Stellaris

[Ross Scott]

Genre: Strategy

Year released: 2016

Ross's rating: Unrated

Link to game:

https://af.gog.com/game/stellaris

Free to play: No

GaaS: No

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[BTGBullseye]

It's pretty fun if you like real-time empire building type games. There's a LOT of stuff to do, and a lot of content.

[Eshanas]

6 hours ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

I actually really hated this, I figured the gameplay out in five minutes.

Send science ship, do science, click on the icons to build mineral or power stations, repeat for five thousand hours.

 

I don't know, it's another spreadsheet game. City management only involves, getting a bunch of numbers up. Once you have like ten planets, you have to click on the building JPGs, to do more pretend stuff. I'm sorry, this gameplay is just too fake for me, it's just numbers. This whole game is just, clicking on a bunch of icons, and getting a bunch of numbers up, that's it.

 

If you are like me, and if you hate games who claim that the gameplay is actually really swallow because, "it's for roleplaying", "it's all pretend", then, yeah, just skip it.

 

I just find the game really artificial, it's just a lot of text, a lot of icons, take that out, you are left out with a number's game, no real gameplay in there to be honest.

 

I would rather be playing SPORE. Space stage still sucks though, I just like the sea stage and the stage where you are a monster and you just, grow your brain or something. It was more entertaining than playing Stellaris to me at least. Yeah SPORE was bad, but... it had some kind of actual gameplay. I'm not saying that SPORE is the better game, but it was the more fun game.

 

I didn't have to pretend as much, as in Stellaris.

 

Yea, something about the execution didn't rub me the right game. I played it and felt "I've played this before."

 

And while I'm not a self-described Graphics Whore, this was just...too stiff. Everything feels too detached, too clinical. Click buttons and text appears over something flashy. Now, the DLC did add a lot more content, but the gameplay is still the same.

 

Honestly I probably just have high expectations. The 4x genre died because it got too samey. The 4x revival is...still too samey. I want them to push the envelope and unite more things together and go from the small scale to the big scale and you get to see it firsthand. That's what Spore did, in a way.

 

And then they removed most types of FTL apparently. And the random Tech Tree - I never liked that. At all. Loads of games do well with fixed tech trees, and I would extend this to the 'procedurally generated' (in this case, faux?) craze we had that reached a Zenith with Strafe. People don't mind set-in-stone maps or set-in-stone tech trees. Instead of making it random, put more work into it to make it huge and expansive so a player can go to one corner and still progress in the game. Then in another playthrough they can go through the center or the other corner. Spice up a bit of the stuff on the inside to keep players on their toes,  but that's about it.

[MikMogus]

THE FOUL XENOS HAVE DECLARED WAR ON US!

[Tanaj]

Stellaris is shallow, cluttered and designed to be as little fun as possible. Even if you spend all your money on DLC there's still very little content. I really don't get the popularity of modern Paradox games.

[Thomasbelcar]

I've played Stellaris around it's original release and I had a very good time with it. Unfortunately, it's not as replayable or feature complete as other games of this genre (Paradox Real Time Strategy Games).

[AdventureKyles]

Stellaris is for the SUPER strategic and tactically minded among us. I haven't successfully finished a game because the gameplay is VERY long.

It is however, designed to be that way, like Civilization in Space (but not the actual Civilization in Space). Random generation makes the gameplay.

LOTS of content, and the Steam Workshop is always a plus. I think all games should have modded content- really improves the life expectancy of a game.
 
Would Rate: Good (almost Great)

I love the exploration and early stages, but once the game becomes Galactic War III, I start to lose interest.

[zotquix]

I'm going to agree with others that after a point you are sort of coasting in this game and it doesn't feel very engaging. Sometimes it feels like the game is actively trying to slow me down from conquering the galaxy.

 

Some of the writing and little bits of plot are neat. Maybe this is just the wrong genre for me -- I wish there was a space exploration game with that degree of story and questing that also let you progress through builds. I'm imagining No Man's Sky meets Escape Velocity I think. Don't make the story into flavor text -- instead, engage us in the story. 

[FukkenSaved]

It's pretty comparable to Paradox's other grand strategy games. Gets boring after a while.

[philmanz]

this game is great. you roleplay a civ of your choice and you are constrained on how you can achieve outcomes. if you dont like turn based 4X  like say civ then this might get you into 4X because you dont have to figure out which counters are changing each time you finish a turn, or tediously move things around and then adjust where they are going each turn.

 

the quests your ships pick up have a plot to most of them to keep you going during your campaign. some of them are longer and are pretty strange. The early, mid, and late stages of the game play differently and have events which keep you working on some goal other than your victory method of choice.

 

wanna be space pirate toads, go for it. Wanna be pacifist slugs, go for it. wanna be the borg but entirely foxes, go for it. wanna be an agrarian society of butterflies who build death stars and enslaves their parrot neighbours, go for it?

[toastedbread47]

I loved Stellaris when I first started playing it. However, after getting into the mid to late game, I found myself becoming increasingly bored with it. I've bought all of the expansions to date, and have recently tried to get back into it, but really find myself just wanting to play something else. It's fun and interesting at what it does, and a lot of people certainly love this game. I however just can't get into it, as it ends up feeling too repetitive and at times slow. Good for some people, not for me.

[Surname117]

Fantastic: This is one of my favorite games. It's more of a roleplay game than a strategy game though.

Edited October 7, 2019 by Surname117 (see edit history)

[kerdios]

How is it compared to Master of Orion?

[BTGBullseye]

10 hours ago, kerdios said:

How is it compared to Master of Orion?

It's a little less user friendly right off the bat than MoO, but has way more depth and content, especially with the expansions.

 

Here's a decent discussion of the comparison: 

 

[Im_CIA]

this actually seems interesting. too bad the sky boxes look like the night after Taco Bell

[BTGBullseye]

On 12/30/2020 at 11:00 AM, Im_CIA said:

this actually seems interesting. too bad the sky boxes look like the night after Taco Bell

Just get one of the many skybox replacement mods... This game has tons of mods available for it. (I'm using a Star Trek total conversion right now, and it's extremely fun)

[Im_CIA]

20 hours ago, BTGBullseye said:

Just get one of the many skybox replacement mods... This game has tons of mods available for it. (I'm using a Star Trek total conversion right now, and it's extremely fun)

How does it compare with hw, the original from 1999? I know there is more of an empire management sim built in here, but just from combat

[BTGBullseye]

14 minutes ago, Im_CIA said:

How does it compare with hw, the original from 1999? I know there is more of an empire management sim built in here, but just from combat

I'm not sure what you mean by "hw, the original from 1999"... Do you mean Birth of the Federation? If you do, the mod is very much in line with that game, and even includes a grid arrangement galaxy generation that basically gives you BotF, just including far more content. It also includes events from newer Trek series, and the tech progression is even more diverse than the vanilla game.

[Generic-User]

1 hour ago, Im_CIA said:

How does it compare with hw, the original from 1999? I know there is more of an empire management sim built in here, but just from combat

If you're referring to Homeworld, the combat in Stellaris is much less intricate than that, to the point of it might as well be automated. Still, I enjoy the game myself, but if you're looking for an RTS combat experience, it would not really even come close to Homeworld in that regard.

[BTGBullseye]

56 minutes ago, Generic-User said:

If you're referring to Homeworld, the combat in Stellaris is much less intricate than that, to the point of it might as well be automated. Still, I enjoy the game myself, but if you're looking for an RTS combat experience, it would not really even come close to Homeworld in that regard.

Indeed. It's a grand scale RTS, not a fleet micromanagement RTS.