First Thoughts: Stellaris (PS4)

Stellaris is a real time with pause strategy game that’s been out for quite some years now, especially for PC. Being a console peasant, I’ve only just gotten around to getting it. So, is it mind-bendingly complicated or easy to get into?

Yes.

It’s complicated. There are multiple resources/currency types, huge timescales, diplomacy, internal political factions, bureaucratic limitations and various policies, as well as racial bonuses and disadvantages you can give yourself.

And yet despite that, I haven’t had too much difficult so far with my first game. The tutorial tips are really useful, and, although complex, everything seems to make intuitive sense. I’ve made some mistakes, which is to be expected for a complicated game the first time it’s played, but nothing horrendous (probably should’ve built more starbases and fewer districts).

Let’s start at the beginning. There are preset races/civilisations you can play as, or you can make your own. I toyed with being Cosmic Dragons or a reptilian version of Rome (may create those later) but decided to go with the British Space Empire, exporting tea, cricket, and intergalactic violence to anyone who crosses me. There’s a range of cosmetic stuff you can play with, as well as gameplay mechanics such as boosting how adaptable your species is (handy for colonising more worlds). Another cool feature is that empires you create may then appear in your future games as AI civs (you can enable or disable this feature as you like for each individual empire).

Start up the game and you’ve got your homeworld, a small military force, and civilian ships. These last ships are the most immediately useful. Constructions ships create mining facilities, and can build starbases in other systems, claiming them for your empire and enabling the constructions of mining operations. Science ships fly about surveying everything so you know which systems are worth claiming. They also analyse anomalies which can yield significant benefits (mostly scientific, but one example of something different would be that found a ship way more advanced than anything I had, trapped in the gravity of a planet. I tried and succeeded to retrieve it, substantially boosting my military capacity).

It’s a really laid back game. Mostly. The vast distances can mean that if you get caught short militarily you end up unable to defend if your ships are too far from the action.

Other empires can have wildly varying attitudes towards you, based on xenophobia/xenophilia and how similar/far away you are from them. Butter them up with trade deals (or gifts), or crack some skulls and go to war (I did this and claimed two systems from the Figyar Star Commonwealth, including a natural bottleneck to stop them annoying me in the future).

The speed can be varied from slow to average to fast, as well as pausing possible pretty much any time you like. There’s a really nice level of creative writing with the varied anomalies and special research projects that I appreciate. Still relatively early days (I’ve been playing for less than a week), but right now I’m enjoying it a lot. Recently formed a federation with my best alien friends, and a third member just joined, putting us in what I hope is pretty good shape.

I have to admit to a perverse desire to try playing it in German. I’ve played quite a few games that way, and it’s the only reason I can remember more than a handful of words.

Thaddeus