Review: Stellaris will strategically punish and reward every move

Scroll down to read the verdict.

Stellaris is the ultimate mix of grand strategy and traditional 4X set in a sci-fi universe that fans of the genre have been waiting for. You take control over an empire that has just discovered faster than light travel and you take a leap of faith out into the dark and unforgiving void of space. Will you lead your empire to greatness or watch as it gets burnt into ashes?

Paradox Interactive’s latest game takes inspiration from other giants of the genre like Civilization and Sins of a Solar Empire, and meshes it with the design philosophies found in the studio’s other Grand Strategy games like Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron. It is a more accessible game than most Paradox games, a feature the developers have defined as one of their top priorities. However, Stellaris will still be overwhelming for most players, at least within the first couple of attempts at galactic domination.

Based on what we learned about Stellaris in an interview with Lead Designer, Henrik Fåhraeus, the game plays just as well as we hoped. It is an amazing strategy game.

Gameplay

When players go to pick their empire, what’s immediately apparent is how big and complex Stellaris is. There are a variety of options to choose from, such as how your species will look, the starting planet, as well as traits that will determine your empire’s stats. There are also various ethics that your empire will follow that will determine the type of government they will have. Players can customize the names of their ships and government officials as well! As if that wasn’t enough, players also gets to pick how what type of FTL travel they want to use. As you can see, the options you have right out of the gate are staggering.

All of these decisions will factor into how things play out down the road, though it’s tough to see that until you’ve played a few times. What type of ethics and government you have will dictate how well you fit in with other alien races and how they respond to random events. Your starting planet matters as it determines what type of planets around you can be colonized early in the game. There no unimportant choices, they all matter.

When players start Stellaris they get the option of having the tutorial enabled, which is something I highly recommended for new players to have turned on since there are so many mechanics in the game to think about and master. If you don’t like tutorials, there is no reason to worry, it's integrated into the game and gives you quests marked “Tutorial” whenever a new mechanic appears in Stellaris. There is no dedicated tutorial mode or level, players just start a new game and click the option to have the tutorial enabled, then Stellaris gives you quests and information when new mechanics appear and teaches you on how to use them in a very intuitive way.

The core gameplay will be familiar to most strategy players. You pick your buildings, build armies, right click to move armies, pretend to be friendly with the neighboring empire only to kill them when the time is right, and eventually conquer the galaxy. It’s your typical 4X build order, a satisfying formula that has been perfected over the years. Instead of having regular turns like in Civilization Stellaris uses pausable real time to let time pass. Although, Stellaris does offer one major change to make it stand out. The player has to learn the language of the other empires before that they can be communicated with. Any interaction before that and  violence ends up being the only dialog exchanged.

To further make Stellaris even more complex Paradox decided that the players needs to have government officials in important positions, like planetary government, science, and in the space navy. There are three fields of science and to get the most out of the science players has to assign scientist to the three fields. The science ships which are used to explore the galaxy and survey star systems also needs scientist to be able to work at it’s full potential.

Picking the lead scientists is the easy part, it’s the picking of the science that is the hard part.

Since there is no traditional tech tree players don’t really know what they are supposed to get. It is like a deck of cards, each time players gets to pick from three techs, the ones they don’t pick get put back into the deck and there is no real indication on what tech is the best to have for your empire at this very moment. Though techs that the game thinks player should have tend to be at the top of the tech deck.

Besides having scientists the players also need to, depending on their government form, assign leaders for each planet or sector to make sure it is rules properly. Their traits also affects the planet in various ways. A planet without an officially appointed leader could get itself into trouble.

Players also need to recruit admirals for the many fleets the players has to make sure that the fleet is functioning at its maximum capability. In Stellaris, the success in combat is based on a few factors, your ships’ weapons and shields, the attack strength of the fleet, and the admiral and his or hers traits. From these numbers the game simulates the results while the players gets to watch a Star Wars style space battle.

That means that three different types government officials are needed if the player wants to get the most out of his empire in Stellaris. These leaders die after a while as well, which means the player has to replace them every now and again. Juggling all this while staying on top of production and empire happiness while expanding at a reasonable pace is not an easy task.  

Even though players can rule over hundreds of planets and stars they will only have direct control over about five at a time. After that the game suggest on creating sectors which will take care of themselves and contribute to the good of the empire. In these sectors, and on direct controlled planets, various factions can rise. These factions can cause a lot of problems and starts strikes and armed revolutions. Keeping these factions happy and under control is crucial, they add yet another challenge to Stellaris.

Additionally there is random events in Stellaris which ranges from collecting animals for the zoo to uplifting species to more sentient life and to hunt for a long lost empire. There is a lot to the gameplay in Stellaris.

Graphics

Stellaris is built on a beefed up version of Paradox’s Clausewitz engine and it is the same type of game Paradox usually makes, like Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings, so graphically it looks similar to those games, but with a different color pallet since this is in space and not down on earth.

The graphics themselves are looking good, crisp and luscious. They won’t probably win any awards but they are still looking good. Most top down 4X strategy games don’t have Crysis level of graphics and that is because they don’t need it. 30 minutes into a 5 hour sitting most players stop paying attention to the graphics, they have more important things to look at, like if they will survive the coming invasion or how to stop the empire from leaking Credits.

I played Stellaris for the purpose of reviewing it before the launch on May 9th and as late as May 8th there weren’t many options to change the graphics setting manually, there were only four options. Play in windowed or in fullscreen. What resolution that fit best with your set up. What frame rate the player wants, it can be changed if the players PC set up can handle it, it is not locked at a certain number. And finally Multisample Level, something that determines how many samples of each frame the game takes to reduce the aliasing, higher Multisample Level means better image quality but lower frame rate. As of now the Multisample Level can be set to 0, 2, 4, and 8.

I played on Multisample Level 4 and on 60 fps and only experience minor frame drops when a lot was going on and I was zooming in or watching a big fight. Most of the time Stellaris was running smoothly. Nothing that really ruins the immersion or the gaming experience.

The art in Stellaris is also really beautiful, both the loading screen art and the ones for things like ships, cities, species, and the different kinds of planets. It really boosts the science fiction look of the game and makes for greater immersion. It really shows Paradox’s passion for Stellaris.

Accessibility and Verdict

Stellaris is probably the most accessible Grand Strategy game from Paradox, which really says a lot on how inaccessible the other games have been since this game is really complex and from times confusing to understand even though it has a great tutorial, tool tips, and explanations.

Stellaris is by no means an easy game, Stellaris will punish new players. Players new to the genre will have no clue on what they are doing, players new to Paradox games, but not to strategy games will have a bit more of a clue on what’s going on but will still be confused. Though after speaking with a friend and long time Paradox fan he assured me that Stellaris is very friendly to new players compared with earlier games.

It is a fun and challenging game. I had to play it twice since my save file somehow got lost in cyberspace and I was about to lose both times, most players will lose their first games since there is so much to learn and do. Picking the right traits, ethics, government type, buildings, science projects, government officials, and all that is hard to do but is vital for success.

Stellaris is a great space strategy game, it’s the game fans wanted Civilization: Beyond Earth to be but on a larger scale. It is a finished game that released for once, it never felt empty like Civ BE Paradox plans on making an expansion available that will add a new game changing mechanic will be added to the main game as well.

To sum it up: Stellaris might be one of the best strategy games out there but with that comes it being a niche game which is not meant for everyone. It is hard and punishing, not every player will enjoy it since the learning curve is a bit steep. If players can get past that then they have a really great strategy game in which every game will be a new and fresh experience with all the random events, ethics and government combos and the rest of the randomizations. If Stellaris should become boring then Paradox has promised modding support to let fans create even more content to this already jampacked game.