Stellaris, a 4X/grand strategy game set in space, hit the shelves at a sweet spot in between Endless Space releases. Meeting a surprisingly starved market, Stellaris rapidly gained a huge player base, relatively speaking. Years later, it?s attempting to do the ill-advised, if not impossible?port to consoles a real-time-strategy game originally made for PC.
Given that this is a new audience, this review will tackle both the game itself and how the game translates to the controller. If you?re new to Stellaris, strap-in, buckle up and say your prayers. It?s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Mad Strats

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Stellaris takes place in a distant future in which civilization discovered faster-than-light travel and opted to attempt to conquer the stars. It?s a 4x game, so you have to explore the vastness of space, expand your borders, exploit the resources you find and exterminate anyone who gets in your way. But it?s also a real-time-strategy game, where seconds are days and each passing moment presents an opportunity either wasted or seized. What this looks like in Stellaris is exploring near-endless systems. You survey them with your science ship to see what resources are present and swoop in with your construction ship to build mining stations and the like. Meanwhile, you also need to expand your borders to habitable planets and manage the government, complex social interactions a...