Now onto the main problems:
It needs a complete overhaul. Even without mods, the game lags hard once you control half of a medium or large galaxy. Millions of pops across planets just bog the whole thing down. If the devs focused on this first and gave it a proper rework in a big patch, the whole community would be hyped. It’d also help new players because not everyone runs a high-end rig.
2. Rebellions need to actually feel like a threat again.
Or at least add some serious internal political challenges for different empire types. Right now, the galaxy doesn’t feel as alive or dynamic as it should.
Right now, you can just spam fleets, and there's not enough of a downside. Make it matter more to your national economy if you want that kind of power.
4. More ship variety, please.
Having almost no real visual or functional variation across 10+ races/empires is just lazy. It’s a sci-fi game—lean into that! There should be way more effort put into making each empire's fleet feel unique and believable.
(Those are just four things I personally think need major work, and there’s way more.)
Now, let's move on to the direction of the game overall.
After over 950 hours, I’ve finally hit the point where I’m done. Stellaris used to have this deep, semi-realistic, gritty tone that made it special, especially before the console release, when they started doing all these huge overhauls. Some of those changes were needed, like making UI elements more user-friendly, but it came at the cost of complexity.
Then they started overhauling the galactic economy—and that May 2025 update? That was the final straw. Instead of fixing the core issue of the economy (which has been hollow for ages), they just gutted it entirely. It feels like the game has now fully entered this weird "Disney-simplified" phase. They stripped out anything remotely resembling economic realism. Honestly, it feels like the devs are trying to turn Stellaris into the next family-friendly franchise rather than the gritty, semi-realistic sci-fi sim it once was.
At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if they straight-up ban war crimes in-game and replace them with... I don't know, “galactic timeouts” or something. It’s heading in a direction that just feels sanitized and soulless. It’s no longer the game I got hooked on.
This is my last update. I won’t be paying attention to Stellaris anymore. Between the growing number of DLCs, the absurd cost, and the direction the devs are going, I’m out. It used to be fun, flawed, but full of potential. Now it just feels like a bland shell of what it could’ve been.
