Stellaris - First Impressions

★★★★☆

I finally tried Stellaris after buying it who knows how long ago. Probably around the same time I bought No Man’s Sky, only I tried that first and stuck with it.

It’s an empire-building game. Not a type I tend to play much - in fact my main experience with this type of game is the Heroes of Might and Magic series (the map parts, not the battle parts). Though I played a lot of Heroes 3 back in the day.

And just like with Heroes, you start out exploring, gathering resources, establishing towns colonies…and then in phase 2, other factions start invading and you frantically try to fend them off while building up troops fleets on the opposite side of where you expected the attack to come from.

Unlike Heroes, in Stellaris you can also engage in diplomacy, espionage and alliances with the other factions, and so forth. It’s a much more complicated game.

Still, I stayed up waaaaaay too late last night trying to fend off an invasion when I should’ve just hit “save” and picked it up again later.