Recent reviews by TTtime

It's hard to leave an ultimately negative review of a game that gave me hours upon hours of fun. At one point I would have said that this is one of the best games I've ever played. But having recently uninstalled the game, I am finally writing a review as a way to vent my frustrations with it. I've played every dlc, countless mods, and several different playstyles that either comes with the game/dlc or unique ones that come from mods. I won't go into what makes this game great as there are better reviews for that and I would probably agree with most of them. I'm going to focus on what makes this game difficult to enjoy.
At the top of the list has to be the fact that after years of patches, dlc, development, communication with the devs etc.. the game still has issues with multi core processors and lag. This game is legendary for it's late game screen freezing lag, but with some patches it literally starts at both the main menu and the beginning of your playthrough. I honestly find this unacceptable that they can still release dlc and patches while leaving me with the feeling that despite the money being thrown at them and the time spent working on it that these are still very prevalent issues with very little progress being made and no end in sight. I can assure you that my pc more than meets the games requirements or suggestions of pc setup, this isn't the issue, please see paradox forums for proof. The game has a limited options menu with many options being gated behind console commands and forum/wiki searches to try to optimize the game for them? Why not just put this in the games menu? Why aren't the settings just set that way automatically? Why do they still barely help if at all? Your guess is as good as mine. A great game that you can barely play before even adding mods is less an interactive experience and more a piece of art you just look at.
Second, the AI. Whether we're talking about AI 'improvements' done almost every patch, despite the mods that attempt to make AI actually function, despite 'hiring' AI mod makers to join the company and work from the inside, the AI is still dog excrement. You'll find it extremely common for the AI to do things like take a settled world that is clearly meant to be a mining hub with various bonuses to mining and maluses to everything else, being used for literally anything and everything but mining. The best part? A little console magic reveals that said empire is in massive debt due to lack of minerals and is falling behind dramatically.. as you watch them colonize another mining world.. that they use to produce food or energy or whatever -_-. Just like with the lag, this is an ongoing issue that's been going on for years with no end in sight. Again, look at their forums. Difficulty scales the resources an empire receives while also boosting combat stats for the AI but it makes zero change to how the AI behaves in the game and all it does is stall the game to a more distant point where you will still surpass the AI based entirely on managing your own empire with a little common sense. This extends to other areas of the game like trying to automate your own sectors too, but the bottom line is the AI is atrocious.
I would mention more beyond this but I feel like most of it would be personal gripes and not worth mentioning as I don't think those reasons are valid enough to sway your opinion of the game and don't affect the experience as a whole. In all honesty, if those two issues would be solved I wouldn't even be here writing this review. I would be playing the game and adding onto the already thousands of hours I've put into it because it IS a great game.. on paper. But with each patch adding new problems as they attempt to fix the old ones with, again, no end in sight, I am regretfully moving from what should be an amazing game and am looking elsewhere. In a world of early access, subscribe to play, loot boxes, pay2win, and all the other nonsense, this title unfortunately belongs on that list. It's been too long and cost too much to keep waiting in hope of fixes that should have been a part of the game upon it's release, a dying concept. As much as I love the game, and feel happy for those that do still enjoy it, I can't recommend this game to the uninitiated knowing they would be spending money on a sub-standard experience. I probably should have spoken with my wallet sooner than this but I held out in the hopes that progress would be made. There isn't. So long Stellaris and Paradox! And good luck to the rest of you, may your galaxies always be painted with the colors of your empire.

EDIT: I wrote that the game is 'literally unplayable' out of frustration with my most recent playthrough but the game is obviously playable, how would I have so many hours on it if it was impossible to play, right? Those words are inaccurate and was just me venting. I just wanted to be clear on this because it does sound kinda ridiculous.

I also wanted to add and reiterate a couple of things since some people in the comments say I'm imagining things, to put it nicely. All anybody has to do is look at all the patch notes throughout the life of this game, even the most recent ones, to see that the ai issue and the lag issue are very real challenges for the devs. You can also do the same with the forum posts on paradox's forum, again, starting with recent stuff stretching all the way back. People are still trying to make and update mods, very popular ones mind you, that try and solve these issues or at least improve them. Please take a moment to check this out to see the proof for yourself, don't take my word on it. lol I'm definitely not imagining this. If I am then the game's devs along with multiple mod makers all share the same fantasy as I do. You could still enjoy any game with all of its flaws, including this game, like I did for a long while. My stance is that their improvements to these issues are too slow and too few, sometimes non-existant, while they continue to put out DLC and make other games while IMO this one still isn't finished. BUT people do play and even enjoy unfinished games, maybe you're one of em. For me personally my experience is soured by this and I feel that new buyers should be aware that the game, while still very playable and fun, has fundamental problems that may sour your experience too. In fact if the game wasn't as fun as it was I probably wouldn't care enough to write anything at all. But it IS fun, and that's WHY it sucks to see these things, at least for me it does. I'm passionate about the game and it's one of my most played games of all time but the issues are too glaring for me to ignore at this point when there are so many other great games out there that deserve my money and time.