For something a little different, today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite games – Stellaris. I posted about it in my Year In Video Games post, where I shared I spent more than 400 hours on it in 2023. It may win out again this year.
What is Stellaris?
Stellaris is a 4x strategy game by Paradox. 4x relates to Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. Think of the Civilization games, but put them in space. I find it to be a bit more complicated than the Civ games I’ve played, however. Paradox also made the Crusader Kings series, and I own the latest title in that line.
You are the leader of a civilization who is just now expanding into the wider galaxy. You get to decide what your new empire is called, what they like and don’t like, and what the people look like and do. You manage everything from the planets to the ships and diplomacy with others.
One important note about this review is I play on the PS5. The console version of this game is a fair bit behind on the updates on the PC version. I do own all the expansions available on console, but even more and different mechanics are seen in the PC version.
The Options Abound
There are so many different ways to play this game. You can play as a diplomatic empire, set on bringing peace to the galaxy through freedom. Or through taking over imperial rule, to help defend everyone, of course. You can win on points by out-researching everyone else, which has a handy side effect of making sure your weapons and ships are the most advanced in case you’re also in the mood for a little conquering.
Play as a machine empire dead set on killing everything else or obsessed with protecting the tiny organics. Become a hive organism that tries to fit in or just decides to use the rest of the species as food. Be a fish species that only wants to live on water planets, or be the dwarves that delved too deep.
Become a trade empire and establish treaties with all the other species so you can build fast food joints on their planets. Or swing to the criminal side of things, ignore the treaties, and start franchises anyway. The crime you create on those planets will bring the competing empires down.
Ever wanted to destroy the galaxy entirely? You can do that with a little bit of military might and the patience to start destroying stars to feed your overly-enlightened quest to ascend.
One of the more recent expansions I finally picked up allows me to play as a very honorable knightly empire in service to a long-gone toxic god. Yes, toxic god. Nothing can go wrong there.
You can join federations and acquire vassals, either because you are benevolent and wise or because you have more ships and can destroy them. Land troops and conquer their planets.
Low on resources? Depending on your empire’s ethics, you may be able to buy and sell slaves to solve that problem. Or use the troops to take over planets and ship the inhabitants home to do work. Or be food.
Research more tech so you can modify your genes to make you more powerful, or more telepathic, or more robotic. Everybody wants to be a robot!
Speaking of robots, you can just make those as well. They can be your servants or you can grant them sentience and allow them to serve in leadership capacities. Nothing can go wrong here, either.
Build incredible mega-structures that give you more resources, allow you to build more ships, or become the most powerful at diplomacy.
Study species that have not yet acquired space travel, or invade their planets and take them as friends. Or slaves.
You can even start with a pet dragon. Seriously.
We are not Alone
There are also many other dangers in the galaxy to contend with, including ancient races that aren’t interested in you at all. Until they are.
You can have a friendly raider empire spawn as well, and they want your stuff. They may eventually find themselves a leader who wants to take over the galaxy.
The end game involves an all out invasion, unless you turn it off. That’s an option. You can change the size and shape of the galaxy, how many AI empires spawn, and if there’s a big bad at the end.
You can create empires and force them to spawn as the AI, so if you’d really like to play a game with little war, just populate your little galaxy with friendly folk who just want to trade.
All of these options are entirely valid ways to play the game. There are few limits to how you might enjoy this game.
A few Downsides
One of the main complaints about the game is after a few hundred years in game, the whole thing can slow to a crawl. It takes a lot of computing power to figure out what all those people across all those planets with all those different personalities might be doing. It does work a lot better on my PS5 than it did on my PS4.
My largest complaint though is one of the options you can’t select. Each game, you’re randomly assigned a precursor chain of events that will lead you to a special bonus. Sometimes it is a tech or a planet or resources. I don’t like most of them, so I’d love to be able to select the Cybrex precursor option. As it is, I just start the game over and over and over until I get what I want, which takes a lot of time.
This game can also have a steep learning curve, as one might imagine with so much to control. Set the thing on the easiest difficulty setting possible, turn the AI aggressiveness to low, and turn the tutorial on. You’ll win some and lose some, but it won’t take too long to get a decent understanding.
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