TL;DR version:
If you're wanting Stellaris but with a campaign and story mode, then I do not recommend this game for you at all.
If you're wanting a Virtual Novel with light 4x elements as gameplay between segments of the story then this isn't that bad!



I approached this game knowing full well that it wasn't going to be heavy on the 4x elements as some other games. From watching gameplay and seeing cutscenes and moments with your war-council and other species, how the conversations were carried and emotion conveyed by sprites propped up in a scene, who just change the emotions on their face. The dialogue options being the typical "Ask about details." "Accept Side Quest or refuse Side Quest" etcetera screams that the elements are more geared for what feels like a Virtual Novel. It unfortunately tries to advertise it is more geared as a grand strategy and 4X type game. And to be fair it does have those elements, it is just lighter in this game than others of it's type.

Gameplay:
Gameplay consists mostly of fleet combat between hostile factions as you scramble to secure valuable worlds for your operation. The game features colony management but that too is lighter as colonies are broken up into three tiers such as
-Outpost
-Settlement
-Colony

The last one being rare and a main objective to get and the others spread out through the game. You don't really get into the meat of the management aspect until you get a Settlement and eventually a Colony. Outposts are basically pre-set blueprints you slap down on a world that you can build it on. Extract the resources. And go. Due to the worlds themselves limiting if you can upgrade an Outpost to a Settlement or higher, most of the time you're just slapping a mine down and forgetting about it. Even on Settlements and Colonies, which unlock 'higher tier' of buildings. Such as going from a basic Tier-1 ship yard an outpost can have to a Tier-2 Orbital Dockyard that can build Tier-2 units. And Tier-3 ultimately in Colonies. You have a set limit of structures on a world you can make for the higher tiers so it both forces you to find more worlds. And to specialize the ones you get.

Fleet Management and Combat part of the gameplay is rather straightforward and can be very grindy. In the early game you start out small, trying to gain a foothold. You need to minimize the damage you take in fights. Since fully repairing a fleet takes two turns and a lot happens in just a single turn. You need those fleets mobile. Fleets get comprised of a Flagship and number of other specialty types. Another example of how it includes some 4x or Grand Strategy elements is that you can build specific Chassis of ships. A fleet with a lot of Carriers for example. As the game has four types from 'Frigates, Cruisers, Carrier, Artillery' with the last one being good at firing at far away hostiles.

But it's a moot point really. What really determines a battle is how damaged you are and how damaged the enemies are. Eventually you unlock higher tiers of ships as mentioned and you can upgrade your Fleets if you build the facilities for it. At that point the fights become just steamrolling through the enemies as two groups of Three Fleets at Tier-2 just roll over any opposition. The biggest damage they can expect is when you fly through a "Hazard" system that halves your ships health.

Combat it self is simple but effective. Give your ships buffs for resources, debuffs as the cheap option, and finally decide if you want to Nuke the bad guys or look good to the Aliens and minimize casualties. Then you just drag a slider that represents where your ships are coming from and let the AI do it's thing. It's simple, and more often than not it's better to just mindlessly plot the course of the fleet than to let Auto-Resolve handle an encounter as they might decide to enter from the far-side of the Enemy Fleet and get shelled by long-range weapons while they take their sweet time realizing they just invaded an empty planet and maybe they should advance to the people firing at them.

There's also science, and resource management. Both of which start out slow in the early game as you get outposts but eventually you can ramp it up to the point you put King Midas to shame with your wealth. The Research Tree in the game is layered like it's indepth but in actuality it's actually simple. Pursue either ship upgrades, either hulls or equipment. Researching the tech to settle on worlds too hazardous at game start (Though it is again just mostly outposts-sized worlds and they'll just be drop of water in your ocean of resources later)

You can pursue bioweapons though for the aliens. Which is nice. No Geneva Convention in the Perseus Galaxy after all.

All in all, the Early Gameplay is a slightly tense slog which then shifts you to steam rolling the enemies in the late game. It feels like it's filler to pad out the moments between interaction of NPCs but it's not necessarily BAD filler.


The Story:

The story, to not go into much, is simple and sweet with characters conveying the weight of what happens and occasionally a proper narrated cutscene to support the moment. The Plot for the EU campaign is that you're there in the galaxy to support the war effort of Earth as they fight a losing battle against a race of aliens known as "The Colossals" which are not described completely other than tidbits of characters describing an occasional aspect of them.

As the game progresses and you set up in the galaxy. You deal with more factions and political unrest that your sudden near-invasion of the galaxy has brought to get allies and to get what you need for your mission. My own personal complaint is that there's not much meaningful interaction with a number of the Aliens save the Mechanical-organics you will encounter. If you choose to encounter them that is. Comically enough, and I like that the option is there, each time the aliens attempt to talk or broach you with a side-quest. You are given a "No I do not want to do this." button that just burns that bridge.

The only real issue I have with it is that the pacing of the story can be confusing. The game stresses that you have a timelimit and some chapters start after a set amount of turns I feel. With one main objective, to build Six buildings spread out through Six Colonies, actually waiting for you to do said objective than just pushing you forward as it did with me on prior Main Story Quests. And at the same time you can end up going too fast for the game's liking or pacing. In one moment I had three quests trying to hit me with plot progressing cutscenes at the same time, it's when the Derelicts enter your system, and that just rolled me into the next chapter.

The side quests do stand to send you across the galaxy so if you pursue them then be warned that you'll have to leave your corner of the galaxy. It came as a surprise to me when I was given a quest to the other half of the galaxy that I didn't bother visiting yet. And half of the galaxy was still hidden by the Fog Of War/Undiscovered.


All the ups and downs taken into account. It's not BAD. If you come in thinking you're about to get a really well written Stellaris game then you will be disappointed. But if you approach it as a Virtual Novel which is what it seems more designed towards, both plot wise and with the minor gameplay, it's a good game to pass the hours on if you have time to kill.

Honestly, a pretty great narrative 4X-lite.
If you're looking for something like Stellaris, GalCiv, or something similar, this isn't it.
But if you found those too complex, or just want a break from the sandbox while still getting the itch for some grand strategy, The Pegasus Expedition is a great option in my opinion.
The game's main focus is on the narrative campaign, which you can finish in about 20 hours without aiming for total galactic domination. The second half of the campaign can be less event-focused and a bit repetitive, but it was short enough that it didn't affect my overall opinion of the game.
I did encounter some bugs, but for the most part my experience was pretty smooth.

Considering the only other review is a bug report about not launching, I'll count this as a first proper reaction to the game itself. How exciting!

And... it's pretty great! Definitely worth the price, especially with the small sale going on. I don't know how far along the Chapters go so far since this IS in Early Access, but I will say: The mystery of the unknown is gripping enough that I stopped myself part way through reading their Story dev diary, simply because I wanted to be immersed. Good job for that! The actual gameplay portion is simple but tense, warfare is truly about attrition and as a logistics nerd I love it.

Hoping there are enough "Chapters" left for me to whet my appetite for the setting.

Great Early Access release. This game has been on my wishlist for a while and was excited to jump in:

Visuals: Great. Intuitive, dynamic map. Exciting, tactical battle sequences. Interesting cutscenes and story arc dialogue screens. Unit/fleet markers little bland on screen. But not immersion breaking. It's kind of the norm in the genre to not have anything flashy/cluttered on the map, so I'm good with it

Audio: Great. Soundtrack well executed. Game and menu SFX immersive, sci fi appropriate and without being annoying or repetitive

Gameplay: Great. Exactly what I had hoped for in a turn based grand strategy title. It's been a while since I dug my teeth into similar games like Stellaris or Endless Space. So good to get back into the genre with this title. Well-handled resource management and system/planet upgrade mechanics. Fun, unique ship and fleet customization and management. Very nice combat mechanics. I love when turn based games throw in a fun real time minigame to get your heart rate up a bit. Overall very good gameplay.

Economy. No complaints. Resource diversity is well-crafted and consequences of running out of any critical economy component is appropriately dire.

Diplomacy: Interesting but could use some work. There's still plenty of time in the Early Access so excited to see improvements in AI opponents negotiations, etc.

Story: Engaging and meaningful. My only critique is you typically want infinite replayability in grand strategy/4X games. The current story seems to push you into similar experiences from Turn 1 - 30, even if it does branch out later in the game. TBD how this is handled as the EA progresses. I'd like to see a sandbox mode with no story. Or much more impactful decision trees and consequences to significantly alter your game experience based on one choice or another. Battletech, one of my favorite turn based tacticals, did this extremely well. There was a single player campaign where you went down a fairly narrow story path. Then Career mode which was totally sandbox. Hoping the option to have both will come soon.

Overall: Awsome release. Looking forward to continuing to see progress as the Early Access unfolds and be a part of the first batch of players!

If you're a fan of narrative driven experience and 4 X games then you may enjoy this, the story is compelling and maintains the right amount of pressure. I personally loved this game as the story vaguely reminds me of Stargate SG1 and our fight for the right to survive.

These are tips from an Edge Lord on how to be a Humanity First Nemesis. When faced with the cruelty of this universe, my fleets push forward, my soldiers scream out, my species RAGE!

Outpost and Colony management

The Pegasus Expedition has decent and I would even argue good, 4 X elements, as with all good simulation/management systems you can automate some broader aspects of outpost/colony and fleet management, although experienced players will know things can and will end poorly if left on auto. Also technology as a unit generated by labs, events and upgraded buildings can be traded for resources rather than a completed technology, which has obvious drawbacks but can help when you're in desperate need of fleet repairs etc.

Building an excess of research outposts can aid you in a pinch if you have good diplomatic relations with other factions, at the opposite extreme of relations, empires will refuse to even engage in diplomacy with you, If you wish to go hard, then there can be no peace.

Technology can be used to end wars and secure nonaggression pacts however your standing in the galaxy seems to decide how easily the other empires will break pacts, so if you're a nuke launching Nemesis like myself, be prepared for blitzkrieg just after you set all your fleets to be repaired in situ on xeno borders to be annihilated as you silently whisper "You too, Brutus?" as they betray the last of your good will to their galaxy.

I can see a diplomacy run being viable to some degree, however it means you will suffer during fleet combat and empire expansion, and with the pressure of the main story, I chose to burn the galaxy to save mankind.

Humanity first brothers!

Selling tech units initially to fund outpost and colony development gives you the early advantage you can use to crush the galaxy later.

Most of your planets and moons will be a basic outpost Tier 1, these add up obviously but Tier 2 habitable and Tier 3 colony allow you to build higher tier buildings. Your first habitable system should be designed as a T1 Shipyard outpost then upgraded to T2 after you give it a governor, this will allow you to build or retrofit Tier 2 Fleets once the required warship tech is researched, a governor is needed to allow an outpost to reach Tier 2 and Tier 3 depending on the tier of planet or moon.

Your first Two colonies should be T3 Shipyards aswell, you'll need to retrofit your T2 fleets and pump out enough T3 fleets to darken the skies like a murder of crows. Do not change these shipyard colonies as you will conquer enough systems and have enough governors to specialise them for your needs. If you run out of governors, rightclick to remove them from T2 habitable after you have replaced the higher tier buildings with T1 buildings as this will allow you to uses those extra building slots after it returns to being unchangeable like basic outposts, I advise stacking T1 power and mines before you free up that governor to put one on a colony.


TRANSIT STATIONS!

Orbital development is straightforward barring transit station and their upgrade to supply hubs, I nearly crippled my empire by adding these cheep upgrades to almost the whole empire before I had built out the power infrastructure to pay the energy costs. So in one turn I had nearly covered everything in transit hubs and then had no idea what happened to my power.

These should be used in the same way early rail was built as a single line across nations and empires of old, mainly for the movement of troops and resources to the war front. Extend these transit stations conservatively, from your shipyards through colonies to the the front, if you can pay the power costs then you will maintain the wrath of mankind upon the natives.

Fleets and Combat

Fleets can be set to automatic management, which will select equipment and build ships into the fleet however as above with outpost/colony management, you will find sub-optimal builds and equipment that is constantly being refitted, draining the economy of your empire. You can right click to lock the equipment slot however you may as well just manage the whole fleet the first time it is built. Recruit an admiral, look at their bonuses like artillery damage, interceptors (carriers) etc and build your fleets accordingly or just build a standard fleet such as:

F F F F
Cr Cr Cr Cr
A A Ca Ca

Frigates
Cruisers
Artillery
Carriers

Switching your back line up based on bonuses, discover your own fleet compositions or find better ones. Fleet combat is relatively straightforward and visually pleasing, so I won't cover more than strategic positioning on the galactic map and fleet exhaustion.

Fleets have two actions they can preform, which can include attacking twice, however once a fleet has used both actions it becomes exhausted, which means if you are attacked and force to retreat then you take dramatically more damage than if you had one action to spare on the enemies turn.

Defending fleets that are encircled or their only path of retreat is a double action (double jump) star lane then it and any other fleet stacked on that system will be annihilated if the defending fleet loses that engagement. Attacking fleets gain 1 to 3 attacks per action depending on stack size, meaning attackers only have to win 1 of 3 attempts to to annihilate the defenders.

The defender has to win all 3, with the maximum stack size in a system being 3, you can encounter bottlenecks when trying to travel through allied territory or reaching the battlefront and trying to pass your retreating fleets as they head to the nearest shipyard or repair station. Also equipment can be swapped at any time in your territory.

Hazardous systems or double jump star lanes force you to take detours, these systems and should be utilised to your advantage, turn based actions on the galactic map allows you to plan encirclements and ambushes after scouting ahead with agents, these are built like fleets after clicking on a system with the correct tech locked building. Annihilating an encircled fleet by attacking into a system that backs onto a double jump lane or opening your ambush system, then cutting off the escape route will allow you to quickly dominate the galaxy.

There's nothing stopping you from retreating your attacking fleet/s, to open the trap again and waiting for the enemy to attack the weak newly spawned garrison fleet in system, just to be slaughtered in the same trap or isolated double jump system.

Technology

Rush Pegasus Colony, Tier 2 and Tier 3 warship upgrades, the rest is up to you, I didn't use bio-weapons as I wasn't there to poison the galaxy. But I wanted to haha, especially after nuking fleets into Nemesis status immediately.

This isn't a guide, I just enjoyed this game alot and had a few tips that worked for me after my first failed start, take these tips with a grain of salt as I may be wrong on some aspects or future changes to the game alter mechanics etc.

Support the developers as I'd like to see them create more games, my European Union playthrough lasted around 130 turns on normal difficulty, depending on lost fleets and backstabbing Xenos, with these tips it really should be much faster than that however turn based construction and resource limitations will still inhibit the speed of story completion.

The two major gripes here are the mid-to-late stages of the campaign where honestly everything starts to kind become a blurry haze of slapping down outposts, upgrading fleets at your 1-2 dedicated tier 2 ship building planets, crunching forwards through whoever is in your way, and if you choose to enter the lizard-people civil war you get to enjoy ether having to crunch through the other half of the galaxy or you'll be stuck with a permanent -2.50% to your happiness cap (and you'll accrue more of them don't you worry) which is really not a good idea since you'll also be straddling yourself with a whopping -30% max long term happiness cap just for fielding 18 ish admirals.

(Edit: So the game got updated and the happiness mechanic has been changed, haven't played it yet so disregard this negative - until I've played it)

Which brings me to the second major gripe, the long term happiness mechanic. It's a good mechanic generally, but for some mind boggling reason it's capped at 100%

But that sounds reasonable right? Wrong!

Any structures or choices you make to raise that long term happiness do not build a buffer against negative effects after you reach 100% and do not exist at all; long term happiness only calculates your buildings and any choices you made first and then cuts them off at 100% meaning any excess ceases to exist... and then you get hit with whopping -30%'s by the late game which tanks your long term happiness. This makes many buildings actively a complete negative to build since if you're already at that 100% cap from your infrastructure any bonuses you got from building them become a one-time only piss into the wind.

I changed my mind a lot of time about this game.

I first I was put of by the bland dialog and the mediocre 4X, but then, the mix 4X-narration start working – it’s usually a very strong mix-, the autobattler, while lacking depth is pretty and the optimism of the game in the European construction is touching (the French admiral, the minister from Sarajevo and the other one from the Ruhr, a pity the player title is not commissioner like any good EU bureaucrat). I grow annoyed by all the bugs, performance problem on Linux, script not working as expected,... and was prepared to give a negative review but I then abruptly reached the credit.
The dev team is so tiny, the producers team almost outnumber the dev. The game scope and state of the game is impressive considering it was make with what look like 5 devs fulltime.

I just finished the main campaign,
And i'm Realy agreably surprised.
Here is a very decent not too simple 4X, with some fresh idea, and who succeed very well the narativ part, even if the story is not very complex (but quite original, as you're an invader that have reason to act the way they act, but absolutly no real casus belly against your enemy : You're a coloniser. Face it.)

I'm a 4X veteran , trying most tittle that are too badly receptionned to test them, and i didn't go try this one because of the mixed review... I Hope not too many people did that as it's quite the hiden ( but not perfect) gem

first the bad :
-Their is still some anoying bug
(infinit turn for AI , you need to roll back to previous round as the last autosave will be busted for good)
(indestructible enemy sometime appear in fight , or artillery focus zone with no enemy in it... you either hope for the best and asume the unjust result, or load before the fight)

-some mecanique are not well balanced or well thought
(you can ignore population all together realy soon after the start of the game(
(colonising already settled planet can be very complicated as their is only one way to make use of those place : replace their infrastructure with your's. And if they have made a good happines system for its increase, the flat loss of happiness globaly for most thing you can do is sometime normal, and sometime plainly ridiculous)

The mid : the subject of this game is quite touchy, as it dive into colonialism, and make you a coloniser with existential reason to do so.. A subject quite hard to tackle, even if chosing a sf setting help into making it less perillous.
Because of this setting i couldn't stop thinking about what was an interesting take on the subject, what was from my point of view a little too sugar coated, being a little too gentle with what you're actualy doing for exemple... maybee confronting you not enough with what could be the consequence of what yo'ure doing (but gooing too deep could be a problem too, so...) ... thinking about what was well done from my point of view, but questioning if it's my place to conclude that, etc....
My take about it now is that it's not perfect, their is a lot of thing that could be criticised, in different way depending of your view on the subject, but you can see that the developper carred about the subject and tryed to explore it seriously. ANd that, i think , is already something i would like to give them credit for.

the good :
- the fight system is quite original and a good balance of automation and choice. The fleet crafting is also well thought, even if sometime, you're not sure of why thing go well or not with what you crafted(
-the story is quite effective in making you do horrible thing with "good" reason or dubious one. (special thought about using some specific enemy to do genocide in a system you want from another empire, by waiting, like an USSR army just outside varsaw, to then take it back and install your own people, faciliting a process that would have took a lot of turn and a lot of happines management. It's effective... I couldn't stop thinking about how atrocious that was. )
- character are interesting, and success in being more than just utilitarian
-The pacing of the game is quite a success, enven if some people could find the ending a little slow, as you have a last mission, quite frenetic, but with less efect because of you still managing the rest of the map.

To conclude, i realy enjoyed the experience, and hope the developper still refine a little their game, even if it's already a success in this state (they made an update just this december, so i think they will probably do that for a little longer)
it's one of the best 4X experience i had this past two years.

Okay, so this is an interesting one. Even though I will be listing many cons below, I still like the concept of the game and enjoyed it enough to recommend it.

It really reminds me of a simplified Stellaris with a storyline, which is an interesting concept. The gameplay is fine and the story is good enough. I didn't encounter any bugs, except one time the game froze on one of the faction's turns, but reloading a previous save fixed that.


Pros:
+ I really liked the concept of a 4X game with a story. Now I wish Stellaris did something like that (more than they do with origins).

+ The dialogues were sufficiently mature and without typos. I was really expecting less, so was pleasantly surprised.

+ The tactical battles were interesting, forcing me to adapt my strategy almost every time.

+ Major bonus points for making espionage actually useful, compared to Stellaris. Your agents can damage enemy fleets, hurt relations, and overall they feel useful and sufficiently powerful.


Cons:
- I have a very hard time believing European Union as an organization is going to exist for another 250 years, but okay.

- Managing planet buildings is currently very painful. I couldn't find any way to see where I have buildable planets without buildings, so, when I had to look for a planet to build extra mines, I had to literally click through all the buildable systems and check if they had any free space. Additional frustration comes from the fact that you unlock technologies that make more planets buildable, so then I had to click through all the same systems again to find them.

- Managing fleets also becomes painful after you get 20+ of them. Like with planets, you have to click through all of them to remember where they are on the map and make their turns. For comparison, in Stellaris the fleets were bigger and I rarely had more than 10 of them, and could also order their movement across the whole galaxy, instead of managing it every turn. I think it would be better if it was at least possible to group 3 fleets into a single unit. And also allow docking them in systems with allied ships (really annoying when I can't move 3 fleets through a system because there are allied fleets stationed there).

- Surveying derelicts felt very pointless. I was expecting some unique and powerful rewards, but instead surveying them grants a very mediocre amount of rare earth and science. I could generate the same amount of resources and science in literally 1 turn without doing anything, while derelict surveys last multiple turns and may fail (although I never managed to fail mine).

- Even after completing the game, I still don't fully understand how energy generation works. From what I could gather, it allows you to only use the energy generated on the last turn, without being able to store or trade the excess. They don't have capacitors in the year 2260?

- "Local happiness". I see it's a recently added mechanic, and I couldn't find a meaningful way to interact with it, i.e. increase happiness on a specific local planet or a system. As such, when a rebellion was brewing on of one my system, I didn't have any way to stop it other than issuing an edict increasing global happiness. If edicts were on a cooldown - tough luck.

- Speaking of rebellions. Rebellious systems joining a random faction is plain ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It's especially "fun" when your colony rebels and joins your ally, and you have no way to conquer it back (you can NEVER attack your allies, the game doesn't let you) and have to trade like 10 other systems for it (colonies are very useful and important for the story).

- I also didn't like the limit of tier 3 (T3) buildings on the colonies. You have 1 T3 mandatory story building, and there are 3 T3 buildings necessary to construct different T3 ships, so already you can't have a colony that can construct all types of T3 ships (unless you capture more than 6 colonies, which is very difficult). I would really prefer if a colony could build T3 buildings without a limit, or at least increase the maximum T3 buildings to 5-6.

- I couldn't find any way to increase the max amount of governors, except through rare events. In the beginning, I thought admirals would always be useful and opted to increase their max through the events, but then suddenly I had ~50 max admirals and two buildings that can increase this number further, while I had 18 max governors with 40+ habitable planets.

- Lastly, I had a rather amusing experience with the "nemesis system", which makes all other factions go to war with you if your reputation drops low enough. After they've done that, I could just click through them and offer them the cessation of hostilities, which they always immediately accept. But, what's even more funny, they are ready to pay me minerals and rare earth to stop the war that they have initiated. :D In the mid-game, as a Nemesis, I used that to get a couple extra Ks of minerals per turn, just ending wars that would start again on the next turn. Although, at some point, the factions stopped engaging in diplomacy with me, so I guess there was some limit to it.


Conclusion:
* This game has a great foundation and needs just a little more UI/UX work and gameplay balancing to become really good. For now it is, at times, rather tedious to play, but, if you enjoy space operas and/or Stellaris - I would still recommend it.

Generally an okay game. Basically a lightweight version of Stellaris. However there are a few nitpicks I have. Combat is pretty confusing and I'm not completely sure how much impact different fleet types or tactics have. The UI is missing quality of life features that would help in managing a large empire. I often don't know which territories I captured need new facilities without opening each one.