Nexus 5X

This is exactly what the 4X genre needs - a faster paced game that can be finished in about an hour. There is a ton of variety in factions and strategy, allowing you to play wide or play a small focused empire. A real gem that has innovations similar to the "order system" from Old World, limiting your actions per turn. This along with the galactic voting system makes the strategies more than just "build up fleet, conquer enemy". Diplomacy and objectives actually matter. I just wish that more people knew about it and that its name wasn't literally a cellphone. Why they renamed it is anyone's guess, but it's caused this game to be forgotten by even the Stellaris fanbase. Come back and develop it and once again rename it to Stellaris : 5X or something of that nature with a juicy new patch and I think we'd see a lot more people return.

Playing the board game of Twilight Imperium is the perfect segue into playing this game. It takes the great concepts that TI created and improves upon them in pretty much everyway. Grab some friends and fight over the galaxy together. I love this game and I dont know how it has gone under people's radars for so long.

I like the concept of a "5X game" - even if the title is a little silly. I honestly think it's a shame, that Paradox didn't stick with allowing them to take the Stellaris name and call it Stellaris 5x instead. Would have given the game some well deserved publicity. Haven't played this a ton or anything, but can definitely see myself coming back to this from time to time - which isn't suuuper comon with games (for me). Wouldn't necessarilly say, that I would want to play every faction or leader there is, but definitely found some I like. And it's not like I expect every choice to be my first one. I think that's fine - seems like every version has at least a chance at winning, and the short session design makes for an experience where the AI can atleast fight a good fight (because the player doesn't have as much time to be smarter/better/more efficient etc.), and therefore doesn't automatically run away with the game. [b] Only criticism: [/b] Give me the option for longer sessions. 100 is to short, so I was pumped to find the option to extend the game by choosing the 150 option: Would be nice to have the option to play even longer games and make a perfect empire or conquer everything. (I don't even care if it isn't balanced anymore after a certain point. Maybe make it an option, but with disclaimer?). I just would like to have the option to gain my sweet-sweet-COMPLETELY-decimating-the-AI-in-a-4X-game-serotonin :D

criminally underrated. Smartly designed and very intuitive.

A 4x game that can be completed in under an hour fills a gap in the genre that I have been hoping for for a long time. Its really entertaining, contains all important aspects of a 4x game and i defenitely recommend it.

This is a pretty shallow and simple 4X space strategy game. The limitations are frustrating. I think it's designed more for PvP than PvE (which is what I enjoy). I found that the way the AI seems to have much larger fleet sizes and can pull a rabbit out of its hat with the perfect player card every single time is annoying. The turn system is a bit wonky too in that you leave your system to fight a battle elsewhere only to find you didn't actually leave yet because the AI warped in at the same time and they got to leave but you didn't and have to fight them before you can then take your drastically reduced force to fight in their system now (which they get to update).

An overlooked multiplayer gem. It's "Stellaris Lite" in many ways, with games that last about 2 hours on default settings. There are often issues with players getting disconnected but the way they've handled it is really smooth (players can rejoin within a few seconds and everyone else can still do their turn in the meantime). The tutorial is pretty good at getting new players onboarded within an hour or so. Overall I'd highly recommend this one, and it's a shame they're not continuing to develop it!