Stellaris

DO NOT BUY THE STARTER PACK
THEY ARE GIVING THIS FOR FREE AS PART OF THE BASE GAME SOON
Other than that, My favourite game of all time.

I nearly have a grasp of the game now. I understand and finished the Tutorial now too.

Anyone who tells you this is a strategy game is a liar. This is a roleplaying game with strategic elements. The fun doesn't come from copy pasting a meta template or clicking your deathstack on the opponents smaller deathstack. It comes from the emergent story telling that this games mechanics allow for.

look. the game has a very steep learning curve. i mean like learning this game will take you 40-50 hours. once you are past that point the game is amazing

As a girl who usually just plays Stardew valley, Sims amd BG3, I love stellaris. Its a bit difficult to learn in the beginning, BUT when you first get the hang of it its really a lot of fun. There isnt a lot of pretty/girly aliens, but that can be fixed with mods hehe. Also if you ever played Spore and the space-age was your favorite part, this is definetly the game for you. 10/10 Love <3

If you are looking at this game and all of the DLCs and are hesitant to buy it, note that you can have a bunch of fun without the DLCs.

I was very hesitant to give Stellaris a recommendation, especially because the game I played back in 2016 is not the same as 2018, nor the same as 2020... on an on. It felt like each time I opened the game after a few years, the entire game would be overhauled, when what I really wanted was the game I played back in 2018, and also look back at the game from the summer of 2016 with a bit of nostalgia.

What fueled this apathy was the constant release of DLCs that further fueled my lack of interest in this game. Not only was the game overhauled to my mind, it locked some of those overhauls in a paywall, or segmented interesting features in what seemed like DLC on DLC. Note that as of the time of this writing, I do not own any DLC besides the Anniversary Portraits and the Horizon Signal, both of which were free.

So, why the recommendation?

Simple, properties>betas>input code>"oldstellaris" version 2.0.5
I can play that game that I bought in 2016
I can play the space Civ5-Like update from 2018 (at least to me it reminded me of Civ5 for some odd reason).
To me, those versions do not feel like DLC is required to enjoy. They are exactly what I want in a space 4x.

I am especially happy that Paradox allows players to play the original version, and I think it is good to highlight this in a good review.

Is this a perfect game? No, but it is a very good option for a 4x in space.
DLC is not required to have fun, but now that I am playing again and know I can version back to when a DLC was new and unique (and not DLC on DLC on...) I am now interested in actually supporting the studio more by buying other DLC.

The base game goes on fairly consistent sales, so if you want to give the general systems a try, its not as much of a cliff of DLC to climb as you may think.

Incredible game BUT : DLC price go brrr, it's good and they're not like dlc slop, it's good, well made, content-heavy DLCs. But there are a lot of them, and because they're so content heavy, the base game seems so small without them. It's totally not the case btw, the base game is still really good, the dlcs are just that good, also my reccomendations for said dlcs
Machine Age is a must if you like robots, Biogenesis is quite good, do reccomend, Lithoids is seen as bad by a lot of people but the species are just incredibly good looking, I use one of them half the time, Infernals is really good too.
I would reccomend Nemesis in general but do not buy Cosmic storms or Distant Stars first, they're not as good at the others, I kinda just bought them for the cube species and the jellyfich amalgam species that you unlock when you have all the dlcs. Also talking about species, create or loggin into your paradox account, the behemothkin species that you get from it is like in my top five species ever, and it goes well with Biogenesis for obvious reasons (the Behemoth)
also there is a mod workshop with a lot of good things, would reccomend Gigastructural Engineering if you like huge things (attack moon go brrr) or Ancient Cashe Of Technology (ACOT) if you like small but powerful tech, and both at the same time is kinda ridiculous.
Also the species mods by Silfae are really good, and there is two Star Trek total conversion mods, two Star Wars ones, and a Mass Effect one so a lot of potential, and the youtubers that play the game are generally really funny and the community is the opposite of toxic and kinda funny but on the good side of funny
Also you can buy a subscription to have all DLCs but i think it's gonna make the base game feel weird and empy after all and paying for a subscription every month seems like a bad idea for me but you do what you want
PS: thanks for the feedback