I really tried... but I could not.
Spacefaring opera? Mankind's survival at its finest hour? Moral crisis?
All this in a 4X grand strategy game? COUNT ME IN!
That's what I THOUGHT when I bought the game. And here I am, sadly, having to write a 2 star review to it... I am not even doing this out of spite, like in Ci*****ation 7 (such crap, Jesus).
Let's begin.
1) The story started strong, but is falls short of everything really quickly. The characters are not compelling, the plot gets too generic without the adequate depth and in the end it just feels like an excuse to say "hey we got a campaign mode",
2) The soundtrack was good at the beginning, too, but then, also, it gets repetitive: not a lot of variety and very short repertoire.
3) The UI is bad. Really bad. At first (like everything in this game, damn, what a good first impression and what a HUGE disappointment) it looks polished, simple, effective... but no. It is just bad. Lacking in crucial information (where is the detailed breakdown of my mineral income?), uncomfortable for many things (why can't I quickly scroll on my systems from the planet view) and many other small things that keep piling up.
4) Learning the game through trial and error can be fun sometimes, but not this time. You need to plan, so you need to learn first. Mechanics and rules are progressively explained until... poof. No more explanation. No more tutorial and no more encyclopedia. There IS an ingame manual although you cannot zoom in to read some of the important explicative pictures.
5) Probably the most important thing: gameplay itself. The battles seem extremely random sometimes. Lots of tactical options but in the end it's just: NUCLEARS OR NOT? Colonies are not complex at all. Just fill the slots, spam buildings and there you have it.
Many other things but I run out of space for the review, it seems there is a character limit. There is no grand and there is no strategy.
The saddest thing of all: I could not stop thinking about playing Stellaris again.
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