TLDR; Stellaris is incredibly fun and allows for many playstyles and an unrivaled amount of customization, but don't get it if you don't have the patience or if you aren't prepared to shell out quite a bit of money (or wait for sales).


I just reached 1000 hours in this game so I thought I would write a review finally. I will probably have to change it soon though since tomorrow is the release of the 4.0 update.

Stellaris is a very fun game to play on your own or with other people (if you can ever get someone to play with you) and I would absolutely recommend it. That being said there are a few things. Stellaris is not a game for people who like completing a match in half an hour, which makes sense because it's a strategy game. You can play it for like half an hour at a time but a full game of Stellaris can take days to finish if you have it on the default time settings. Also the DLC scheme is a little annoying. The base game is really not worth paying 50$ for if you aren't going to buy at least a few DLC over time. I would recommend waiting for a sale to buy it since you need at least like 3 of the DLC for it to be enjoyable long term.

Now that I've gotten the bad out of the way there are a lot of great things about the game:

1. Replayability: Replayability in a game is really important and Stellaris has a lot of it. Every time you play the galaxy is completely different with different events, systems, planets, and empires. Even if you played the exact same empire every time your experience between two games would be fairly different.

2. Customization: my favorite part of Stellaris is how customizable it is. I went into the game expecting it to be like a lot of strategy games with a few empires you can play as. The game is way different and allows you to completely create your empire from scratch; including your species, your government type and ideals, your origin which can drastically change your playstyle, and the look of your units and flag and stuff. In one playthrough you can play as a peaceful race of bird-people with psionic powers, and in another you can play as a collective of mass murdering machines who kill everything that breathes.

3. Appeal to different playstyles: Stellaris is a game that can be fun for very different people with different wants out of a game. If you are interested in being a peaceful nation of diplomats there are very in-depth mechanics that deal with diplomacy. If you like trade and capitalism then there you can do a lot of that. If you like playing strategy games just to murder everyone then you can be a purifier and go total war on everyone with the in-depth war mechanics.

4. Mechanics: the mechanics of Stellaris are very original in a lot of ways. The tech "tree" is more random and has a lot of mechanics dedicated to getting research of different types and specializing leaders to get the techs you want. The tradition tree mechanic gives you cool ways to customize the ideals of your nation and get different bonuses depending on how you want to play. You also get ascension perks for completing them which give you interesting new mechanics or massive bonuses. The game doesn't do turns or grids but instead uses an interconnected web of systems that ships can move about freely, and has everything happen in real time instead of being turn-based. I could go on and on about all the interesting and original mechanics but basically its very good and fun.

Basically Stellaris is a must have for anyone who likes any kind of strategy or roleplay, but requires a bit of a monetary investment.


If you have decided to get the game then this is the part where I give unsoliscited advice on which DLCs to get (you're gonna need a few). These are my top 10.

1. Utopia:
Basically everyone says to get Utopia first. This is for good reason because without it you basically aren't playing stellaris.

2. Machine age:
Machine age is a massive addition to stellaris. The DLC adds machine empires (as an alternative to synthetic dawn). It adds the cybernetic and synthetic ascensions which are super good. It adds a new megastructure that produces some minerals (arc furnace), 3 new fun origins, and a new Crisis path that allows you to leave the universe for a better one while annihilating the old one and anyone who stands in your path.

3. Federations:
Federations is important not just because of the mechanics, but also because of the origins. Federations adds the most origins of any DLC (8) and almost all of them are fun. It also adds federations (duh) which allows you to become allied with other empires and get useful bonuses.


4. Megacorp:
some people don't like megacorp (they are wrong) but personally it is my favorite way to play. Megacorp adds a few great things. It adds Ecuminopolis worlds which are worlds that are encased in a massive city, it adds a bunch of megastructures, it adds the caravaneers which are like space vegas, and finally it adds Megacorps. Megacorps are a style of government where you are governed by a massive company. This is THE DLC for trade empires and is a must have if you like money.

5. Overlord:
Overlord is a great DLC if you like conquering and war because it expands the vassal system. Even if you don't like war this is a good DLC to get because it adds the conclaves. The conclaves are independant groups that help you in different ways.

6. Paragons:
I didn't get why paragons was so useful until I actually got it. The DLC makes leaders actually good by letting you choose which skills they get as they level up. It also adds some cool leaders who you can hire periodically which can be really great.

7. Grand Archive:
I would put this one on par with Paragons honestly. Grand Archive adds a few really cool things. First of all the archive itself gives you a fun scavenger hunt to find specimens which give you good bonuses. The DLC also adds two more types of space fauna who are really cool, and even adds space fauna as ships which are a different and really fun way to play (though they may be overshadowed when Biogenesis releases).

8. Ancient Relics, Leviathans, & Distant stars:
These three DLCs are all basically on par. Ancient relics adds a ton of new archeological sites, and relics which make for powerful bonuses. It also improves the precursor system by a ton. Leviathans adds massive space entities that rival planets in size and adds a fun challenge to fight them. Distant stars adds a whole host of new features. It adds the L-Gates which are a really cool mid-game event. It also adds a huge host of new anomalies, special interactions, and interesting scenarios over the galaxy.

9. Nemesis:
Nemesis is such a cool DLC to play if you want to become the Crisis. It was the first DLC to add a crisis path and it is genuinely a very fun path. The Crisis path allows an empire to make entire star systems go supernova one by one in order to collect enough dark matter to build the aetherophasic engine and rip a whole in the universe. This DLC adds some cool interactions with the galactic community as well. The only snag is that cracking star systems goes from "super cool" to "boring and tedious" quickly once you need to crack like 100 of them.

10. Synthetic Dawn:
Synthetic Dawn is the OG robots DLC. It adds the machine intelligence government and robots, as well as a ton of interesting civics for robots. Obviously now Machine Age adds robots but you should still get this DLC eventually because it adds a bunch more stuff (Driven assimilator, 2 Origins by 4.0, and a genocidal civic for bots).

All the other DLC are kind of whatever or just didn't make top ten. I would especially avoid cosmic storms, some of the species packs (Necroid, Aquatic, and Toxoid are the cool ones imo), and Apocolypse because you never actually use any of the stuff in it.

4.0 update was meant to improve performance and the final result is that the game is about 25% slower now than before. Thanks.

The new update took an intuitive set up and made it so that I can't even tell what is going on with a planet. I don't know if I am getting the pops I want and the game is so strange to me that I don't want to play long enough to figure it out. This update has made the game unplayable to me. I hope some of you like it, maybe I will be able to wait a couple of weeks and find a video that will explain how to play the game now. I can't recommend this version of the game, maybe that will change over time.