GB Feature: Stellaris Review

Following up on our set of first impressions earlier this month, we’ve now taken Paradox Interactive’s recently released strategy-heavy and RPG-lite title, Stellaris, through the paces long enough to publish our full review. A snippet, as you might have expected:

On first glance, there is nothing particularly wrong with how Stellaris expands on its systems. For example, once you hit the cap on how many planets you can directly control, the game will nudge you in the direction of sectors. Sectors can be created to put a part of your empire under the control of the AI, which will micromanage your planets for you. It’s a flawed system, partly because the AI isn’t great and partly because it doesn’t govern any of the spaceports in the sector, meaning the player will still have to access them manually to build new ships in that sector.

By this point, the game also introduces twists on other systems, such as strategic resources. These can be obtained much in the same manner as other resources and allow, for example, the creation of far more powerful buildings on a planet. A betharian power plant, which requires a particularly rare mineral, will be able to produce far more energy credits than a normal power plant, for example. The tutorials stress the importance of these resources, though my experience with them leads me to believe they are overrated by the development team.