Recent reviews by Selmack

I'm quite frustrated with this update.

Stellaris changed drastically. Some of these changes are good... and some aren't, IMHO. I hope most problems I encountered are 'bugs' or insufficiently tested features, still to be patched/balanced, otherwise I will just uninstall this formerly excellent game on which I spent several hundred hours.

The game is now much, much slower. Expansion feels like a pain, and seems both artificial and repetitive. Old border system was a little messy, but you could play with it. Build agressive frontier outposts, or see borders slowly slip away depending on empires' relative power... The new system is just boring. You just have to chain-build starbases, while hoping that your neighbours won't by chance take a chokepoint before you. If you manage to claim a few key chokepoints early on, you can secure a huge territory without risks and can continue building stations for hours... otherwise, you're screwed. Once the 'starbase chain-building' phase is over, boredom sadly isn't. The war system seems totally broken up, both claims and war exhaustion.

The new FTL system implies that your fleets will take forever to travel in your empire, and gateways is a very late-game technology. Fortresses are weak against any serious fleet, but awfully expensive. Barbarians continuously travel throught your territory, destroying everything they see (however, I heard that this problem will be patched soon). Even tall playing style is not worth it anymore, since you get tech and tradition penalties for every system you have, even uninhabited ones.

War. Why couldn't we select which claims we want to fight for ? Why, when calling another empire in the war, should it come with all its overnumbered claims ? I really hope this system will be refined.

And war exhaustion ... Large-scale, epic, long wars are not possible anymore, because war exhaustion quickly rose even without fights, and never fall down. You can be kicked off of a war, without any choice, even if you are roflstomping your ennemies. We're far away from a system like the EU4's one, where war exhaustion implies growing troubles in your empire and reduction of your warring capabilities, forcing you to make a choice : Is this war worth the mess war exhaustion is triggering around ? No choice here, the war simply stops. It's both frustrating and absurd, a space-tyran should be able to force his population into war (even if it means facing serious internal troubles later on, or having demotivated and unefficient troops).
Thus, I just fought (and lost, surprisingly) a defensive war against 2 ennemies. I stacked 30 war exhaustion in a hurry, because .... I counter-attacked after having defeated their fleets ?! WE skyrocketed when i occupied some of their systems, even if I was 1) in a defensive position and trying to crumble them from the inside and 2) had only lost around 3 corvettes against their paper-like space forts... It's like I got their own war exhaustion. I genuinely don't understand the 'logic' underlying this mess, and I will just leave the game for some weeks, hoping for a serious patch that the devs said was coming.

However, everything isn't that bad. The new weapon and armor system, with weapons being far more specialized and unique, is really worth it. Edicts are more interesting and powerful. Fleets limitation in size leads to a more tactical gameplay and prevent you from using an invincible doomstack. Space forts (even if surprisingly weak) combined with "galactic terrain" lead to innovative strategies (that are unapplicable due to the war system being broken)

However, I have the feeling that this update was released far too early, with some badly adapted concepts from EU4 and not enough bug-testing and balancing. I downvote, with a tear down my cheek.