The Steam experience is typically seamless. Your options are to purchase it on Steam, GOG, PC, Xbox, or Playstation or to play it while it’s included in the Xbox Game Pass. Stellaris does not support any form of split-screen or hotseat local co-op/multiplayer. If you’re planning to play with someone in the same home as you, you’ll need separate PCs or consoles. Like any multi-platform, multiplayer game Stellaris can be a bit difficult to get up and running for the very first time. After we had about 8 hours into our first game together we were ready to split up and start a new match with our own empires. It took us about 2 hours to get the hang of things. Paradox does an excellent job of on-boarding players through its optional tutorial quests, but at the end of the day it’s still a complex game. This isn’t a game like Pac Man that you can just pick up and play. The first thing you’ll need (aside from the game) is the time it takes to learn to play it. We actually co-managed a single civilization the first time we played (by simply making all the empire’s decisions together during a single-player tutorial run) so that we could learn to play together.Īnd that brings us to what you need to play Stellaris. Managing an entire space-faring civilization at both the big picture and individual ship level is a daunting and incredibly rewarding feat. My fiancee and I had deep, satisfying conversations about the nature of geopolitics in space, whether might was right, and how cute the giant space whales attacking my ships were. The experience is an ambient and often relaxing one that’s regularly broken up by exciting events such as combat or diplomacy. During the early game (before all the empires have discovered each other) it feels a lot like you and your fellow human players are playing different games because you can go hours without actually encountering one another.īut chatting together during this seemingly solo portion of the game is what makes it special. But the experience here works equally well in single player or with just two or three players. Why play it on date night? Obviously Stellaris’ multiplayer mode wasn’t designed strictly with small groups in mind as it supports up to 32 players.
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Once time rolls you can choose how quickly it passes allowing you to decide whether to speed through lolls in the action or to slow things down to observe interesting events. You control the passage of time so, for example, if you want to deal with a new development, issue orders, or just take a breather to surmise your empire you can pause the game at any time for as long as you want. And we can also stop the action any time we want if one of us needs to deal with something important in the game. Everyone playing has something to do all the time, even if it’s just taking stock. Not only is space a pretty backdrop, but the graphics and ambient atmosphere hold up excellently after five years. We like it because it’s absolutely gorgeous. Much like Civilization VI, you’ll be controlling an entire empire but in Stellaris you’ll move beyond a single planet to conquer the stars. The point of the game is to manage your civilization by choosing and enforcing government policies, building and directing your military, deciding what to research, and slowly expanding its influence across the game maps. But, in this case, Civilization VI was our gateway drug. It marks our first foray together into something close to a title in the grand strategy genre.
Why Stellaris? My fiancee and I have been gaming together for years but this one’s a bit “advanced” for us.