I recommend this game if you like strategy games, specifically space 4x games. It will last you a good couple hundred hours.

That said, in the genre of space 4x games, that's not a very long time. Consider this game the "sugar rush" of space 4x. You're going to get a hell of a lot more hours of satisfying gameplay out of something like Master of Orion 2 (or even Master of Orion 3 with the Chocolate mod) or Space Empires 4, although those games won't be anywhere near as fascinating and feel-good up front.

The Anomaly system (story-based stuff, each event will only be new to you once) playing such a heavy role in the game is the primary culprit. A close second is, as you will eventually discover, that ship composition design system. The tech/equipment decisions mean f*ing nothing to gameplay, basically more tech = more gooder. Somehow they've managed to make tech choices matter even less as time goes on, in the game's 1.0 version tech choices between lasers/missiles/guns and wormhole/warp/hyperdrive actually had a fairly sizable impact in the early game.

To make the "sugar rush" analogy more complete is the fact that the performance of the game's engine is ridiculously bad at midgame and beyond. I built my current computer FOR Stellaris, in mid 2017. My CPU is a 7700k I overclocked to 5GHz, I have a 1080Ti and 32GB of RAM, with a NVME solid state drive. In 2.2 on a Tiny (200 star) galaxy I will *STILL* get 30fps on Fastest speed by year 2400. More stars? Say, 1000? Hell, that'll be sub-60fps on Fastest game start and who bloody knows what you'll get later! This is ridiculous! It's actually gotten worse since release!

In summary, you'll be able to ignore the bs for a good long while, but if you're a lifelong space 4x veteran you'll come to the conclusion that this is just another "almost great" entry into the genre. In general I consider it worth the money as far as most games go, but consider this "yes" recommendation tenuous and disappointed.

I recommend this game if you like strategy games, specifically space 4x games. It will last you a good couple hundred hours. That said, in the genre of space 4x games, that's not a very long time. Consider this game the "sugar rush" of space 4x. You're going to get a hell of a lot more hours of satisfying gameplay out of something like Master of Orion 2 (or even Master of Orion 3 with the Chocolate mod) or Space Empires 4, although those games won't be anywhere near as fascinating and feel-good up front. The Anomaly system (story-based stuff, each event will only be new to you once) playing such a heavy role in the game is the primary culprit. A close second is, as you will eventually discover, that ship composition design system. The tech/equipment decisions mean f*ing nothing to gameplay, basically more tech = more gooder. Somehow they've managed to make tech choices matter even less as time goes on, in the game's 1.0 version tech choices between lasers/missiles/guns and wormhole/warp/hyperdrive actually had a fairly sizable impact in the early game. To make the "sugar rush" analogy more complete is the fact that the performance of the game's engine is ridiculously bad at midgame and beyond. I built my current computer FOR Stellaris, in mid 2017. My CPU is a 7700k I overclocked to 5GHz, I have a 1080Ti and 32GB of RAM, with a NVME solid state drive. In 2.2 on a Tiny (200 star) galaxy I will *STILL* get 30fps on Fastest speed by year 2400. More stars? Say, 1000? Hell, that'll be sub-60fps on Fastest game start and who bloody knows what you'll get later! This is ridiculous! It's actually gotten worse since release! In summary, you'll be able to ignore the bs for a good long while, but if you're a lifelong space 4x veteran you'll come to the conclusion that this is just another "almost great" entry into the genre. In general I consider it worth the money as far as most games go, but consider this "yes" recommendation tenuous and disappointed.