Recent reviews by eric

Stellaris is a large fish in a very small pond. Despite a promising start, lethargic developers and a stagnant mid to end game quickly snuffed out the initial spark.

A few things before I put this unfortunate train wreck to rest:

• The point of a 4X game is to be able to: explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. The common denominator? Player control. As such, I cannot fathom what the Paradox developer(s) were thinking when they decided to inject RNG like a steroid into literally every aspect of the game.

• I want to do things. Doing things makes me happy. Regrettably, the minute a territory touches another territory, the game instantly becomes kill or be killed. That's not doing things. That's praying that my randomly generated homeworld and surrounding systems has enough randomly generated resources to create uncontrollable stations and uncontrollable AI troops to fight uncontrollable battles enhanced by randomly generated research.

• When I found that single-player stalled out, I turned my hopes to a more rewarding online experience. However, a plethora of unrefined and missing game mechanics makes multiplayer virtually pointless. I don't think I need to explain how this annihilates any chance of a multiplayer game succeeding.

After 100+ hours of gameplay, I regretfully conclude that I can no longer justify spending any more time on this game. The developers' inability to respond adequately to community feedback and prioritize what actually needs to be implemented/changed honestly is so disappointing, because I see so much potential in what Stellaris could become.

I truly hope that Paradox and its developers can get their act together and make Stellaris the 4X it should be. Until then, au revoir.