Well well well, finally 600 hours of gameplay and I have finally decided to review this garbage for what this really is.

A DLC factory.

Vanilla is just an empty shell of the same repeating events over and over with nothing much to do after you have played the first ten games. The game is just empty. If you play without DLC, even more so. Most of the content is in DLCs that feel more like a mod than a DLC. Without DLC you have a bare-bones game.

You will also notice that there isn't much to do with skill or knowledge of the game. Most of the game is heavily based on luck. Did you get lucky and have 20 planets around you? You now can surpass nearby AIs that still share just 1 brain cell and the only thing how they can survive your reign of terror is by difficulty bonuses. Without these, they suck.

Or did you get unlucky and have to restart 1 hour into the game cause you have no space and any tall build pretty much sucks and is boring to watch an AI simulator?

On the other point, it doesn't feel like you are playing against an enemy, more like they are all just an obstacle. The obstacle to further freaking annoys you. Have you finally decided to go on a purge spree? Well, all AIs just group up into 1 mega federation. That just steamrolls you no matter what you do.

On the other hand, if you can steamroll all AIs, it just gets boring. If you can't, you are annoyed cause they also group up and now you can't declare war on anyone without dragging half a galaxy into it. So you sit there in your little corner and just watch how the galaxy does pretty much nothing but one AI vassalizing the entire galaxy.

The performance. Oh god, the performance. The game runs like absolute ♥♥♥♥, no matter how good your PC is. You will always get to some point when the game takes ages for a year to pass and most of your time is spent just watching the paint dry.

Now to the latest news. MORE DLCs YAY. As if this game "checks notes" doesn't already cost over 240 EUROS to buy in its entirety or around 140 with all discounts. For a mod-level amount of content. The mods are free by the way. Next DLC is planned to cost around 20 euros each. So how nice of them to make them cost just 2/3 of the game.

My recommendation is to stay away from the EVERYTHING paradox ever makes. It will always fall into the DLC factory ♥♥♥♥ show with everything being rebalanced each update, fun stuff getting nerfed game being slowed down, etc. With AI's that are more A than I playing against it is mostly based on abusing vassalization to infinity.

Well well well, finally 600 hours of gameplay and I have finally decided to review this garbage for what this really is. A DLC factory. Vanilla is just an empty shell of the same repeating events over and over with nothing much to do after you have played the first ten games. The game is just empty. If you play without DLC, even more so. Most of the content is in DLCs that feel more like a mod than a DLC. Without DLC you have a bare-bones game. You will also notice that there isn't much to do with skill or knowledge of the game. Most of the game is heavily based on luck. Did you get lucky and have 20 planets around you? You now can surpass nearby AIs that still share just 1 brain cell and the only thing how they can survive your reign of terror is by difficulty bonuses. Without these, they suck. Or did you get unlucky and have to restart 1 hour into the game cause you have no space and any tall build pretty much sucks and is boring to watch an AI simulator? On the other point, it doesn't feel like you are playing against an enemy, more like they are all just an obstacle. The obstacle to further freaking annoys you. Have you finally decided to go on a purge spree? Well, all AIs just group up into 1 mega federation. That just steamrolls you no matter what you do. On the other hand, if you can steamroll all AIs, it just gets boring. If you can't, you are annoyed cause they also group up and now you can't declare war on anyone without dragging half a galaxy into it. So you sit there in your little corner and just watch how the galaxy does pretty much nothing but one AI vassalizing the entire galaxy. The performance. Oh god, the performance. The game runs like absolute shit, no matter how good your PC is. You will always get to some point when the game takes ages for a year to pass and most of your time is spent just watching the paint dry. Now to the latest news. MORE DLCs YAY. As if this game "checks notes" doesn't already cost over 240 EUROS to buy in its entirety or around 140 with all discounts. For a mod-level amount of content. The mods are free by the way. Next DLC is planned to cost around 20 euros each. So how nice of them to make them cost just 2/3 of the game. My recommendation is to stay away from the EVERYTHING paradox ever makes. It will always fall into the DLC factory shit show with everything being rebalanced each update, fun stuff getting nerfed game being slowed down, etc. With AI's that are more A than I playing against it is mostly based on abusing vassalization to infinity.