Stellaris: Apocalypse Critic Reviews

The wide variety of changes and brand new “apocalyptic” features introduced with the expansion or as part of the free 2.0 update add great strategic depth and new narrative paths, taking Stellaris one step closer towards its destined objective of becoming the ultimate 4X space grand strategy game of our times.

A really solid base for a 4X game with plenty of good ideas and a nice presentation. It´s just lacking a bit of content, especially at the endgame.

With the revamp of war, naval combat, technological additions and managing territory, Stellaris: Apocalypse might even be a more ambitious addition than last year’s Stellaris: Utopia. Stellaris only seems to journey towards a brighter future and Stellaris: Apocalypse paves the way for it to shine.

The new RPG start options and endgame contents are fun, but no must-have for Stellaris fans.

Stellaris: Apocalypse brings awesome weapons and new challenges to the Stellaris experience, but is also carried by the massive changes brought on with the new and free Cherryh update. As such, I wish Apocalypse came with the kind of changes we saw with the Utopia expansion last year, because by itself, the expansion lacks the kind of marvel we've come to expect from Paradox's expansions.

In the end, Apocalypse is an interesting – yet not essential – expansion. The only real game changer are the Colossi, as a ship type, a handful of perks, and a boring mid-game crisis are hardly worthy of an expansion pack. The team at Paradox seems comfortable with putting in the minimum amount of effort when coming up with creative options. But even while it adds planet-killing superweapons, it displays a disappointing lack of creativity in them and holds your hand the whole time, preventing you from ever using them freely. It’s bad enough that they restricted the number of megastructures in the previous patch, but this senseless clamp on superweapons mechanics just perpetuates a trend that will undoubtedly ruin the game in the long run.

The new Stellaris' expansion lacks interesting new content.

Super-weapons are hella fun, but this expansion is oddly skippable if you're not sold by its lean feature-set.

This new DLC, Stellaris: Apocalypse, and the major update to the base game, overhaul some serious systems, but the root problem of the title still remains. It simply is too grindy, too 'bureaucratic,' and simply takes too long to do anything interesting. The major issues that have plagued the experience are still present, so those hoping for any change to that will be disappointed, while many elements present serve to frustrate the player.

Every part of Stellaris is still here; the pieces have just been rearranged, neatly.