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I don’t really like Civilization. While the idea of controlling an empire through the ages sounds good in theory, the amount of time you have to spend doing it mostly outweighs the amount of fun to be had. While this may be an inherent flaw of 4X games, I had high hopes for Stellaris anyway since I’m a bit of a sci-fi nerd (actually, that’s a lie: I’m a lot of a sci-fi nerd).
Stellaris has been sitting in my queue for ages, and when I first took a look at it I put it into Tier 1 after playing for an hour; admittedly, this was not a fair shake. But with a lazy Sunday afternoon ahead of me and having been reminded that I still hadn’t played Stellaris by a board game I played with Chezni, I sat down determined to play a game. I got up 8 hours later, having played about half a game and realizing I just didn’t care anymore.
The problems started the same time the game did. A “helpful” AI popped up asking if I wanted a tutorial – I recalled that I was completely lost the last time I tried, so I happily agreed. And….nothing happened. The entire tutorial consisted of an AI voice telling me what things did when I clicked on them. Which was less “helpful” and more “Yes, I know the economy tab is where I manage the economy. I didn’t need to be told that, I needed to be told where the economy tab was and what all the buttons on it do instead of clicking around for five minutes.”
Now, I wouldn’t complain about this if Stellaris hadn’t pretended to have a helpful interface – I’m certainly used to needing a wiki to learn how to play. Unfortunately, the interface remains something you have to fight against for much of the game. Early on, it was simple things like figuring out how to complete a special mission. Later, it was more frustrating interface gymnastics like managing fleets. Getting used to these quirks made it usable, but certainly not intuitive.
Moving on into the meat of the game, I have a pretty simple test for space-based strategy games: if you can meaningfully interact with the third dimension, it’s a space game. If you can’t, then it’s space themed. So far, only one game I’ve played has passed (yeah yeah, I’ll get to Sins of a Solar Empire eventually), and even there the third dimension is only really useful in multiplayer. Sadly, Stellaris falls squarely in the “space themed” camp. Galaxies are flat, solar systems are flat, everything is flat. The ecliptic is a thing, but the galaxy is not one solar system deep. This, more than anything else, really made me feel like I was playing a reskinned Civilization.
Near the end of my eight hour journey, I was attacked by an empire on my southern flank (there’s no south in space, but as we’ve established there’s apparently no height either). That’s not surprising – it’s expected, really – and I was prepared for it. What was surprising was that the neighboring civilization, with whom I had cultivated a relationship (as far as the diplomacy system lets you, which isn’t far), also declared war on me. They did this because they had previously fought (and won) a war against the southern empire and forced them to join their federation (a peaceful federation). The eastern civilization was primarily a peaceful one, mostly interested in cooperation and trade. And yet, I lost several systems and a planet because they joined in the fight against me due to the federation. It wasn’t a catastrophic loss by any means, but it did seem to be a random one. With that, I realized I just didn’t care anymore and the façade of enjoyable alien 4X was broken.
That’s the bulk of my complaints, but there is one more facet I wanted to bring up. Obviously, predicting the future of technology is practically impossible, but having a solid grasp on physics and the potential technologies is a hobby of mine. This can be a problem, particularly in video games. Quite often, technology will be introduced with very little regard for physics or how it will impact society. I’d argue that one of the purposes of sci-fi is to explore that very thing – how imagined technologies impact society (or how it doesn’t).
Now, I’m not saying all sci-fi needs to be hard sci-fi, but it does need to clearly delineate when the technology they introduce is applied phlebotinum or just reversing the polarity versus when we’re supposed to take the technology seriously. In a 4X game such as Stellaris, this is doubly true. As much as I hate to admit it, FTL travel is probably impossible. And as cool as it seems, braving new worlds and discovering strange new alien species is increasingly unlikely. What does seem pretty likely is that we’ll build a Dyson swarm and turn our solar system into one giant Matrioshka brain.
The trouble is, those sorts of projects seem far more difficult than “just” going faster than light, so that’s how popular media treats them. This problem isn’t confined to Stellaris, but reaches to a staggering amount of sci-fi. Perhaps this is just my experience interfering with my enjoyment, but while I find it acceptable to make up fantastical new technologies, it annoys me when realistic technologies are treated as ridiculous alongside the fantastic (even Star Trek could be guilty of this occasionally). This happens constantly in Stellaris (since so much of the game is based around researching new technologies).
In the end, Stellaris lost points with me because it’s not a real space game, ignores science in its sci-fi, and didn’t make up for it with political intrigue. While I really did want to enjoy it, I just can’t justify spending more time on it. With great regret, it goes into Tier Three.