Stellaris Reviews
Stellaris combines watertight strategic gameplay with a wonderful sense of exploration to create a thrilling and engrossing spacefaring grand strategy title.
Stellaris is the Paradox grand strategy game you need to play.
The early game promises an instant strategy classic, but Stellaris is unable to maintain that pace.
Stellaris is filled with good ideas, and it's not difficult to see the outline of a great space strategy game where those ideas could come together. But beyond the early game, it's only compelling in bits and pieces – it turns into a largely uneventful slog after that. Paradox has developed a reputation of major upgrades to their games for years after launch, and Stellaris is going to need all that love and more to reach its potential.
A series of small tasks makes Stellaris easy to jump into, but hard to put down without completing that "one last thing"
Stellaris isn't astounding yet, but in time, it may just get there
Stellaris gives you the stars as your playground, proving that Paradox capably translates some of their strategy game prowess into space.
A fantastic space strategy game let down by some plodding sections.
Stellaris is not a perfect game and there are aspects that Paradox could (and, judging by their track record, probably will) improve, including an unexciting range of technologies, a potentially plodding mid-game and timid enemy AI.
Less erratic and surprising than its ancestors, but much more elegant in its design.
Stellaris won't expand strategy to a mass audience; while more accessible, it won't appeal to people who like building things in reality rather than in concept. But if you're like me, on the fence between 4X and grand strategy titles, you'll enjoy the heck out of the single-player campaign.
This ain't your grandfather's space strategy game. Stellaris opens up a whole new perspective on galactic conquest, and in doing so sets the bar for the genre for years to come.
Review in Italian | Read full review
It's good that, in a game about space, I've never felt limited, because there shouldn't be limits. While this almost feels like "Sim Universe" at times, the core difference is in something for which to strive and active threats beyond your own mishandling of resources and the occasional fire to put out. There's a whole universe out there, and I can't wait to play through Stellaris as many times as it takes to experience the whole thing.
A disappointingly flawed grand strategy game, which for every good idea seems to have another that works actively against it.
Marrying Paradox's particular brand of real time grand strategy to the familiarity of space and 4X empire building has worked wonders, making this the most welcoming and accessible of their games that I've played. There's a few minor niggles, but it's compelling and it's easy to lose yourself in Stellaris for hours at a time, as you build your empire and explore both the galaxy and the stories that it can contain.
This is a game for anyone who has already enjoyed the grand strategy genre or anyone who has always wanted to. There is a strong sense of accomplishment from starting an empire and guiding it along the path you choose, even if it eventually ends in failure. Stellaris is easy to comprehend and exciting to execute, which is a perfect combination for a genre notoriously difficult to break into.
_____________________________ Exploration and empire expansion are genuinely captivating.
Ultimately Paradox has created a brilliant and lasting experience in Stellaris; one that allows players to cultivate an empire that spans entire galaxies. It is both wonderful and appropriately grand.
As many other videogames developed by Paradox, Stellaris speaks to a very small niche. Complex and uncompromising, it shows an impressive effort to bring the gameplay of a Grand Strategy Game into the space.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Calling Stellaris Europa Universalis in space is probably reductive, but it was the first thing I did in this review not because they are almost exactly alike, but because, when I put away my empires and get on with my day, the stories that have played out in these digital worlds embed themselves in my brain, and I so desperately want to tell people about them. Both games tickle the part of my brain that wants every battle to have some greater context, every move I make to be part of a larger narrative. Stellaris manages to do this without history to lean on, though, and does so with aplomb.