The whole process is helped by a downright immaculate interface. While this may not be the most enticing of metaphors, there’s something eminently magical about building a well oiled-empire a million tiny steps at a time. The game puts me in a strange trance-like mode where I become a whirlwind of administrative efficiency, smoothing wrinkles in my great quilt with spry grandma-esque deftness, cursing and muttering to myself like a senile lunatic. Unromantically boiled down to bare bones, the game is an endless stream of bureaucratic tasks: move science ship here, deal with slave unrest there, optimise planetary upgrades, talk to the mushroom people, insult those weird squid things etc. Paradox games have always excelled at putting you on the throne of a supreme leader and Stellaris is no exception.
Playing a half hour every other day would be mostly spent piecing together what you were doing, so unless you’re willing to pay the toll and continue down that road, you might want to steer clear.Ĭaveats out of the way, Stellaris is 4X executed to near perfection. A single campaign can easily last into the 50 hour range depending on the map size you choose, and there are eventually a whole lot of things to keep track of. I would also recommend that you have plenty of time to play. In-game game time is passable and flexible, but even on “Fast” speed, don’t expect to be waging massive interstellar war anywhere near the starting gate. Make no mistake however, it takes a long time to learn in comparison to most games and takes an extremely long time to get your empire to a reasonable level. While past games like Europa Universalis IV requires about a semester’s worth of work to learn how to play effectively (trust me), Stellaris is lighter in terms of sheer volume of mechanics. If that doesn’t sound appealing, this game is sadly not for you. It’s sitting on a comfy chair looking at a lot of little pieces on a big map making big decisions. Running a galactic empire is not about gallantly leading troops on an invasion mission or heading an expeditionary scientific mission to a new world. It is an exponentially growing administrative task that will cow a great many of those who play. It is not an APM spamming spectator sport. This is not a Total War game, nor Age of Empires, nor Starcraft. So in case you’re en route to the bottom of the page to see the summary because reading is hard, buy it based on that, play it for 40 minutes, get confused, get a refund and complain how I don’t know what I’m talking about, repeat after me: THIS GAME IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. Despite this new territory for the studio, as you may have already surmised, they did a bang up job on this game as well.īefore I start my love letter to the game in earnest, I have to stress the fact that this game is not for everyone.
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Stellaris is embraces this 4X distinction wholeheartedly: players of the Civilization or Galactic Civilization series will feel at home more so than veterans of Paradox’s older fare ( Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis etc. Through colonisation, war and diplomacy, you’re tasked with nothing short of 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) galactic dominance. Departing more Earthly dramas, this title puts you at the helm of a newly burgeoning space-faring race, plopping you down in a procedurally-generated galaxy for you to dominate/be dominated. While I may well be an emaciated corpse by the time you read this, I’m sure as hell going to lead my exosuit-touting parrot people to galactic prominence before I do.įor the uninitiated, Stellaris is a grand strategy title from the good prophets people at Paradox studios. The scary part is that I am only in the beginning stages of this disease. I’m just like you: I’ve got a job, friends, family, nutritional requirements, but I found that after contracting an acute colonisation by Stellaris, my work performance degraded, I withdrew from the people who love me and may have dropped a few pant sizes. Stellaris is one of those rare games which becomes a parasite on your life.