Apologies to my regular visitors who stumble across this. Most of you will have no interest in this. I wrote a review for Steam but it far exceeded the character limit so I decided to post the full review here since I don’t have a personal blog. I predated it to bury it as well, that’s why the date is wrong.
Stellaris 2.0 made space boring again.
Before you decide to get Stellaris 2.0, you must ask yourself one question. Why do you play?
Coming from the perspective of someone who bought Stellaris the week it came out, and thoroughly enjoyed it for its open-ended roleplaying Star Trek-like space 4X goodness, I can honestly say the 2.0 Cherryh update has rendered the game a chore. If you like other Paradox games, long-form multiplayer games, and/or managing details to perfect your strategy, maybe you could get into what Stellaris is now. But if you’re like me and value freedom and exploration over balance and stategising don’t bother with the current incarnation.
That’s the tl;dr version. If you’re in the same camp as me, or are intereseted in such a perspective, read on. Otherwise my preferences probably won’t reflect your own enough to be useful.
This is not Stellaris. It looks like Stellaris, it calls itself Stellaris, but make no mistake, this is an entirely new game. A new game that uses the assets and some of the code and mechanics from Stellaris, but has none of the appeal of the Stellaris I was sold on almost two years ago.
It’s so intolerably boring now, and I’m honestly not sure what other people are getting out of 2.0 that I’m not. Maybe they just have more patience than I do, because the game has a greatly reduced pace leaving little to do but wait. It seems every design decision was made with the goals of limiting player agency and making things as monotonous as possible. And because of the new direction the game has taken, I know all the little things I used to overlook will never be fixed, not in the version of the game I actually enjoyed. With all these little issues now permanent and unignorable, I’m almost starting to hate the game.
Stellaris has gone in a direction that may enhance the experience for one portion of the playerbase, but at the expense of forsaking another. Not that the game is unplayable garbage, but even accounting for my betrayal bias Stellaris 2.0 is well below the worth-playing threshold. I followed the dev diaries and all the latest Stellaris news, yet 2.0 has still managed to disappoint me. It’s worse than I expected, and I didn’t exactly have high hopes. And I certainly wouldn’t have purchased this version if it’s what they were selling two years ago.
Now, I’m not going to complain too much about bugs or balance issues, because those will likely be fixed within a month. (Or you know, like in the case of some balance issues, never. Like how building upgrades are mostly garbage compared to mining stations.) My grievances lie with design decisions that reflect the philosophy of the game, so to speak. They’ve taken the game in a direction that simply doesn’t appeal to me on a conceptual level.
So, if I had to sum up my experience with the new version of Stellaris in one word, that word would have to be “restrictive”. If you gave me a second word, I’d probably choose either “artificial” or “gamey”.
Starting with the obvious. Having your choice of 3 FTL methods has been removed in favour of the most restrictive and gamey method previously available, hyperlanes. Also known as roads in space. Immutable, static roads in space. That you see all laid out for you when you start the game, killling the sense of exploration you might otherwise enjoy. This makes the movement of all entities predictable and boring, and greatly reduces your options for exploring. You can up the number of spaceroad connections on galaxy creation, but good luck defending yourself if you do, because of the next problem…
Ships must now cross each solar system before making the FTL jump to the next. Which doesn’t sound too bad, and makes sense logically within the universe of the game. But the trouble is they didn’t increase sublight speed enough to compensate, making all travel painfully slow. I think this was done to break up the doomstacks (balling all your ships into one big fleet that never separates), but like much of 2.0 it produced unbearably boring sluggishness as a side effect. (BTW, doomstacks still happen, the AI just threw two 1k fleets at my planet instead of one 2k fleet.)
The absolute worst part of nerfed space travel by far, so bad I convinced myself I dreamt it because no sane person would have their game work this way, is only the defenseless science ships may enter unexplored systems. Aside from being monumentally counterintuitive and gamey as all fcuk, it also severely slows down the early game. (There’s a hostile first contact policy, but you can’t even make use of it because only science ships will ever make first contact.) You only start with one science ship. Previously this wasn’t an issue as you could explore to your heart’s content with the three military vessels at your disposal. Those vessels are now absolutely worthless for years or even decades, because unknown forces have forbidden them from exploring, and there’s nothing to fight. Nothing you would stand a chance again at least; there are still powerful space monsters waiting to devour you only science ship around every corner. I understand that it was a bit too open before 2.0, you could skip across the whole galaxy in a decade or two, but the new system is a ridiculous overcorrection.
You can build more science ships, and you will because there’s not much to spend your minerals on when you control only one system, and military ships do nothing but rust in orbit while costing you maintenance. But at the start of the game it takes up to a year to save up enough energy credits to get a another scientist. (Which makes no sense, you’re the only civilisation in the universe as far as you know, who else is going to hire them?) If you have a colony ship or developing colony this sucks 8 credits per month, making hiring additional scientists (or leaders of any kind) unnecessarily difficult. One could argue you need to make a choice between expansion and exploration, but I would argue that since you need to do both of those things, it’s not much of a choice, they’re just stifling you arbitrarily. In the end you’re going to need about 2 or 3 times as many science ships as you would before 2.0, because they perform double duty as explorers and surveyors, and travel is so slow.
The dual role of science ships causes you to make a “decision” between surveying nearby systems to allow them to be claimed,(btw, needing to survey a system before claiming it makes a lot less sense now that you don’t claim by colonising a planet) or exploring unknown space to meet other empires, find colonisable planets, and you know, get to the interesting part. And for some reason science ships without a leader can’t even explore despite having all the crew and sensors of a captained science ship. It’s like the designers took every measure possible to stifle your progress.
Speaking of sensors, they are now based on hyperlane jumps rather than spacial distance. And starting sensors have been downgraded to only provide information about the system the ship is already in. (and for some reason, info about a system is deleted when you exit without a full survey. But I’m pretty sure this is a bug.) This huge nerf makes exploring before teching up your sensors painfully inefficient, and dangerous. One could argue this by design. My counterargument would be, the inefficiency is boring, and the danger is frustrating. I doubt the developers intended the game to be boring and frustrating, but that’s the result of their decision making. You don’t boldly go in Stellaris, you meekly creep.
The crap sensors, science-ship-only-exploration, and slow rate of aquiring new scientists come together in a perfect storm where your only science ship is immediately and without warning destroyed by hostile space monsters two jumps from the home system 45 seconds into the game. This actually happened to me. There was nothing to do but wait until I accumulated enough energy credits to hire another scientist. I’m aware this could be considered a balance issue, but it highlights the larger problem of a boring early game. I used to play the game mostly on the standard speed, skipping to faster speed during the lulls. Now I can play on the fastest speed the whole time and still be bored. Because there is so little to do that is actually engaging.
Because of the exploration nerf and reduced traversal speed, micromanaging your science ship is both the only thing to do and a neccessity for optimal play. No other ship can do much of anything. You might have a station or two to build with your construction ship, but unless you’re indiscriminately claiming every system you survey, (which quickly increases the cost of technologies) it’s going to be mostly useless for the first few years. So you get to micromanage the science ship to ensure it ends its survey on the optimal part of the system to jump to the next. This isn’t fun. You used to be able to let your scientist(s) do their thing while you explored with other vessels that met foreign empires and enclaves to interact with. Now there’s nothing to do but nanny the science ship.
The old expansion system had borders pushing against one another with numerous contributing factors, and unpredictable results. It was a bit of a mess, but it was exciting. The new border mechanics look good on paper. You claim each system individually, so there’s no messy system flipping. Unfortunately the devs have made no effort to automate or even optimise expansion, so it’s another tedious task you need to deal with before getting to the good part. (On top of that it uses the Influence resource, which trickles in at the same linear rate no matter the size of your empire.) You pick a constuctor, tell it where to build the outpost, and wait. It doesn’t sound that bad, but when you have to do it dozens of times, and the only other thing you’re doing is micromanaging science ships, it quickly gets irritating. Slowing exploration and expansion doesn’t make the galaxy feel bigger, it just makes the player feel powerless and inert. And bored.
And I’m not done with spaceroads yet. Because of their restrictive nature, a hazardous star system can require 5 or 6 jumps to bypass. Even with the highest spaceroad density setting this is a possbility, because no two roads may cross one another, meaning there are no shortcuts. Compare this to the depreciated warp tech, which would add one jump at most, and wormhole generators which would likely not require any extra jumps, you’d just avoid that system. This makes the early game, before you have the firepower to elimate hostile space critters, very tedious and often frustrating. And if that hazard happens to be on a choke point, it can cut you off to a significant fraction of the galaxy, and no amount of movement related technology will change that. Hooray for chokepoints in outer space.
It seems the developers have done everything in their power to slow the early game to a crawl. I think they shifted activities to later on because the midgame slog was previously an area of common criticism. But you can’t cut off the dog’s tail to feed the dog. Moving the boring part to the beginning just makes the player lose interest before they’ve become invested in the experience.
All of this basically comes down to one fact. The early game is now boring as hell. And when it’s not boring, it’s frustrating. (Damned hyperlanes.) Occasional frustration in a fun game can be an exciting and motivating part of the experience, but in a boring game frustrating occurences just feel like the game is insulting the player.
And why is the beginning so boring? Well, the simple answer is it’s slower, but there’s more to it than that. Because of the reduced sensor range and inability to scout with your military, you can make it decades into the game without meeting more than one AI empire, even when they’ve been right under your nose the whole time. When you can’t explore faster than a slug, and you can’t interact with other empires, all there is to do is claim systems and build up your economy. That’s the boring part. Without competition expansion is rote and dull, and economic development is the chore you do to get to the good stuff. I understand there are in universe justifications, but these are not enough when they make the game restrictive and boring.
The entire early game has been reduced to the micromanaging and optimisation problems. They’ve taken all the interesting choices out and replaced them with optimisations. Like playing with a calculator, only less fun because there’s no way to make it spell “80085”. Once you’ve learned how to optimise the development of a planet’s surface you can just do the same thing each time. You may as well write a script to do it for you. Optimising isn’t fun, it’s work. Especially after you’ve gained proficiency at it. Maybe some people like this type of work and derive some satisfaction from it, but I need something more to keep me going. Optimisation work is like tofu, it can be satisfying with a little added flavour, but when it’s the only thing you get it’s bland and repulsive.
I haven’t touched on war too much yet, and there’s a few of reasons for that. I tend to have more fun playng cooperatively, war has always been more of a mid-to-lategame activity, and the gimping of exploration combined with the new war system limits the number of possible enemies. In four attempts at enjoying a game of Stellaris 2.0, I never made it past the year 2230, (game starts at 2200) and I only went to war once, just to see what it’s like.
Aaaand it sucks. I don’t have a ton of experience with warfare since the 2.0 patch, but from what I’ve gathered the “galactic terrain” we were promised in exchange for freedom of movement hasn’t materialised. I didn’t notice it at all, as it played no role in my one war as far as I’m aware. The individual battles and balance may be a bit better, but no matter how good it is or will be, for me, it’s not worth the tradeoff of being restricted to the garbage FTL method.
The real issue is how the game deals with war on a systemic level. The war system was already too artifical and earth-history-based before, but now it’s on a entirely new level. You need a casus beli to declare war, and you must have border contact with you potential enemy to even get the option. The old simple warscore system has been replaced with a more complicated war exhaustian mechanic that in the current build is totally unbalanced and broken. Even after they fix this new system, it still takes the game in the wrong direction by restricting player agency as the enemy can force a status quo peace on you when you’re winning. This is a game with hive-minds, devouring swarms, and robot collectives. Why do we need to obey medieval European war ettiquette? Why does what is essentially an ant colony suffer from war weariness?
My best guess is they’re trying to balance the game for multiplayer. (I don’t know who plays such a long game like Stellaris in multiplayer. How do you and a friend have that much spare time simultaneously? Do they play at maximum speed?) But in the process they’re ruining the roleplay aspect and the singleplayer experience. The developers have endorsed one playstyle, and implicitly told everyone who doesn’t conform to that style to go pound mud up their butts. They’re taking the game in the exact opposite direction from what I wanted, and more importantly what I’ve expected since I first learned of it. I expected that the appealing aspects of the game, the ones that were functional but flawed, like diplomacy, exploration, and player agency, would be refined and improved upon. Instead they’ve been stripped down to focus on “improving” the aspects that were never fun or interesting. Many of which don’t even carry the potential to be fun.
With Stellaris, Paradox took a chance and made a game that was something diferent from their usual fare. And it paid off in a big way. iirc Stellaris is their best-selling game ever. They had something new that people really liked, and instead of building on that they had, they got scared of the more mainstream 4X gamer they had attracted and ran back to their grand strategy comfort zone. They changed it to be just like their other games, the ones I was never interested in because they appear drab and obtuse. It’s become an inferior version of EU4 with a space skin. (Maybe they were backed into a corner by the suits pushing them to make new content for DLC, so they couldn’t allocate enough resources to fixing the existing systems. In which case it’s the suits’ fault and not the devs’, but that doesn’t make the game any better.)
Too be fair, they made some good changes and additions, like unstable wormholes, automatically upgrading civilian ships, abandoned stargates, etc. but the early game is so uninteresting that I never got to engage with these meaningfully before I was overwhelmed by boredom. It’s like Paradox is George Lucas, and 2.0 is the Special Edition. Yeah, the audio remastering, cooler looking explosions, and R2D2 actually being the right colour in the bluescreen shots are all great, but it’s not worth having to sit through the extended CGI band scene in Jabba’s Palace. I appreciate the cherry you put on my sundae, but I’m not going to eat it because you replaced the icecreams with flavourless tofu.
I’m tempted to still recommend Stellaris to the roleplayer who has never tried it before. To whom all aspects of the game would seem fresh, who hasn’t grown tired of the content the way I have, and who wouldn’t know what they were missing when it comes to the older versions of Stellaris. But the changes they’ve made indicate they only plan to make the game more restrictive and tedious in future updates. They could potentially remove more core features. Perhaps ethics are next on the chopping block? Or maybe the 4 standard ship sizes will be reduced to 2. If they can justify forcing roads in space, they can justify anything. Either that or the have no idea what they’re doing with the game. Neither scenario results in a game I can endorse.
At the end of the day, I prefer the flawed but fun version of Stellaris to the balanced but boring one.
Music’s still good though.