diplomacy, war and politics :D <3 <3 <3

This game is great... if you're ultra rich and can afford to spend $200+ on a video game. Buying a Paradox game is like going to a burger joint and paying full price for a burger. You receive a patty, and if you want the rest you'll have to pay even more for all the other components individually. In the end, you spend maybe 5x what the whole burger is actually worth. They took EA's business model.

My 2 cents here! I`ve been playing this game for a long time, while it has its downs but nothing compares to the last few weeks. Not once we have suffered a serious desync and we played on 800 galaxy with Crysis and War in Heaven. Now with the new DLC we can`t even hit 2250 without a desync with 2 player multi. PARADOX! FIX IT! I know you can do it! If fixed I`ll change to YES!

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) -> betas -> then pick whatever version you want to play

I have really, really liked this game in the past and I have been playing on and off for a few years now. I tend to have a bit more free time in the summer and decided to give the new expansion a try. Frankly, I really don’t like a lot of the changes made in version 4.0. I could go on and on, but I think it comes down to this: according to the developers, this version was supposed to “fix” a lot of the issues with managing planets (also including orbital stations, ring worlds, etc. in this category), but they just made the management some much complicated and less intuitive. I really don’t think there were many issues previously, but that might just be me having played the game for a few years. A big example of this for me is population. Previously, the smallest unit of population was one, presumably representing a much larger number. One pop fulfills one job and takes one unit of food (or something else for different species) per month to sustain itself, and needs amenities to be happy. Now, population is represented in the thousands. So rather than a simple equation for balancing growth and material requirements on a simple system, this has been made much harder. Need to move unemployed pops to another planet? You better be making notes. I have started three games in the past month and each time I am running into similar issues managing this. Yes, this is a management game, but I am constantly going into depth trying to root out the problems, but determining the issues and fixing them has become a lot harder now. It feels like work. I also found the districts a bizarre idea. This was already covered by planetary specialization. We don't need district specialization as well. Perhaps I would like it if it were implemented better, but as it is currently being implemented it just seems like an arbitrary restriction on getting what you want with the planet. I feel unsure of why a lot of these changes were made in the first place and if they were even tested out. I play a lot of similar paradox games and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a counter intuitive change.

Overall 9/10 Yes, it can be infuriating when the game has content locked behind DLCs and paywalls, but the games been out for years at this point. They've accumulated the DLCs over a large span of time. Basically everyone who is review bombing the game right now is largely overreacting, like it's actually crazy work. I hadn't even started playing until 4.0 came out, and the game is at a perfectly fine fps. Yes, it isn't 4k 120 fps constantly at all times, but gamers cope and seethe when they can't get their perfect frames. This isn't like rainbow 6 or something where you desperately need frames or else the opponent kills you, this is Stellaris. The only reason that this review isn't a 10/10 is because Utopia is basically required to play the base game, which granted is incredibly annoying, but a decent chunk of people claim that the game is "a store simulator" or is "a constant dlc push" of a game. You wanna take a look at a store simulator, take one look at Star Citizen. Paradox lwky a good company compared to most of the other slop titles that are out rn