I am really enjoying this game. If your favourite part of RPGs is tinkering with builds and upgrading them, this game let's you focus on this, while also playing PVP without having to sweat too much. I'd love to see this game expanded further, there's all sorts of things they could do with it.

Ensuring everything is balanced is important too. That's why the roguelite randomness aspect makes the meta more interesting.

I think there may be some bugs, for example I'm noticing that Super Armour doesn't seem to trigger properly.

What I would like to see is a 1v1 mode, where instead of strangers you can play with a friend or group of friends and have a tournament style run with just those players. That would be very interesting indeed.

I've played Stellaris enough that it surely deserves a review. This game has undergone frequent and radical evolution since I first got it in 2016, and has finally reached a point where I can recommend it to anyone and it's approaching masterpiece / classic status due to the serious efforts that have been put in to perfecting this game. There's a huge amount of DLC and because I've always bought the DLC, I can only recommend the game with all the DLC (though I'm sure not every one is absolutely required, I'd miss any of them if I were to turn them off).

What makes Stellaris special and better than any other 4x game on the market is the fact that it is real time, while having all of the mechanics of turn based 4x games (and more than most!). You can of course pause the game at any time, and it would be unplayable without the ability to pause and think carefully to learn the game, although when you're experienced it becomes no longer necessary. I'm a bit surprised, to be honest, that there aren't more strategy games on the market designed like this.

One of the weaknesses of the game is that certain mechanics are underpowered or unpolished and certain ways of playing are weaker than others. There's a large degree to which this is by design and stated by the developers, and doesn't actually take away from the game, but there's a lot of things I wish would be buffed / retouched still. Another weakness is that there is a lot of work still to do on making the game more convenient to play. It's possible to automate some tedious tasks, but this is suboptimal, so there should be some effort put in to allowing queueing up of actions so that players can achieve higher APM in order to play the game optimally without pausing; it can get tedious later on to manage all your planets and especially, your fleets. The multiplayer of this game is an excellent experience with friends, but I can't really recommend the game as a competitive game or to play with strangers due to the inherent imbalance between builds and how long it takes to play.

I really would describe this as a beautiful game, that's as rewarding as it is well designed and presented. Like many games out there, I can only recommend it if you're going to invest a lot of time in to it, and buy most of the DLC and eventually all of them. It's great that only the host has to own said DLCs to activate them for other players in a multiplayer game.

If you like 4x games or enjoy games with complex economy management, Stellaris is a must-play in my opinion.

I want to say that this game is fantastic and the only thing that's killed it is the player count. I am all in for competitive RTS games and this is one pure and simple, with lovely mechanics, incredible graphics and design, great colours... if there was more of a scene I would be well in to this game.

if you have an OLED get this game!!!

I am very impressed by this game so far and has exceeded my experience with all previous Endless games and Civilisation.

The music is beautiful, and there is a unique soundtrack for each civilisation archetype.

The graphics are also nice. Note that the game has surprisingly high performance requirements even on the lowest settings, and my GTX 960 struggles a bit. Fortunately since this is a 4x game it is still playable.

There are many details that most 4x games get wrong where this game has innovated. For example:

The opening phase of a game works nicely because you are incentivised to explore and think about where you will settle your first city, instead of rushing to avoid losing early production.

All gameplay styles have the potential to be successful in the game. To advance to the next era, you have to achieve a set number of 'era stars' which are obtained by completing various objectives associated with different resources and achievements. These aren't gimmicky and fit nicely with how the game is played. For example you can gain stars by building a certain number of districts, settling territories, generating money or influence, increasing your population, or killing enemy units.

This in turn supports the high customisability during gameplay. I suspected this could be a gimmicky feature as well but it is absolutely not, and in fact enhances the 4x experience considerably. At each era, you choose a new civilisation archetype. These each have a unique legacy bonus, (which you keep throughout the game), a unique unit (which does seem to remain but naturally becomes obsolete), a unique building (which you can only build for 1 era but once constructed remain as you move on) and a focus for your civilisation, e.g. money, warfare, which gives a special ability.

This system helps alleviate one of the main problems I find with 4x games; it's more tempting to start again and choose a new civilistation / customise again, as this gives more variety than playing a game through. With this system you regularly choose a new bonus, and this leads to a huge variety of paths during the course of a game. This keeps things fresh and exciting from beginning to end.

Various 4x mechanics are also improved. The game does not feel grindy or micro-management intensive. The territory system which is imported from Endless Legend helps significantly with this, as there is less micro-managing of empire borders. Armies stack which leaves less micromanagement of units. I really appreciated being able to place an outpost / city with any unit, provided I have the influence cost. This massively cuts down the tedium of expanding with settlers. I feel I am spending the vast majority of time making decisions in the game - of which there are a lot to make - rather than executing them. This is a great achievement!

The mechanics in the game also offer a lot of interesting possibilities in the gameplay that prevent repetition and make the game more interesting to play. In my most recent run I began the game as the productivity focused Egyptians. I could produce most units and buildings in 1
turn. This was balanced by my low population growth - 1 population is required to build any military units. However I lagged behind somewhat in science In the medieval era, I chose a civilsiation that grants science per territory to every city. This science focused civ allows you to transform all money and production generation in a city in to science. By activating this ability on my main city, and benefiting from the civilisation's legacy ability, my science jumped from about 100/turn to 650/turn, allowing me to quickly catch up in tech. This was a very interesting interaction for this kind of game and I am excited to experiment with more combinations.

I am now hugely looking forward to this game's full release. Give this demo a try!