Recent reviews by Radpahrak

I've had nothing but fun with this game. Anyone who enjoys strategy games (even if, like me, you're really bad at them) should definitely consider adding this one to their collection; also, if it's on sale, buy it. It's easily worth $10, and I'd argue that the base $40 is still a good price.
The DLC is also, on the whole, pretty good, though I would advise on waiting for a good sale for it. I would prioritize Utopia and Federations, Synthetic Dawn, Ancient Relics, and then Apocalypse and/or Megacorp.
Overall, the game is a wonderful tribute to science fiction, an engaging 4X experience, and an overall good time for hundreds (possibly thousands, judging by some of the reviews here) of hours.

Pros:
+ Thanks to the low system requirements, it's very accessible, even for computers on the potato end of quality.

+ DLCs are frequently on sale, and add rich, fun new elements to gameplay.

+ Near-infinite replayability. I've never had the same game twice.

+ Game is still being actively developed, with new features and fixes constantly being published.

+ If a new patch is too buggy for your liking, the developer allows players to roll back to earlier versions (while retaining multiplayer support!).

+ Active, vibrant modding community. Very easy to look up after 5 minutes on the workshop and realize that you've added sixteen new mods.

+ Engaging gameplay, with a challenge level for everyone, from the casual story lovers (like me) to the most hardcore min-maxers.

+ Speaking of min-maxing: customization. The player has a huge amount of agency in what and how they play. There's a niche for (nearly) every playstyle, if you play your cards right.

+ Bubbles.

+ Multiplayer is a blast with friends, and DLC isn't required: the game's host is able to share all DLC content with fellow players, for free. Additionally, though each player must download identical mods in order to do so, the game supports modded multiplayer.

Cons:
- Late-game performance. The sheer amount of entities the game has to keep track of by the year 2500 can utterly annihilate the game's speed.

- Multiplayer balance. Against the AI, you can play just about anything and still have a chance at winning, assuming RNGsus doesn't screw you over. However, in multiplayer, some of the imbalances in the game make certain strategies and civilizations far stronger or weaker than others.

- Micromanagement can become tedious, especially once you gain the ability to construct artificial habitations. I've noticed that it starts to become annoying once you have four or more planets.

- New builds are frequently buggy until one or two patches in.

- DLC is expensive when not on sale. Some DLCs are lacking in content; namely, the Species Pack DLCs, which are purely aesthetic (the exception being Lithoids, which offers new content in addition to aesthetic). Some important features that could easily be part of the base game (megastructures, hive minds, Bubbles) are locked behind the DLC wall.

- The game takes a serious time commitment to finish, which can make multiplayer difficult; the game basically requires setting aside at least 2 hours to make any meaningful progress, and can take upwards of 20 hours total.

- Some mechanics get frustrating. For example, I find myself constantly dueling with ethics attraction, especially after they introduced RNG to your species' starting ethics, and what do you mean I started with more xenophobic pops than xenophilic ones?! We're FANATIC XENOPHILES. WE HAVEN'T EVEN MET ANY ALIENS YET.

Other:
= There's a steep learning curve, but mastering the game's mechanics is satisfying; overall, I think it's part of the experience, and I've had a blast with it.

= I've never finished a game. I keep having new ideas for the civilization I want to play next, or simply become frustrated when the RNG decides that my time has come to die. There's an element of chance that can easily render your chosen playstyle completely unfeasible, though this is very rare. However, I'm not bothered by my lack of finishes; on the contrary, I think it'll make my first victory all the more special.

= The devs at Paradox Interactive have their ups and downs. They've sometimes taken ages to fix issues that plagued the community (only with 2.6 did they address the end-game lag issue that had been plaguing players since 2.2, and 2.7.1 seems to have borked that once more); on the other hand, they seem genuinely interested in improving the game and adding new content, to the point of hiring mod devs to improve the base game. As another plus, Paradox seems quite responsive to players, with some of their devs holding an active presence on the game's forums, and frequently release "dev diaries" cataloging the game's development process, as well as answering player questions in Q&A threads. Overall, I understand that a good deal of players have issues with them, but I quite like them.

= Never trust the cute portraits. They're always evil.